[Kosh]

If she was indeed the evil, corrupt person the individual above made her out to be, then history will record her as such.

Not if the people writing said history is too brainwashed to know better. There's more than a few people in Russia who think Stalin was a hero.

I assumed it was about the allegations that she believed suffering to be a good thing, and her little hospital places ended up being horrid, nasty places.

Watch the Penn&Teller episode "Holier than Thou", they have her on tape saying exactly that, plus videos showing the terrible conditions of her "hospitals".

[Nuclear1]

Funny, cause when you ask people about Mother Teresa, you don't hear them say "suffering is good" or "treats people like ****".  You hear "good humanitarian" and "wonderful human being".

Fine, whatever, I know research is a good thing and sometimes it's good to have dirt on everyone, but when you're trying to tarnish the reputation (true or not) of what has been made out to be one of the greatest humanitarians in history, don't you think there's something wrong?  People don't look at her methods, they look at her intentions. 

Whatever.  Want to piss on Clara Barton or Cesar Chavez while we're at it?  Destroy any other sacred symbols of humanitarianism and good will?

[Mongoose]

To expand on what I said above, because no one really seems to have picked up on the point, this is the exact sort of **** that has made General Discussion such a ****ing chore to read recently.  Someone saunters in, throws down a thread consisting of little more than a link, a massive quote of some article or other, and a single-sentence snide remark, and then waltzes out again.  There's no legitimate starting point for discussion, no measured look at the topic, just the seeming intent to fan the flames by dropping a spark on some tinder-box of a topic.  Never mind that the article in question is just one limited viewpoint on a particular topic, and isn't from what one could call an unbiased source, or that there's very little potential for any sort of meaningful conversation.  Just throw the match into the puddle of gasoline, and sit back and watch the fun.

I mean seriously, Nemesis, what sort of response were you looking for here?  Here's one for you: as a practicing Catholic, I'm not very inclined to put much stock in the words of a militant atheist who has every personal motivation to discredit the Church's decisions, at least not in matters of eligibility for sainthood.  Did Mother Teresa have personal flaws?  Of course she did.  But as Nuclear1 said, her legacy is one that brings about great good in the lives of many, many people.  So who is the real villain here: the woman herself, or the people casting mud on her after her death?

[Nuclear1]

I'm a ****ing atheist too, and I'm no friend of the Church by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not for trashing the reputation and the good connotations associated with a person that inspires others to do good works.

That's just plain ****ing detrimental.

[Kosh]

Fine, whatever, I know research is a good thing and sometimes it's good to have dirt on everyone, but when you're trying to tarnish the reputation (true or not) of what has been made out to be one of the greatest humanitarians in history, don't you think there's something wrong?

I'm not trying to tarnish anyone, I'm going where the evidence is leading me. To do otherwise would be intellectually dishonest. I generally try to avoid having sacred cows.

Funny, cause when you ask people about Mother Teresa,

You hear "good humanitarian" and "wonderful human being".

Appeal to popularity doesn't work with me. I'm sure you could get millions of people in North Korea to say exactly that about Kim Jong Il and genuinely believe it, or millions from anywhere who think space aliens are coming here to abduct people. Just because a bunch of people think of something in a certain way does not mean that is true.

People don't look at her methods, they look at her intentions.  

How can anyone who believes suffering is good possibly have good intentions?

Whatever.  Want to piss on Clara Barton or Cesar Chavez while we're at it?  Destroy any other sacred symbols of humanitarianism and good will?

Nothing is sacred to me.

 

I'm a ****ing atheist too, and I'm no friend of the Church by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not for trashing the reputation and the good connotations associated with a person that inspires others to do good works.

That's just plain ****ing detrimental.

Being an Atheist does not automatically make you a skeptic. While there is considerable overlap between them in a lot of cases, there's plenty of atheists who believe all sorts of new age mysticism/space aliens/whatever bunk you can imagine.

[Nuclear1]

*sigh*

Maybe I'm just lost here.

Or are you seriously comparing the cult of personality surrounding Kim Jong Il to Mother Teresa?  Because Kim Jong Il doesn't inspire charities around the world.

[Kosh]

*sigh*

Maybe I'm just lost here.

Or are you seriously comparing the cult of personality surrounding Kim Jong Il to Mother Teresa?  Because Kim Jong Il doesn't inspire charities around the world.

I'm pointing out the absurdity of saying "lots of people think XXXXX is good so therefore XXXXX must be good", which is also why I included an example of people believing in alien abductions. Cults of personality can take many forms, they are not the exclusive province of dictators.

[Nuclear1]

Well yeah, but Mother Teresa is synonymous with "good works" and "humanitarianism" these days.  Is that really something worth destroying?

Look, humanitarianism has enough problems these days without one of its key idols being targeted.  If you hate the Church, fine, hate the Church, but leave the woman alone.

[Kosh]

Yes it is if it is not real.

Over the many years that her mission was in Calcutta, there were about a
dozen floods and numerous cholera epidemics in or near the city, with
thousands perishing. Various relief agencies responded to each
disaster, but Teresa and her crew were nowhere in sight, except briefly
on one occasion.[7]

When someone asked Teresa how people without money or power can make the
world a better place, she replied, "They should smile more," a response
that charmed some listeners. During a press conference in Washington
DC, when asked "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" she said "I
think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share
it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped
by the suffering of the poor people."[8]

But she herself lived lavishly well, enjoying luxurious accommodations
in her travels abroad. It seems to have gone unnoticed that as a world
celebrity she spent most of her time away from Calcutta, with protracted
stays at opulent residences in Europe and the United States, jetting
from Rome to London to New York in private planes.[9]

This is not about church hating, this is about the truth.

EDIT:

What usually went unreported were the vast sums she received from
wealthy and sometimes tainted sources, including a million dollars from
convicted savings & loan swindler Charles Keating, on whose behalf she
sent a personal plea for clemency to the presiding judge. She was asked
by the prosecutor in that case to return Keating's gift because it was
money he had stolen. She never did.[1] She also accepted substantial
sums given by the brutal Duvalier dictatorship that regularly stole
from the Haitian public treasury.

Mother Teresa's hospitals for the indigent in India and elsewhere turned
out to be hardly more than human warehouses in which seriously ill
persons lay on mats, sometimes fifty to sixty in a room without benefit
of adequate medical attention. Their ailments usually went undiagnosed.
The food was nutritionally lacking and sanitary conditions were
deplorable. There were few medical personnel on the premises, mostly
untrained nuns and brothers.[2]

When tending to her own ailments, however, Teresa checked into some of
the costliest hospitals and recovery care units in the world for
state-of-the-art treatment.[3]

Teresa journeyed the globe to wage campaigns against divorce, abortion,
and birth control. At her Nobel award ceremony, she announced that the
greatest destroyer of peace is abortion. And she once suggested that
AIDS might be a just retribution for improper sexual conduct.[4]

Another juicy bit. These are not the actions or attitudes of a humanist.

EDIT 2: I'd also like to ask why are you defending someone who seriously thinks birth control is bad despite the population explosion in lots of developing countries?

[Mongoose]

...are you seriously looking at the sources you're linking?  From the sidebar of that wonderful Mostly Water site:  Haiti: A New U.S. Occupation Disguised as Disaster Relief?

Call me when you find something that isn't pure wank.

[Liberator]

This to me is akin to someone saying Neil Armstrong was a drunken womanizer who did 3 lines of coke just to get by.  No one cares about that, all he will be remembered as is the first human to walk on another world.  That's all that matters to most people.  

BTW, I am no insinuating the Mr. Armstrong has ever taken an illicit substance, fooled around with anyone other than his wife or drank to excess.

Sometimes, it's not what a person says or even does that matters a fig.  Sometimes it's what they represent and inspire people to do.

[redsniper]

This to me is akin to someone saying Neil Armstrong was a drunken womanizer who did 3 lines of coke just to get by.  No one cares about that, all he will be remembered as is the first human to walk on another world.  That's all that matters to most people. 

BTW, I am no insinuating the Mr. Armstrong has ever taken an illicit substance, fooled around with anyone other than his wife or drank to excess.

Sometimes, it's not what a person says or even does that matters a fig.  Sometimes it's what they represent and inspire people to do.

Except that if it turns out that Armstrong was a womanizing cocaine addict, it has no bearing on whether or not he walked on the moon.

If it turns out that Mother Theresa wasn't a good humanitarian, then that directly affects her reputation for being a good humanitarian.

[Nuke]

ive always considered religion to be a fraud. a machine using the faith of others to gain power and/or profit. especially in the catholic church, which has about as many secrets as most governments, and about the same amount of corruption too.

[karajorma]

Not a Catholic, so my vote means bupkis, but where I grew up, one does not run down the reputation of the dead.

Actually Hitchins started pointing out what she was like long before she died IIRC. It's just that few people listened to him. I've got no idea how old that quote is.

If she was indeed the evil, corrupt person the individual above made her out to be, then history will record her as such.

But how will it do that if no one actually points out what she was like?

The modern "reality" that so many intellectuals want everyone to accept is that there is no God, no such thing as Absolute Good or Absolute evil.  That there is no existence after this life, this is it, one shot then you are less than dust in the wind.

Okay, let's assume there is a God. How is making MT a saint based on false miracles a good thing? Doesn't that cheapen real saints? Hell I don't believe in God or saints so I don't give a damn what you call her. But those of you who are Catholics probably should be annoyed that she was made a saint in defiance of the rules surrounding that sort of thing.

See, it has nothing to do with militant atheism or whatever bogeyman you want to come up with.

Say whatever about Mother Teresa you want; the fact that she made even one person's life on this godforsaken ****hole of a planet better makes her a saint.

But if she made one person's life better while simultaneously tricking lots of people into dying of preventable causes is she still a saint?

To be honest I don't particularly care about MT either way, she's dead now. What I care about is the legacy she set up. The money donated to MT might have done more good if it was given to The Red Cross or some other similar organisation. The homes for the dying were squalid, awful places where people actually died of illnesses that might have been preventable in homes run by other organisations. Are they still? No idea.

Whether or not MT was a good humanitarian isn't as important as whether the work still going on in her name actually is humanitarian. If it's not, if more people are still dying because of those places than would without them, then pulling down her entire reputation would actually be a good thing.

[Nuclear1]

So a person's legacy doesn't account for anything?

Whether her methods were 100% praiseworthy, she founded an organization that cares for the sick, poor, AIDS-afflicted, and hopeless.  She saved several dozen children in 1982 from Beirut during the siege.  

All this smells of is a horse**** political attack on the church.  Mother Teresa's dead--whatever methods she used have gone with her.  The MC is a modern charity operating in most countries around the world doing good work for the poor.

Oh, **** it.  I would've thought we've got bigger problems in the world than tackling whether Mother Teresa was perfect, but apparently this somehow takes priority.  

EDIT: Exactly what Kara said in his last paragraph.

[zookeeper]

The article was so obviously biased that I'm not going to waste my time checking the facts to see if its claims are anywhere near correct or not. If the author wanted the article to be taken seriously, then presumably he wouldn't have tried to make himself sound like an arse.

[TrashMan]

The last sentance in that guys article is all I need to know.

He's a church hater.

[karajorma]

Whether her methods were 100% praiseworthy, she founded an organization that cares for the sick, poor, AIDS-afflicted, and hopeless.  She saved several dozen children in 1982 from Beirut during the siege.

The important question is whether Mother Teresa's charities saved more than they killed. There have been some serious complaints about that. One that I find especially important is that money donated to her charities was rarely used to improve the quality of hospices back in India but instead went on opening more convents across the world. Given that the majority of the money was being given to help the lot of people in India it is rather troubling that it ended up elsewhere.

All this smells of is a horse**** political attack on the church.  Mother Teresa's dead--whatever methods she used have gone with her.  The MC is a modern charity operating in most countries around the world doing good work for the poor.

The Red Cross is also a (at least partly) religious organisation and I'd have serious problems with anyone who made an attack on them based on that fact alone.

That said it is worth pointing out that this article is nearly 7 years old. So there may have been a legitimate reason for writing it in 2003 which no longer exists now.

[Kosh]

...are you seriously looking at the sources you're linking?  From the sidebar of that wonderful Mostly Water site:  Haiti: A New U.S. Occupation Disguised as Disaster Relief?

Call me when you find something that isn't pure wank.

I cited that because they cited their sources, half of which was from Hitchens.

She saved several dozen children in 1982 from Beirut during the siege.  

Kara already addressed points like this. A few here and there is meaningless when the whole is allowed to suffer.

All this smells of is a horse**** political attack on the church.

Kara also addressed this point. You're allowing your emotions to cloud your reason.

Oh, **** it.  I would've thought we've got bigger problems in the world than tackling whether Mother Teresa was perfect, but apparently this somehow takes priority.  

It isn't about whether or not she was perfect, no one is, it's about whehter or not what she did actually was good. Herding sick, poor people into squalid "hospitals" staffed by only a few minimally trained "doctors" so they can suffer horrible, preventable deaths while simultaneously checking yourself into real hospitals is not humanitarianism, it's a crime against humanity. Funny how we (rightfully) criticize Kim Jong Il for doing this while giving MT a free pass. She has blood on her hands, a lot of it.

That said it is worth pointing out that this article is nearly 7 years old. So there may have been a legitimate reason for writing it in 2003 which no longer exists now.

There's always a legitimate reason to take out a facade, to lift the curtain and find out that the Wizard of Oz is not who he says he is.

EDIT: My biggest problem with MT is not just that she did so many bad things, but the cult of personality she has prevents people from seeing the reality.

[NGTM-1R]

Kara also addressed this point. You're allowing your emotions to cloud your reason.

Back at you. I'm no friend of the Roman Catholic Church. I'm the one over in the corner waving the "Pantheocide Is The Only Way" flag. But this, and your sources, and your reasoning, smell like dead fish.

It isn't about whether or not she was perfect, no one is, it's about whehter or not what she did actually was good. Herding sick, poor people into squalid "hospitals" staffed by only a few minimally trained "doctors" so they can suffer horrible, preventable deaths while simultaneously checking yourself into real hospitals is not humanitarianism, it's a crime against humanity.

I have yet to see any evidence that these sick poor people would have had access to any other kind of facility. Or did you and everyone else forget that point of how charities work? Hope to the hopeless and all that? Do what you can with limited resources?

Funny how we (rightfully) criticize Kim Jong Il for doing this while giving MT a free pass. She has blood on her hands, a lot of it.

The mere fact you just compared Kim Jong Il to Mother Teresa, the mere fact you're implying that they were even remotely capable of inflicting the same degree of human suffering, much less that they actually did, betrays a dangerous lack of perspective. You are one step from a Godwin here. I think you might even have originally taken that step, what with your alleging "crimes against humanity" earlier, and then changed it before you posted because you knew it was ridiculous.

Well, it's still ridiculous.

There's always a legitimate reason to take out a facade, to lift the curtain and find out that the Wizard of Oz is not who he says he is.

And you shall know the truth, but it shall not set you free. Nor shall it heal the sick, comfort the dying, elevate the oppressed, offer hope to the hopeless, right a wrong, or triumph over any sort of evil.

Instead, it will do the exact opposite of all these things.

No. That's not legitimate in any way, shape, or form. That is as illegitimate as it gets. This is beyond the road to hell being paved with good intentions, because I don't think you can even justify your intentions as good. They're not doing any good. You've not said it in so many words but it's nearly impossible to read your last line without concluding you're doing this out of a personal frustration, not any grand moral crusade.