Mother Teresa

[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.

…

Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of Mother Teresa. Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions.

Mother Teresa, real name: Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, was an Albanian nun who, depending on your level of gullibility/cynicism, is one of the following:


 * The most recent example of a saintly person,
 * The greatest con artist, sham charity embezzler, and sadist the world has seen in the last 50 years, or
 * A deeply misguided person who put the perceived spiritual needs of those she served over their real, tangible physical needs, or
 * A very real, very human combination of some or all of the above.

In the beginning
The myth of Mother Teresa was created by journalist/propagandist  Shortly after Muggeridge's conversion from agnosticism to Protestant Christianity in around 1969 (albeit a Protestantism that was peculiarly Catholic-supporting when it suited him ), exemplifying the zeal of the convert, Muggeridge co-starred with Teresa in a credulous BBC TV movie Something Beautiful for God in 1969. This was followed up by Muggeridge's book based upon the movie, Something Beautiful for God, which was very popular and translated into multiple languages. Upon Teresa's death, Catholic Times confirmed Muggeridge's responsibility for the PR campaign, "[But for Muggeridge] perhaps even now no one would have heard of her. Maybe she would have been like the vast majority of giving souls whose works are only known to 'clients' and to God." The foreigner-as-savior for the poor had fit in nicely with the widespread White Savior trope that has been common in the Western World, and so was ripe for confirmation bias.

Protestant fundamentalism
Teresa’s life is a great teaching aid for Protestant apologists, who point out that despite a lifetime of "good works", she is burning in Hell right now because she never said the magic words, "I Accept the Risen Jesus Christ as my Personal Lord and Savior!" Even did that before he died.

Women's rights (specifically contraception and abortion)
Mother Teresa opposed both contraception and abortion. She was an enemy of women's rights. She so successfully opposed the rights of women, that she effectively become the Excalibur of the Catholic Church's war on women.

It was kind of sado-masochistic that she wished half of humanity, herself included, to be oppressed. However, one finds that she seems to make exemptions for masochism as one goes on.

Closet atheism
Mother Teresa could make herself look very sincere in her faith. In reality, she experienced a crisis of faith and became more like an atheist or agnostic, writing privately:

Teresa made the poor, helpless people in her institutions, but was not even certain if God/Jesus exists.

Politicizing the Nobel
She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Being all modest and not wanting to take the money credit, she immediately thanked God for it and proceeded to characterise abortion as the greatest threat to world peace.

Meet the stars!
"What may be most telling about Mother Teresa is how often she ended up in front of the cameras. In pictures, she is either shaking the hand of someone powerful, glamorous, or ruthless — Ronald Reagan, Princess Diana, — or leaning over someone too weak to stand", according to Moira Donegan. Teresa was photographed with numerous world leaders, also including Yasser Arafat, Edward Kennedy, Indira Gandhi, V. P. Singh, and members of the British Royal Family. Media studies academic Gëzim Alpion wrote a book called Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?, documenting her active fame-seeking. Teresa's relationships with other dubious figures included the Haitian dictators François and Jean-Claude Duvalier and fraudster Charles Keating.

The Missionary Position
In his book, author Christopher Hitchens — gasp! shock! horror! — dared to criticize Mother Teresa for her work. His accusations include that she was primarily a political opportunist, abusing her fame and charity to spread her religious message, rather than help her humanitarian work.

Suffering for Jesus
Mother Teresa allowed suffering in her institutions with such depressing regularity one would assume she was sure suffering in the name of Jesus is a good thing. Teresa was not even sure that God or Jesus exists:

Well-meaning people donate money to Mother Teresa's organisation and imagine that they are helping people. Few realise that donations sometimes help Mother Teresa's order of nuns to hurt people rather than help them. Hemant Mehta relates the following:

Donors expected what they gave would go to help poor people. It did not:

While Mother Teresa was a sadist, she wasn't quite so masochistic when her own death was approaching:

Disturbingly, nuns who worked for the Missionaries of Charity were "expected to flog themselves regularly" with a rope or chain. According to former member Mary Johnson, the whole thing was decidedly cult-like.

Of course, Mother Teresa's devotees have rushed to defend their saint from such charges, stating that the Missionaries of Charity are "fully in line with the Universal Church". "The Missionaries of Charity Society is clearly not a cult, and Mother Teresa was not a cult leader." Oh, and cancel culture is to blame too, apparently.

Support of Albanian nationalism
Mother Teresa visited her ancestral homeland of Albania in August 1989, four years after the death of Enver Hoxha, a brutal Stalinist dictator who turned Albania into the "world's first atheist state". Rather than take this as an opportunity to denounce the Hoxha regime's suppression of religion and the murder of her own people, Mother Teresa practically endorsed it. She was received by Hoxha's widow, Nexhmije, who later described Mother Teresa as a "true patriot" and a "great Albanian" who "came with an open mind and praised our achievements". She subsequently laid a bouquet on Hoxha's grave, and placed a wreath on the statue of Mother Albania, which according to Hitchens:

Mother Teresa herself never offered any excuse for these actions, and had furthermore nothing to say when her portrait was being flouted by pro-Greater Albania zealots in Macedonia and Kosovo.

This criticism made Hitchens deeply unpopular with people who simply couldn't get their heads around the idea that Mother Teresa might be anything other than an absolutely perfect and spotless saint, even causing him to be angrily cut off during an interview on, of course, Fox News (so much for "Fair and Balanced"). Criticisms similar to those made by Hitchens were made in the "Holier Than Thou" episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! in 2005 (Hitchens also appeared as a guest on this episode).

Sainthood based on phony miracles
Following her death, the Vatican decided to waive the usual five-year waiting period to open the beatification process. [JAC: As I recall, it took only a year.] The miracle attributed to Mother Teresa was the healing of a woman, Monica Besra, who had been suffering from intense abdominal pain. The woman testified that she was cured after a medallion blessed by Mother Teresa was placed on her abdomen. Her doctors thought otherwise: the ovarian cyst and the tuberculosis from which she suffered were healed by the drugs they had given her. The Vatican, nevertheless, concluded that it was a miracle. Mother Teresa’s popularity was such that she had become untouchable for the population, which had already declared her a saint. “What could be better than beatification followed by canonization of this model to revitalize the Church and inspire the faithful especially at a time when churches are empty and the Roman authority is in decline?

She was canonized 4 September 2016, reigniting some of the debates about her "charities" and the value thereof. Gregory Clark said: