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weller2
Guest
From the article:that First Things article was excellent.
Ahem. If she raised money “on the poor”, and donated it to the Holy See, then this is a misuse of funds by definition.
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Tesseract
Guest
My Hindu friends in Kolkata think very highly of her. They have great respect for the Church because of her example.
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JackVk
Guest
The Holy See used the funds on the very thing Hitchens et al were griping about, so saying it was “misappriopriated” is a moot point". MT is being put in a Catch-22 here, since either way the naysayers are demanding materialistic results. It’s arguably all she could do, given that the peanut gallery is trying to tell her how to do her job.
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weller2
Guest
Note I said “misued” not “misappropriated” (i.e. stolen). You can use funds for a mission and still misuse them.
The yearly cash flow of a charitable organization looks like that:
Donations = Direct costs + Indirect costs + Reserves
For example, if the charity is running a soup kitchen, then direct costs would be purchasing vegetables, salary of the cook, and depreciation of the cooking equipment.
Indirect costs are thing like salary of the accountant, office rental, heating, electricity, etc.
Reserves normally should be near zero, unless there is a legitimate reason to stockpile money anticipating a future outlay.
Hitchens et.al. have correctly observed, that traceable direct costs of MT’s order are nearly zero, as the labor is done by unpaid sisters, the buildings are donated, the food is donated, the medical supplies are donated. Same goes for indirect costs, because accounting etc. is done by the order itself.
This can mean one of two things. Either all money goes into reserves and sits there unused or it is funneled somewhere else. The former means that the money is wasted, the latter means that there is a fraud. Either way, the donor’s money are used in a different way than (s)he wished.
Under normal accounting rules, giving money to the Holy See could be only considered a direct eligible cost if the order was purchasing mission-related services from the Holy See, e.g. leasing a hospital owned by the Holy See. However such arrangement, even if legal, would still raise some red flags.
Finally, let us assume that the money was, as Hitchens asserted, used for jet-setting MT around the world in business class. (I believe it wasn’t, but let’s use this as an example). At $10K per trip and one trip per day, that would amount to “mere” $300K per month. It’s still not enough to explain the mismatch between income and expenses.
So MT’s order will have to live with accusations of financial impropriety unless it agrees to open the accounts – which I don’t think will ever happen.
Again, I don’t think that there is an outright fraud involved – instead, the order simply has a very strict rules on spending (this is corrobated from several sources, including these very pro-MT), so it is unable to use the money.
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DaveBj
Guest
Weller, your posts have been very enlightening and have confirmed me in my opposition to mendicancy. I know, that may not have been your intention, but thank you.
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weller2
Guest
I don’t quite follow your reasoning, but I’m glad to be of service 
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manualman
Guest
This is nothing more or less than people attempting to hijack MT, her mission and that of her congregation. MT did not, to the best of my knowledge, ever discern a calling to create hospitals, health care clinics or other NGO apparatus. Her mission was to bring the love of Christ to the dying, the abandoned sick and the starving. Medical assistance, hygiene, food and shelter were often side effects, but MT refused to allow these secondary goals to distract her or her sisters from their primary calling: to spend their lives loving Christ in the poor.
It’s a very American thing to insist that it is “more loving” to establish a bureaucratic system in which systematized health care is provided to a few rather than a clean bed, healthy food and good hygiene provided to many. It’s also a distressingly American thing when people in their middle class comfort seek to lecture MT on what she “should” have been doing and that since they donated money to her, she should alter her priorities to what the donors want her to do. And not the GOOD side of American traits, either.
MT directed and spent donations on what she always believed God was calling her to do. She never promised high tech medicine or a focus on the physical health. She always was forthright that her call was to love Christ in the suffering that they might come to know and love Him as well. Giving a portion of that to the Holy See, which has the SAME mission is NOT “misuse” of said funds. Anybody who gave money with the expectation that they could manipulate her into changing her mission is both a fool and a knave.
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weller2
Guest
MT’s order does not spend the donations it receives. That’s the problem.
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weller2
Guest
…Yes, and that is why you sometimes have better chances of surviving if you don’t get into MT’s facility. To wit:
Source
In other words if by chance you are not infected with TB, then the quality of “care” at MT’s facility will ensure that you contract it via dirty clothes, and that’s because MT has decided against doing the laundry properly for ideological reasons.
Funnily enough, if I gave funds I am in charge of to another organization with the same mission, I would at minimum lose my job and possibly face criminal charges. Why, exactly, I cannot hold MT’s organization to the standard which is expected of myself?
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manualman
Guest
Ah, the “Hindu Internet Defense Force” website. Great source. Jack Chick’s stuff down today, or is that the next source?
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weller2
Guest
Lack of proper hygiene in MT’s facilities is widely documented.
The question is not why the conditions were originally bad, but why the conditions are still bad if the order gets ca. $10M cash per year.
Well, that’s not a question really, because the answer is known. It’s not that the order cannot afford washing mashines, it’s that the rule says that the nuns must live like the poor, and the poor don’t have washing mashines.
The question is not why the conditions were originally bad, but why the conditions are still bad if the order gets ca. $10M cash per year.
Well, that’s not a question really, because the answer is known. It’s not that the order cannot afford washing mashines, it’s that the rule says that the nuns must live like the poor, and the poor don’t have washing mashines.
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manualman
Guest
And contrary to pundit assertions, washing can be done by hand at least as well as with a machine. There’s no magic, just agitation. If the expose’ interviewee sent laundry with feces still on it back to wear, that’s on her.
You, of course, are completely welcome to go do it better. I may wish to have a look and let you know where you’re doing it wrong though…
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Bradski
Guest
Maybe you can do a deal with your medical insurance. Get a cheaper premium if your linen and hospital gown, bandages and towels are mixed in with everyone else’s and hand washed.
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manualman
Guest
Again, MT never claimed to provide a hospital. Repeat until you comprehend. Her mission was to pick up and give love, food and shelter to those that society had left on the street to die. By society, of course, I mean you and me. That’s worth thinking about for a few seconds before telling her she “did it wrong.”
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Bradski
Guest
But why wouldn’t you buy new needles. A washing machine. Clean linen. Good food.
If you did your bit looking after societies dregs I doubt if you could provide what we might expect from a hospital either. Maybe you’d expressly state that fact so that you couldn’t be misrepresented.
But if people were giving very large sums of money to you so that you could improve matters (what on earth were people giving money for if not that?) and you just left it sitting in the bank and refused to use it, how do you think that may be perceived? Especially when not using it perpetuated the problems that these people already had.
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Ignatius
Guest
So, @CompSciGuy, Exactly what accusations are being made? We have to deal with specifics in these things. Also, The burden of proof is on the person(s) making the accusation.
I’m still waiting for your answer.
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ericc
Guest
True, some charities are not well managed. MT may be highly focused on the destitute. Being a lousy finance person or not being very savvy with modern medical facilities does not impact her holiness. Finance and other skills are not the forte of everyone. Especially those whose focus is on the poor and unwanted.
Every charity does have a culture as to how it operates. Typically it reflects the founder’s management style. Donations to a charity do come with the expectation that the charity will operate under its own style as it is not practical and is not expected to meet the approval of every donator. Donators could be anonymous.
Regarding monies received by her charities, do you know whether these monies are specifically earmarked for certain usages or did well wishers allowed her to use it as she sees fit? If the latter, there is no issue right? Did she wrongfully used those monies for luxury living? For evil deeds?
So it seems the criticisms are not about her personal holiness but about her finance and management skills. That’s ok, Not everyone is good at such things. Even modern charities are not very well run, even if they were run by professionals. Some charities reported very low actual dollar utilization, bulk of it going into “administrative fees”. In the absence of actual comparisons against similar charities, it is difficult to say that MT charities are badly managed. Without that proof, it is just bad mouthing.
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Bradski
Guest
My wife and I give to a couple of charities and I know exactly where the money goes and how it is spent and who benefits. I have no (name removed by moderator)ut, or interest, in how it should be spent but I am convinced that it used efficiently.
If you gave any money to Mother Theresa you would have zero idea of where that money went and what it was spent on. If you saw needles being washed in cold water, filthy dressings washed by hand and out of date medicines being given, then you would surely, but surely, want to know why.
It’s one thing to take a vow of poverty and to deny materiall things to oneself, but to deny them to others when the cash is available is perverse. Nobody expected first class treatment but everyone expects basic hygiene.
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ericc
Guest
And if it is not used efficiently, you can either stop giving or volunteer to improve their processes.
If you contribute to her charities and you don’t like how she runs things, you can stop giving or you can volunteer your time and skills and suggestions on how to improve their processes. Or help to maximise the amount of off-the-shelf/out-of-date medicine the charity can obtain vs medical grade medicines. If you have limited resources vs the number of people you have to care for, you will have to find ways to stretch your medicine so that more people can be treated rather than only some with expensive hospital grade medicines. If you are not a specialist in providing healthcare and your job is to help unwanted people on the streets, you focus is primarily getting them off the streets. Medical care is as best as one knows how, may be not good enough for you, but that is a separate point. There is always a trade off between quality vs quantity. If she opts for maximum headcount to be helped, quality will have to take back seat. One certainly can disagree and therefore one chooses which charity one wants to support.
The previous post said “the order simply has a very strict rules on spending (this is corrobated from several sources, including these very pro-MT), so it is unable to use the money.”. If she can not use the money, how can it be perverse?
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Bradski
Guest
If she cannot use the money? If she cannot use it? She accepted huge donations from anyone who will would give them. If she could not use it, or if she refused to use it, then here’s a good idea…give the money to someone who will!
Accepting it if you can’t (or won’t) use it is perverse.
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