Did Mother Teresa secretly convert the poor? Looking for counters to the claim

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I’m writing a paper defending Mother Teresa and I’d love to hear different takes on it. I’ve narrowed down the secret baptism allegations to two sources:
  1. Susan Shields in Hitchens’ book. However, I don’t find her testimony convincing by herself since she never worked in India and it’s a single testimony. She gives some wrong details about baptism (wet cloth for baptism - which is illicit) which a dogmatic Catholic nun wouldn’t do.
  2. In 1992 Scripps Clinic, Mother Teresa said the following, “We call baptism ticket for St. Peter. We ask the person, do you want a blessing by which your sins will be forgiven and you receive God? They have never refused. So 29,000 have died in that one house [in Kalighat] from the time we began in 1952.” This video is available on YouTube. This is by far the stronger one since we have it straight from her mouth.
As far as I can defend the quote, Mother Teresa was merely blessing the poor with their consent, not a true baptism. She has categorically denied she converted the poor in news interviews and her followers and intimate friends have denied the same, which puts the correct interpretation of the quote in question. For a baptism and conversion to be valid, they have to have consent. And if there was a conversion racket, it would have easily been cross checked by going to the local parish’s registrar. Unless one dwelves to conspiracy theories, this is not very strong.

I am not a fan of the Pascal wager type arguments (if they believed it’s true, if not then no harm) because that would directly contradict Teresa in other quotes and is a problematic line of thinking.

What are your thoughts on this?
 
I’m not that familiar with Saint Mother Teresa, but wouldn’t it have been strange for her not to be converting the people? What good would her material aid have been if those people still died without Christ and potentially went to hell?
 
Without their knowledge and consent I mean. And help with the intent of conversion.

Doesn’t seem very Catholic to me to convert someone on their deathbed with very little agency. Catholic Church takes baptism very seriously, we didn’t baptise WW2 child survivors without their consent.

There’s a quote of Teresa which says she wanted to make a Hindu a better Hindu, a Catholic a better Catholic etc.
 
The Supreme Law of the Church is the salvation of souls. As Baptism is essential for salvation, no one who requests Baptism with the proper disposition is to be denied while in danger of death. She did not baptize people against their will, but did offer Baptism to those who were willing to receive it. If their families take offense at this, they sin by hubris, thinking they have any right to object.
 
I’m confused here. I thought the “job number one” of anyone involved in any kind of ministry (or even the lay apostolate, which we are all in, consonant with our state in life), was to bring as many people to faith in Jesus Christ, knowledge of His teachings (including the teachings of His Church), and baptism and the other sacraments, as can possibly be brought. I wish everyone in the whole world would convert to Catholicism.

As long as the baptism were freely received, and the person being baptized has been brought to some kind of faith in Christ, and has some minimal baseline knowledge of the Faith, I’m sorry, I’m not seeing how there is anything wrong with this. Quite the contrary.

Being baptized with a wet cloth is of dubious validity, but if the cloth were to be squeezed so that some water drips off of it and flows, I can’t see how there could be a problem with it. Not ideal, but better than not being baptized at all.
 
The question is that Mother Teresa has denied this, and her friends and nuns have too.

It just seems odd to me to reduce baptism to merely a ticket to St. Peter when a Catholic nun knows better. It’s very much likely that most people who are dying do not have much agency. Also, by Teresa’s admission, she simply said “ticket to St. Peter”. To me that sounds like very little baseline knowledge of the Church.

Susan Shields just said wiping on the forehead with wet cloth. I think she just might be lying.
 
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The only other source I found besides the two you listed was this article in the Times of India where an official claims he saw forcible conversions. There is nothing in the article to back that up.

I do believe based on the two sources you gave that these baptisms occurred. More importantly, based on the purposefully vague language used (the dying person never assents to a baptism) it seems clear these break the commandment for bearing false witness.
 
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Throw123 said:
The question is that Mother Teresa has denied this, and her friends and nuns have too.

It just seems odd to me to reduce baptism to merely a ticket to St. Peter when a Catholic nun knows better. It’s very much likely that most people who are dying do not have much agency. Also, by Teresa’s admission, she simply said “ticket to St. Peter”. To me that sounds like very little baseline knowledge of the Church.

Susan Shields just said wiping on the forehead with wet cloth. I think she just might be lying.
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I can’t say, I wasn’t there.

Of course a puerile reference to a “ticket to St Peter”, taken all by itself, wouldn’t be sufficient knowledge of the Faith, but perhaps these people had been taught the basic truths of the Faith earlier, and this was just to underscore the necessity of baptism. I don’t know.
 
Also by official accounts, Mother Teresa gave the appropriate last burial rites according to the faith of the deceased. Now if 29,000 people converted, that means one of two things:
  1. the quote is taken out of context, Mother Teresa was simply blessing them
  2. they were converting them in secret and publicly cremating them, which is a deliberate falsehood
Or Mother Teresa was exaggerating (hyperbole). I know people who have worked there, they haven’t seen these secret baptisms.
 
If I were you, I would ask to be shown local sources in Bengali at the time mother Teresa was alive that denounce the conversion racket. If the Calcutta locals did not complain about it, then this accusation is coming from outside sources with an agenda.
 
Throw123 said:
What are your thoughts on this?
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I believe she is a Saint. When I’m looking at her I’m looking at Christ.

If she “baptized” them “secretly” Christ baptized them “secretly”

As an aside, I don’t say the same for all Saints. But when I look at Mother Teresa I believe I’m looking at Christ.
 
Throw123 said:
Also by official accounts, Mother Teresa gave the appropriate last burial rites according to the faith of the deceased. Now if 29,000 people converted, that means one of two things:
  1. the quote is taken out of context, Mother Teresa was simply blessing them
  2. they were converting them in secret and publicly cremating them, which is a deliberate falsehood
Or Mother Teresa was exaggerating (hyperbole). I know people who have worked there, they haven’t seen these secret baptisms.
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I’m confused again. I guess this just isn’t my day. Why would the baptisms have had to be “secret”? Do Hindus have a major taboo against converting to another religion, the way Muslims do? I thought Hindus were pretty tolerant and “chill” about the various forms of religious experience, and might view conversion as a benign personal choice. I heard a cute anecdote one time to the effect that a Hindu was told about Jesus, and he said “that’s okay, that’s good, Jesus can be a god too”, one more among many, Ganesh, Shiva, Krishna, and so on.
 
There are many different Hindus. Conversion is generally frowned down upon in India and among the right wing of India, considered a crime. India has a history of colonialism and the problems with it if you lest forget.
 
You know, you seem to have a lot of information and every time someone answers you, you counter with more negative things about her. What is the purpose of this thread and of your “paper?”
 
I’m merely being a devil’s advocate, sorry if I come out wrong. I am not looking to hate on her, I adore Mother Teresa.
 
Nope, I am not. I am just looking for what you people understand of Mother Teresa, her views on baptism and conversion.
 
May I ask if you are Catholic? Your profile doesn’t say Catholic.
If you aren’t Catholic, what is your interest in our St Mother Teresa?
 
You don’t need to be the devils advocate toward Catholics. We have no reason to want to believe the things that you are questioning, so we have no need to defend her based on nonsense and twisting of her words.

Love her if you love her and ignore the naysayers.
 
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