Mother Teresa an evil person?

  • Thread starter Thread starter unitive_mystic
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
When Mother first started her ministry in India, she hired a man with a wheelbarrow and they went all over, picking up sick and dying untouchables and carting them to her hospice in the wheelbarrow. These were people who were literally dying in the streets and gutters of Calcutta. There was no where for them to go, and no one wanted to care for them. Mother changed that and took all this responsibility upon herself.

Visitors who have seen the hospices universally say they are very clean, have good food and the patients are loved, which are things they did not have when they were healthy.

The reason the patients were given over-the-counter pain meds instead of opioids, which is her detractor’s frequent complaint against her, is because the Indian government does not allow the use of opioid medications outside a hospital setting. Mother did not run a hospital. She ran hospices for dying, indigent, penniless patients. No hospital in India would accept these patients without money.

When I was a child in elementary school, my teacher told us of the time he spent in India in the 1950s-early 1960s. He witnessed, in Calcutta, an infant who was laying in the gutter of a street, when a car pulled over to the side of the road and ran over that baby’s abdomen, crushing it. He said he was in such shock, he was looking around for help but no one seemed to care. They just continued to walk on by, sometimes they would glance at the crushed baby as if to say, “Eh, just another dead baby” and keep on walking. The driver got out and shrugged and went about his business.

This is the India that Mother Teresa stepped in to. The outrageous accusations against her are slander motivated by religious hatred.
 
Last edited:
Loud-living-dogma said:
40.png
phil19034:
One of the parish staff members at my parish knew Mother Teresa. She was a member of Mother Teresa’s Religious Order when she was younger (took temporary vows, but never took her permanent vows). This staff member has told us many wonderful stories of Mother, and many that are very human, sweet, and sometimes funny.

Mother Teresa was a very holy person and Saint. They hate her because she was pro-life and gave a beautiful pro-life speech in front of (and humiliating) Hillary Clinton.
  1. regarding donations - donations are often donated for a specific purpose. If someone donated funds for Mother’s travel, then it would be wrong of her to use it for other purposes. Same thing would be if Mother used money donated for the poor to pay for travel.
Click to expand...
But don’t you think that most of the donations that came in would have been to care for the poor and sick?
Was there any kind of accountability system for donations and payments for this reason?
Click to expand...
Very likely ‘most’ of the donations were for caring for the poor and sick.
And what was donated for that purpose was used for that purpose. The money Mother Teresa used to travel was not money donors had earmarked for taking care of the poor and sick.
And of course there was accountability.
 
Cecilia_Dympna said:
Has the OP been back?

Lit the touchpaper and then stepped back …
Click to expand...
No, he hasn’t. But I’m glad this thread was begun, so we could speak of the truth about Saint Mother Teresa.
I hope the OP does return and reads these answers.
 
Below I’ve provided a link to a post I made some time ago on another thread. That post has a link to a 24 minute video by Christopher Hitchens and the post also contains a brief rundown of the video. You can then see if you feel those criticisms have merit or not.
40.png
Was Hitchens right about Mother Theresa? Social Justice
For anyone interested the “Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa of Calcutta” can be viewed here. It’s about 24 minutes long and touches on some of the things he mentions in the book. Here are a few key points: 1:35 - The story of Malcolm Muggeridge and the BBC visitng the Calcutta shrine. 3:00 - After receiving a new type of Kodak film the producers at the BBC were surprised to see how much detail it gave despite the low light. Despite the fact this was an advancement in film, Malcolm Muggeridge cla…
Click to expand...
 
Pretty hard to “keep someone alive” who’s dying and basically at death’s door in the third world. There are some you don’t want to keep alive in the first world. I’ve been down that road even with the wonders of modern medicine. Baptizing them may have been all she could do.

Reusing needles. Part of me cringes. But to be honest disposable needles ARE a luxury - and a very expensive one. My mother is old enough to remember when needles were reused and autoclaved, and it was possible to get a dull one - they called it a “burr on the end”. Ouch. If I was dying and the best way for me to get pain medications or antibiotics was with a used needle, I’d hand them the alcohol to clean it with.

What would be the point of her receiving treatment in the third world if she died? I don’t judge her for getting the best treatment she could afford. Who wouldn’t? That’s pretty flimsy in my book. Where she herself was treated wasn’t the point. What she was doing for those who didn’t have that option was paramount.

The “house of the dying” by definition WAS palliative care. It was the best palliative care she could provide. Look up how much morphine is per dose. Most dying cancer patients (I know oncology, so I’m just using that as an example) get 1 to 4 milligrams of morphine every one to two hours in the West. (Yes, they can tolerate it. Yes, they need it. Especially bone cancer patients. No, we’re not sneakily euthanizing them. You’ll have to trust me.) Multiply that by the thousands of doses those people that passed through her center would need a year. Not even the Catholic Church could pay that bill. And if you think drug companies are donating, think again. I’m sure medications were rationed and they did the best they could. Medication is a luxury that most of the world cannot afford.

She is a canonized saint. She has always been an idol of mine. I can remember my dad saying they’d canonize her years and years and years ago, when I was a little girl.

Don’t believe everything you read. Literally, in the world today, nothing is sacred.

St. Mother Teresa, pray for us.
 
Pup7 said:
Reusing needles. Part of me cringes. But to be honest disposable needles ARE a luxury - and a very expensive one. My mother is old enough to remember when needles were reused and autoclaved, and it was possible to get a dull one - they called it a “burr on the end”.
Click to expand...
I was in nursing school back in the 60s and that’s what was done. Of course the syringes were glass not plastic.
 
Yep. We had some reusable stuff as recently as the late 1970s. I just associate it with my mom, who’s in her 80s, and tells some pretty wild stories about how things used to be done. I used to cringe as a kiddo when she’d talk about burrs on the ends of needles. 😯

It was HIV and AIDS that really pushed the movement to disposables.
 
Last edited:
There was a way to sharping the needle to remove the burrs but I forget what we used. I was using disposables in 1965 at a NYC hospital.
 
They were around then. But their widespread use and eventual mandatory adoption (because they were extremely expensive) was fueled by the AIDS crisis. As I’m sure you remember, they autoclaved EVERYTHING for the most part. Now almost everything except the instruments is tossed.
 
Last edited:
I remember reading about these accusations and found it helpful when someone pointed out that Mother Teresa’s particular charism was to show Christ’s love to those who literally had nothing and were going to die alone and unloved. She was not called to transplant an expensive western health system into Calcutta single-handedly, she was a religious sister!

And honestly? I think I can critique, from my ivory tower of comfortable sins and selfish choices, when I have done even a fraction of the good that she did.
 
Maybe we should let God decide. Otherwise we just let men battle it out for each others souls, something we do not own, but act like we do.
 
People act like if it wasn’t for Mother Theresa all these folks would have had top notch western medical care in posh hospitals. They would have had no palliative care and no medicine and would have been on the streets.

Also, spreading the faith and baptizing people is not evil. She was a missionary who cared for bodies and souls.
 
Last edited:
All I will say is an evil person has no shot at sainthood. We all know how that worked out for St Mother Teresa.
 
Last edited:
For real, all the horrible claims about Mother Teresa are very infuriating. It seems that some people want to nitpick everything she does in order to find some flaw that they can exagerate about.
 
Mother Teresa is awesome. Who on Earth could say otherwise, she is an excellent model for everyone, especially those who are greedy, for she was always generous. As other people have said, that does not mean she cannot make mistakes and sin. I would like to share a quote by Oscar Wilde. Now, this quote doesn’t really reflect on Saint Mother Teresa, but I got reminded of it when my mind was running a bit.

“…every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.”

So the accusations of Saint Mother Teresa was a bad person (even if they were true) does not affect her Sainthood. You could be the most horrible sinner and an atheist, but then realize you are filthy and get baptized. This person can become a saint if he plays his cards right. I find lots of inspiration in this quote because it reminds me of two things:
  1. God’s endless mercy
  2. God’s endless love
So even in the state of terrible sins I have been committing, especially in the last few days (I’m weak), I know that if I simply confess to God and make an act of perfect contrition, know that God died for me, that His mercy drowns my transgressions, He will forgive me. Of course, I am not baptized yet, so believe me, if I could go to confession, I would be going daily haha. What I am saying here is that this quote is a great reminder of God’s love and how we can all be saints, no matter what we have done in the past, we have free will to change our lives. Brothers and sisters, please pray for the faithful and those struggling with sin. I hope I didn’t just de-rail the thread.

St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, ora pro nobis.
 
Last edited:
I lost my faith because I Wrongly believed false claims about the Catholic religion. Ive recently came back. The devil attacks our religion constantly. Attacking our saints is just another way of doing it.
 
While I wouldn’t call her evil, that doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate criticisms of her:
  1. Her homes for the dying could have done far more to alleviate the suffering of those housed there. In the video I linked to above there was an interview with a woman who worked in one of them. She noted that the patients were mostly given aspirin or occasionally ibuprofen, despite many of them dying of excruciating ailments like cancer. It’s not a matter of means, as she certainly had the means. This relates to the idea that Mother Teresa was more concerned about the beauty of suffering instead of attempting to alleviate it. She’s famously quoted as saying, “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.” There are great many religious who accept that life contains suffering while at the same time working to alleviate it.
  2. Other criticisms made by the interviewee described the scene like that of Belsen. She also recounted a story where a boy was brought in and could easily have been treated with antibiotics and they wouldn’t send him to get healed.
  3. As mentioned upthread there was a concern about needles being used, but it wasn’t just about reusing the needles,. It was that they were reused without being sterilized (just run under warm tap water).
  4. She endorsed several dictators who had killed many of their own people (including Bay Doc Duvalier in Haiti and Enver Hoxha in her home of Albania).
  5. She had her sisters use duplicity in performing baptisms of the dying (essentially having them ask the patients if they want a “ticket to Heaven” then if they said yes would put a damp cloth on their heads and quietly say the baptismal rite. I know CAF members have felt strongly against when the LDS were performing baptisms for the dead, and this is no different – especially in a country where there is a very large mix of faiths like India.
  6. She associated with financial criminals like notorious S&L figure Charles Keating (using his private plane in exchange for a medal, and not returning his donations that came from swindled peoples) as well as publisher and embezzler Robert Maxwell.
As I say, I don’t count her as evil. She did some good, but at the same time these charges should not be ignored solely because of those good deeds.
 
Mike_from_NJ said:
patients were mostly given aspirin or occasionally ibuprofen,
Click to expand...
Indian law does not allow anyone to use opiates without being admitted to a hospital. Mother Teresa did not run hospitals, she ran hospices for the dying.
Mike_from_NJ said:
a boy was brought in and could easily have been treated with antibiotics and they wouldn’t send him to get healed.
Click to expand...
Then why didn’t he go to the hospital? Could it be that the hospital wouldn’t admit him without payment up front? That’s how it usually works in poor countries.
Mike_from_NJ said:
endorsed several dictators
Click to expand...
She did not “endorse” dictators. She did take their money, though. If she didn’t take it, they would just blow it on luxury cars and jewelry, etc. May as well put it to good use.
Mike_from_NJ said:
She had her sisters use duplicity in performing baptisms of the dying
Click to expand...
The patients were asked if they wanted to be baptized. Almost all of them said “yes”. Nobody was deceived, and you absolutely cannot compare it to the Mormon practice of baptism for the dead. That’s just ridiculous.
 
It looks like the accuser of the brethren is alive and well. It is pitiful the things people do to throw mud at people who are doing good.

“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19“If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. 20“Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also."
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top