Mother Teresa doubts?

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HabemusFrancis

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I have always heard all my life that mother teresa was a paragon of virtue, a saint living on earth.

However it seems that the Vatican has promoted this image of her, and has ignored what appear to be flaws with her ministry. It is true that she worked among the “poorest of the poor” in Calcutta. But even after 40 years of working there, after the millions and millions of dollars of donations she received her homes in India and the rest of the world were still basically broken down ramshackle, almost medieval institutions. Notice how it was called M. Teresa’s “House for the dying” not “House of healing.”

I also find it a tad hypocritical that her patients had to do with reused, unsterilized needles and a lack of real pain killers, while she always checked into the finest California clinics to deal with her health problems later in life.😊

Idk, it just seems odd that she talked so much about the poor and suffering, when she did not do that much to offer them material aid ( though she clearly had the resources to do so.)

I find it a little funny too that in the 1980s she flew to Haiti ( where did money for plane ticket come from?) to meet with the Duvalier family. The duvaliers were about the very worst of Latin Americas dictators. Seriously, they made Pinochet and Noriega look civic minded and saintly!:eek:

Despite that, despite the Duvaliers brutal repression and exploitation of their countries poor, she met with them, and announced how much they cared about poor people, and how fortunate the poor were to have such kind leaders as the duvaliers. She was paid handsomely for that.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be no great demand among the Catholic faithful to have her made “Santo Subito” the way there was ten years ago. It is as if she was completly forgotten… or eclipsed by her boss, JPII :rolleyes:

Idk, the more I look into her, the more it seems like she was not a friend of the poor, but a friend and admirer of poverty. Like she relished in the poverty and suffering of India, and thought how spiritually cleansing and uplifting it was for those who had the “privelage” to live in such conditions.

What do my fellow Church members think?
 
I see.

So members of the Catholic Church are not perfect, hunh?
As Bishop Sheen said, “If your church was perfect YOU wouldn’t be in it!”

Oh, yeah. You don’t belong to a church. You’re an agnostic. In that case, Mother Teresa should be completely irrelevant to you. So why are you spending so much time dumping on her?

If you want a “perfect” Saint, check out Saint Joan of Arc.
601 years after her birth, Jan 6, 1412, historians have still found no flaw in her character. This is in spite of much information we have about her having been written by her enemies, the English.
 
HabemusFrancis said:
I have always heard all my life that mother teresa was a paragon of virtue, a saint living on earth.

However it seems that the Vatican has promoted this image of her, and has ignored what appear to be flaws with her ministry. It is true that she worked among the “poorest of the poor” in Calcutta. But even after 40 years of working there, after the millions and millions of dollars of donations she received her homes in India and the rest of the world were still basically broken down ramshackle, almost medieval institutions. Notice how it was called M. Teresa’s “House for the dying” not “House of healing.”

I also find it a tad hypocritical that her patients had to do with reused, unsterilized needles and a lack of real pain killers, while she always checked into the finest California clinics to deal with her health problems later in life.😊

Idk, it just seems odd that she talked so much about the poor and suffering, when she did not do that much to offer them material aid ( though she clearly had the resources to do so.)

I find it a little funny too that in the 1980s she flew to Haiti ( where did money for plane ticket come from?) to meet with the Duvalier family. The duvaliers were about the very worst of Latin Americas dictators. Seriously, they made Pinochet and Noriega look civic minded and saintly!:eek:

Despite that, despite the Duvaliers brutal repression and exploitation of their countries poor, she met with them, and announced how much they cared about poor people, and how fortunate the poor were to have such kind leaders as the duvaliers. She was paid handsomely for that.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be no great demand among the Catholic faithful to have her made “Santo Subito” the way there was ten years ago. It is as if she was completly forgotten… or eclipsed by her boss, JPII :rolleyes:

Idk, the more I look into her, the more it seems like she was not a friend of the poor, but a friend and admirer of poverty. Like she relished in the poverty and suffering of India, and thought how spiritually cleansing and uplifting it was for those who had the “privelage” to live in such conditions.

What do my fellow Church members think?
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Idk, maybe reasonable questions…maybe a troll.

Idk, I mean we can use our standards of suburban US hospitals to evaluate what her nuns “supposedly did” or we can take a more world wide, 3rd world perspective.

Idk, we can, in a quiet clean room without beggars at our doorstep rethink her life long work which put her in daily contact with worm infested dying people…and impugn our nasty motives to her.

Idk I think you’ve been reading that soft fat intellectual atheists smear job on Mother Teresa…Dawkins? Hitchens?

Some people pick 5 or 10 isolated incidents and concoct a smear job around more than 50 years of daily hard love, coming up with crazy notions about her motivations, like yourself, that she did it because she enjoyed the fame, the contrast, whatever…all from your comfy lives.

Some people smear her in another ways…saying if she was so holy why did she live without the palpable “feeling” of God’s presence.

But idk
 
I once wrote to Mother Theresa. I was trying to adopt a baby from India (I had a biological daughter at the time who was about three). She wrote back (I no longer have the letter) telling me that the babies were “better left” in their own country. At the time, I thought this was absolutely incredible considering I was offering a loving, Catholic home with a lifelong commitment to a baby that would end up on the streets. But, what do I know. 🤷 Not much, really.

This left a “bad taste in my mouth” (horrible expression but apt description) for many years. And then, this past Saturday, just before singing (I am the cantor at the 5PM Mass in this church), I met an elderly (in his 80s) parishioner who originally wanted to ask me to announce the numbers of the hymns a bit louder (I do use a microphone lol) because his hearing is seriously impaired. During the course of this five minute encounter, he took out of his pocket a rosary (plain brown, with rope) that had been given to him by a friend to whom it had been given, personally, by Bl. Pope John Paul II. Holding that rosary was a great blessing for me. During our conversation, this gentleman told me that a friend of his was in Rome (did not mention the year) at a cafe having lunch and Mother Theresa walked in. His friend and her companion invited Mother Theresa to sit and eat with them, which she did. At the end of the lunch, the friend asked Mother Theresa to bless a rosary which she had purchased at the Vatican and which had been blessed by the Pope (in general audience). This rosary, said the gentleman, had beads shaped like roses. Mother Theresa blessed it and he reported that, for quite a long time, the rosary smelled STRONGLY of roses. This was not an hallucination, it was a fact as reported by his friend.

So…neither you nor I nor anyone else can sit in judgment of another. That judgment is reserved to God and the soul in particular judgment (and then in general judgment). I have no idea why Mother Theresa has not yet been canonized but it is basically none of my business. This is God’s business. You speak of yourself as an agnostic: yet you search for signs. Remember that Jesus often refused signs. It is by faith we are saved, and not by acts, lest no one can boast.
 
Does this thread get recycled every six months or so? I’m sure I’ve read this one before…Might it be fair that if you post your comments again, that you insert a few good arguments from the last time we all responded?
 
HabemusFrancis said:
I have always heard all my life that mother teresa was a paragon of virtue, a saint living on earth.

However it seems that the Vatican has promoted this image of her, and has ignored what appear to be flaws with her ministry. It is true that she worked among the “poorest of the poor” in Calcutta. But even after 40 years of working there, after the millions and millions of dollars of donations she received her homes in India and the rest of the world were still basically broken down ramshackle, almost medieval institutions. Notice how it was called M. Teresa’s “House for the dying” not “House of healing.”

I also find it a tad hypocritical that her patients had to do with reused, unsterilized needles and a lack of real pain killers, while she always checked into the finest California clinics to deal with her health problems later in life.😊

Idk, it just seems odd that she talked so much about the poor and suffering, when she did not do that much to offer them material aid ( though she clearly had the resources to do so.)

I find it a little funny too that in the 1980s she flew to Haiti ( where did money for plane ticket come from?) to meet with the Duvalier family. The duvaliers were about the very worst of Latin Americas dictators. Seriously, they made Pinochet and Noriega look civic minded and saintly!:eek:

Despite that, despite the Duvaliers brutal repression and exploitation of their countries poor, she met with them, and announced how much they cared about poor people, and how fortunate the poor were to have such kind leaders as the duvaliers. She was paid handsomely for that.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be no great demand among the Catholic faithful to have her made “Santo Subito” the way there was ten years ago. It is as if she was completly forgotten… or eclipsed by her boss, JPII :rolleyes:

Idk, the more I look into her, the more it seems like she was not a friend of the poor, but a friend and admirer of poverty. Like she relished in the poverty and suffering of India, and thought how spiritually cleansing and uplifting it was for those who had the “privelage” to live in such conditions.

What do my fellow Church members think?
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I think you would do well to read from her writings.

And we are not to judge others, but to love one another as he loved us.

God bless+
 
On the point about Mother Teresa and her lack of “feeling”…my private theory is that “she asked for this”.

I mean what greater love could someone give to God…than a whole life lived strenuously for the poorest of the poor…WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST FEELING returned.

We all like good feelings when we give effort for others…but a truly pure intention is to love for the sake of God alone, not for feelings.

I believe God granted Mother Teresa a prayer she made to Him for a “pure love”, not diluted by the desire for reciprocal “feelings”.
 
For the record, I was an agnostic when I started on this forum. Now I am a Catholic in good standing!🙂

I never said she was perfect. I just wonder if perhaps she is made out to be something she wasn’t.

I realize her clinics were not suburban america. Im just saying she had millions of dollars, that should have made her able to build clinics that actually tried to heal the sick instead of just leaving them to die.

I actually just finished HItchens’ tract against her. Very offensive no doubt. But I have not seen any of it refuted.

Her miracle sounds a bit fishy as well. It can only have been “miraculous” if there was no rational explanation. The Bengali woman in question was taking antibiotics to help with her cyst. sooo… maybe?

Unless Hitchens is an out and out liar, I think though his work deserves to be looked at.

It seems that Mother Teresa’s attitude was in part “My friends and benefactors, right or wrong, my friends and benefactors.”

A good example of this occured in a Ladies home journal interview in 1995. At the time M.T was vigorously campaigning against a bill that would legalize divorce in Ireland. When asked what she she thought of her good friend Princess Diana’s divorce she replied “It is a good thing the marriage ended, since it seemed to be such an unhappy one!”

That hardly seemed right for M.T to say. She should have had the integrity to say that Di was committing a serious sin and should have made a stronger effort to stay with Prince Charles. I mean surely there were unhappier more miserable marriages that M.T wanted to make it impossible to end…
 
HabemusFrancis said:
For the record, I was an agnostic when I started on this forum. Now I am a Catholic in good standing!🙂

I never said she was perfect. I just wonder if perhaps she is made out to be something she wasn’t.

I realize her clinics were not suburban america. Im just saying she had millions of dollars, that should have made her able to build clinics that actually tried to heal the sick instead of just leaving them to die.

I actually just finished HItchens’ tract against her. Very offensive no doubt. But I have not seen any of it refuted.

Her miracle sounds a bit fishy as well. It can only have been “miraculous” if there was no rational explanation. The Bengali woman in question was taking antibiotics to help with her cyst. sooo… maybe?
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Well…you think on, “on Monday morning” she should have done this or that…well have at it…see you in 50 years. Thats the Catholic way…deeds…others.
 
I dont want to “judge” mother teresa, since that is only gods province.

I just feel we should look at her carefully and just come to an honest conclusion about her methods and motivations. I just feel she is praised for “helping the poorest of the poor” without anyone saying what that “help” consisted of.

I also think it is fine to point out inconsistincies or contradictions, like how, in her sickness and old age, she didn’t try and recover in one of the homes she set up for the poor.

I disagree with hitchens on many things, yet for a time found him an entertaining writer, with a lot of wit and humor. I just wonder if perhaps he may have been correct on Mother Teresa, in that she cared more about “getting souls to heaven” and praying for poor, than actually relieving their material hunger, suffering, and ignorance. Isnt heaven most important thing anyway?

Btw, I think I had good reason to wonder if F. Franco was a saint. He saved Spain from Godless Bolshevism, and delivered it into the loving arms of Holy Mother Church!
 
HabemusFrancis said:
I dont want to “judge” mother teresa, since that is only gods province.

I just feel we should look at her carefully and just come to an honest conclusion about her methods and motivations. I just feel she is praised for “helping the poorest of the poor” without anyone saying what that “help” consisted of.

I also think it is fine to point out inconsistincies or contradictions, like how, in her sickness and old age, she didn’t try and recover in one of the homes she set up for the poor.

I disagree with hitchens on many things, yet for a time found him an entertaining writer, with a lot of wit and humor. I just wonder if perhaps he may have been correct on Mother Teresa, in that she cared more about “getting souls to heaven” and praying for poor, than actually relieving their material hunger, suffering, and ignorance. Isnt heaven most important thing anyway?

Btw, I think I had good reason to wonder if F. Franco was a saint. He saved Spain from Godless Bolshevism, and delivered it into the loving arms of Holy Mother Church!
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No need to judge her…we have our life to give Christ. But it might be helpful to ask can we see Christ’s life of total self donation in our life.
 
Although I am not a Church member, I was also shocked to hear criticism about this amazing woman. There is documentation about the ‘Houses Of The Dying’, and I viewed the documentary with an open mind. As far as the reuse of needles, the only rationalization I can imagine for this is that it was believed the patients would die of their illness long before infection from a dirty needle might cause symptoms.

Mother Theresa did publicly express the idea that the act of suffering brought one closer to God. There is credible documentation (although I do not know that it is certain evidence) of patients with treatable illnesses (like a young, otherwise healthy girl with a kidney infection) not being taken to a hospital where the patient could have been cured for a small amount of money. The argument reportedly made was that if this child was sent, everyone in a similar situation would demand treatment. I don’t know if it is true, but I acknowledge the possibility.

As far as the Duvalier issue, I do know that many people have made donations to the Church because they were inspired by Mother Theresa. Did the Duvalier family offer a substantial donation if they could meet her? Perhaps. If they did, The Church arranged it and maybe the money raised from this trip was considered well worth the effort. Whether these allegations are true or not, I believe this humble woman worked hard, served the poor & inspired many people, myself included.
 
There are and were plenty of medical missionaries in India, plenty of government health care programs, etc., etc. They are overwhelmed, but they are there. There’s nothing stopping anybody from doing more along those lines, and I hope people do.

Mother Teresa did provide help to people (alms, medicines, etc.) on a small scale, but she felt primarily called to concentrate on running what were essentially hospices for the dying. Obviously it’s a lot better to die in a clean bed than out on a dirty sidewalk, wouldn’t you think?

Just providing that amount of care for the poor of all faiths was a job too big for one order. It was also a pretty revolutionary act for India, because Mother Teresa didn’t discriminate against people of different castes and religions.

Plenty of people wanted Mother Teresa to turn her order into some kind of one-stop shopping for every kind of care. She didn’t feel that she wanted or could do that. It certainly would have made it harder for her order to concentrate on what they were already doing, and would have raised administrative costs immensely. The nuns caring for the dying would have to have been replaced or retrained, because a medical facility has to be staffed by doctors and nurses with full licensing. There would tend to be a hierarchy separating the doctors, the nurses, and the unschooled nuns, and in India, it would probably tend to run along class lines or worse. Basically, a big ball of trouble that wouldn’t help the work getting done.

Instead, the Missionaries of Charity are a relatively lean, agile order, able to respond to the needs they focus on.

If anybody thinks they can do better and more, go at it. Just don’t try to hobble the people who are already going at it.
 
HabemusFrancis said:
For the record, I was an agnostic when I started on this forum. Now I am a Catholic in good standing!🙂
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A true Catholic in good standing would never describe themselves as one. You have much to learn about the Catholic faith. And the first thing is that we are all sinners in need of God’s mercy and totally dependent on God’s grace. The saints all needed God’s grace to do whatever good works they did. The difference between Mother Teresa and Oprah, for example, is that Mother Teresa devoted her whole life to being in the service of the poorest of the poor, not being afraid to personally minister to someone even when they have leprosy. And unlike Oprah who gives credit to herself, Mother Teresa always gave all the credit to God.
 
HabemusFrancis said:
I have always heard all my life that mother teresa was a paragon of virtue, a saint living on earth.

However it seems that the Vatican has promoted this image of her, and has ignored what appear to be flaws with her ministry. It is true that she worked among the “poorest of the poor” in Calcutta. But even after 40 years of working there, after the millions and millions of dollars of donations she received her homes in India and the rest of the world were still basically broken down ramshackle, almost medieval institutions. Notice how it was called M. Teresa’s “House for the dying” not “House of healing.”

I also find it a tad hypocritical that her patients had to do with reused, unsterilized needles and a lack of real pain killers, while she always checked into the finest California clinics to deal with her health problems later in life.😊

Idk, it just seems odd that she talked so much about the poor and suffering, when she did not do that much to offer them material aid ( though she clearly had the resources to do so.)

I find it a little funny too that in the 1980s she flew to Haiti ( where did money for plane ticket come from?) to meet with the Duvalier family. The duvaliers were about the very worst of Latin Americas dictators. Seriously, they made Pinochet and Noriega look civic minded and saintly!:eek:

Despite that, despite the Duvaliers brutal repression and exploitation of their countries poor, she met with them, and announced how much they cared about poor people, and how fortunate the poor were to have such kind leaders as the duvaliers. She was paid handsomely for that.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be no great demand among the Catholic faithful to have her made “Santo Subito” the way there was ten years ago. It is as if she was completly forgotten… or eclipsed by her boss, JPII :rolleyes:

Idk, the more I look into her, the more it seems like she was not a friend of the poor, but a friend and admirer of poverty. Like she relished in the poverty and suffering of India, and thought how spiritually cleansing and uplifting it was for those who had the “privelage” to live in such conditions.

What do my fellow Church members think?
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Going after Mother Theresa… really??
 
Seems like someone could do a lot of good ministering to the dying. showing them the mercy and love of Christ, and possibly leading them at the end of their lives to Christ.
 
SuzanneD said:
Seems like someone could do a lot of good ministering to the dying. showing them the mercy and love of Christ, and possibly leading them at the end of their lives to Christ.
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Well said. Precisely. Love in the ordinary and in the small. 👍
 
I will troll the troll if there is one…

I repeat: Why are you bringing this up again with the same criticisms but none of the good refuted arguments that already busted open this myth? Is this thread like a Christmas fruitcake that keeps making the rounds?
 
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