Responses to criticisms of Mother Teresa

[suzyq_psu]

So you and a friend both have what could be a life threatening illness. Your friends wife is spending the family savings and sending him to Bethesda to get the best possible treatment. But your wife has good news as well and has ‘an even greater gift’.

She’s going to send you to a hospice where someone, in regard to the reality of your situation will ‘truly place that angst-filled reality into eternal perspective, give true meaning to it and enable the personal strength to face whatever current temporal conditions conjure up with aplomb, courage and dignity’.

I’ll bet your friend is really jealous.

Ah jealousy…not a fun emotion.

However say you have two people that are destined to die (oh wait we all are) One you tell them not to worry because when they do die if they believe Jesus is their savior they get to live forever in eternity with him, no suffering again. The other you tell, well this is it, so really once your death comes (inevitably it will regardless of how fast it is, slow it is, painful or unpainful) you have nowhere else to go. This is it.

I bet your friend rethinks her jealousy and opts for eternal life. (Joking, honestly I have no idea what your friend would do) Just making my point.

However this really has nothing to do with this topic but I wanted to chime in because we could do hypotheticals all day long, one shouldn’t be so presumptuous on how people want to “live”. Honestly if I had the chance to die right now I would LOVE to because I believe I will get to be with God, however, it is not my time, so I will continue to pray and hope for the day I get to meet Jesus while trying to do HIS will to the best of my ability.

Basically you can’t say that someone would choose to stay here on this Earth rather than die because you have no clue what one person wants over another.

 

[suzyq_psu]

Here we go…right to the victim mentality.

They’re not “picking on” her for her views, they are reporting on her ACTIONS or lack thereof.

You want it to stop? Prove them wrong. Prove that what they are saying about dirty needles is a lie. Prove that she and her order didn’t hoard money from donations instead of using it to make the conditions better. Many of us gave money to her order because we really thought it would go to make the conditions of those poor people better. Bring modern medical care to them, give them real comfort in their suffering. We didn’t do it so millions of dollars could sit in a bank somewhere while people continued to suffer and die in filth.

People have a right to their own belief on what she was or wasn’t, however the burden of proof lies on them, not supporters of her. There are so many more questions answered than unanswered here to make a educated guess as to her character and mission. No one has to prove anything about the dirty needles because it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what she HAS done. Again, no one is perfect, that is the wonderful thing about the Catholic faith. Even WITH her imperfections she can still be considered a Saint, and so can you and I, sinners as we are.

 

[priya7]

Right on …tell it like it is…no human being is perfect, the good she did far outweighed the faults. It is easy to criticize when its not you GIVING YOUR ALL to help the poor.

I say shame on those whose attack virtue under the guise of “improvement” when they, themselves do not have the moral fiber to live a life such as Mother Theresa, nor would they ever consider such a life of sacrifice.

:yup:

 

[Peter_Plato]

I’m sorry, but with the amount of money in the bank “it’s better than dying in the street” isn’t good enough. I know it came from donations-some of those donations were mine.

I’m not viewing this in black and white-yes, she did a lot of good. Her AIDS hospice in NY was wonderful, I’ve been there. It’s not that she didn’t do good, it’s that she could have done more and chose to hoard the money instead. It’s that she would never have subjected herself to the SAME care that she gave others. Those are the things that do detract from the good she did.

Do unto others as you would have it done to you-that’s the test she failed.

That she chose to “hoard the money” has not been established. Perhaps it came in faster than the sisters could practically manage. Perhaps there was a larger plan that still hadn’t been completely settled. There are a number of very legitimate reasons why the money could have been stock-piled. A fair criticism would have looked into the possibility of those before making a condemnation. I haven’t seen any attempt to be fair on the part of critics. Their vilification strategy seems to be to find any damning evidence and ignore anything but damning conclusions.

 

[ringil]

Sure.

And later, when she had many many millions in the bank, there was no need to make people take medicine from reused needles or spend their final months/days/years on a canvas bed

Sarah x

Mother Theresa nor her sisters were medical professionals. It is disingenuous to place them in the same realm of expectation as placed upon a medical institution.

Come on! I have many atheist and agnostic friends and, to a person, they respect Mother Theresa.

She is universally loved.

I believe the negative characterizations of MT are not being posed by your average atheist or agnostic, but by those I would compare to Fundamentalist Christians. They are aggressive and not interested in dialogue, only offensive tactics.

 

[Seeker1961]

Mother Theresa nor her sisters were medical professionals. It is disingenuous to place them in the same realm of expectation as placed upon a medical institution.

Come on! I have many atheist and agnostic friends and, to a person, they respect Mother Theresa.

She is universally loved.

I believe the negative characterizations of MT are not being posed by your average atheist or agnostic, but by those I would compare to Fundamentalist Christians. They are aggressive and not interested in dialogue, only offensive tactics.

Are you really suggesting that Mother Theresa and her sisters were so ignorant of basic hygiene that they didn’t know used needles weren’t a good thing??

If these women were not Catholic would you have ever suggested such a thing?

Blind allegaince in the face of facts doesn’t make the person you’re defending look better.

Recognize the good she did AND the mistakes she made.

 

[ringil]

Recognize the good she did AND the mistakes she made.

Yes, if the point is that the sisters made medical mistakes that is true. Regarding what they knew or didn’t know I have no idea. Some or many could have been quite sheltered prior to entering the religious life.

I tend to get “my haunches up” when I feel that some seek to disparage MT character as a proxy in their attacks against Christianity. I have noticed that this particular issue has become a standard in the more aggressive Atheists, whom I put in the same boat as frothing fundamentalists, and religious ideologues.

i don’t like hidden agendas by ANY group, and try to be a voice of balance.