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<\/a><\/p>\nFirst Christopher Hitchens took her down, then we learned that her faith wasn\u2019t as strong as we thought, and now a new study from the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al is poised to completely destroy what shreds are left of Mother Teresa\u2019s reputation. She was the winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, was beatified and is well on her way to becoming a saint, and she\u2019s universally admired. As Wikipedia notes:<\/p>\n
[She was] named 18 times in the yearly Gallup\u2019s most admired man and woman poll as one of the ten women around the world that Americans admired most. In 1999, a poll of Americans ranked her first in Gallup\u2019s List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century. In that survey, she out-polled all other volunteered answers by a wide margin, and was in first place in all major demographic categories except the very young.<\/p>\n
The criticisms of Agnes Gonxha, as she was christened, have been growing for a long time. I wasn\u2019t aware of them until I read Christopher Hitchens\u2019s cleverly titled book, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, which I found deeply disturbing. The book is polemic at Hitchens\u2019s best, and though the facts were surprising, he was never sued and his accusations were never refuted\u2014nor even rebutted. (You can read excerpts here and here, but I urge you to read the book.) In light of that, I accepted Mother Teresa as a deeply flawed person.<\/p>\n
In its \u201ccriticism\u201d section of her biography, Wikipedia summarizes the growing opprobrium related to her extreme love of suffering (that is, the suffering of her \u201cpatients\u201d), her refusal to provide adequate medical care, her association with (and financial support from) shady characters, and her treatment of her nuns.<\/p>\n
Now a paper is about to appear (it\u2019s not online yet) that is apparently peer-reviewed, and that expands the list of Mother Teresa\u2019s malfeasances. Lest you think this is atheist hype, the summary below is from an official press release by the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al. <\/p>\n
The myth of altruism and generosity surrounding Mother Teresa is dispelled in a paper by Serge Lariv\u00e9e and Genevieve Chenard of University of Montreal\u2019s Department of Psychoeducation and Carole S\u00e9n\u00e9chal of the University of Ottawa\u2019s Faculty of Education. The paper will be published in the March issue of the journal Studies in Religion\/Sciences religieuses and is an analysis of the published writings about Mother Teresa. Like the journalist and author Christopher Hitchens, who is amply quoted in their analysis, the researchers conclude that her hallowed image\u2014which does not stand up to analysis of the facts\u2014was constructed, and that her beatification was orchestrated by an effective media relations campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile looking for documentation on the phenomenon of altruism for a seminar on ethics, one of us stumbled upon the life and work of one of Catholic Church\u2019s most celebrated woman and now part of our collective imagination\u2014Mother Teresa\u2014whose real name was Agnes Gonxha,\u201d says Professor Lariv\u00e9e, who led the research. \u201cThe description was so ecstatic that it piqued our curiosity and pushed us to research further.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result, the three researchers collected 502 documents on the life and work of Mother Teresa. After eliminating 195 duplicates, they consulted 287 documents to conduct their analysis, representing 96% of the literature on the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity (OMC). Facts debunk the myth of Mother Teresa<\/p>\n
In their article, Serge Lariv\u00e9e and his colleagues also cite a number of problems not take into account by the Vatican in Mother Teresa\u2019s beatification process, such as \u201cher rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding, in particular, abortion, contraception, and divorce.\u201d<\/p>\n
The release levels three types of accusations against mother Teresa and her supporters (quotes are direct, and I don\u2019t mind extensive excerpting since it\u2019s a press release):<\/p>\n
1. The woman was in love with suffering and simply didn\u2019t take care of her charges, many of whom fruitlessly sought medical care.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time of her death, Mother Teresa had opened 517 missions welcoming the poor and sick in more than 100 countries. The missions have been described as \u201chomes for the dying\u201d by doctors visiting several of these establishments in Calcutta. Two-thirds of the people coming to these missions hoped to a find a doctor to treat them, while the other third lay dying without receiving appropriate care. The doctors observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions, as well as a shortage of actual care, inadequate food, and no painkillers. The problem is not a lack of money\u2014the Foundation created by Mother Teresa has raised hundreds of millions of dollars\u2014but rather a particular conception of suffering and death: \u201cThere is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ\u2019s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering,\u201d was her reply to criticism, cites the journalist Christopher Hitchens. Nevertheless, when Mother Teresa required palliative care, she received it in a modern American hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
2. She was tightfisted about helping others, seequestered money donated for her work, and took money from dictators.<\/p>\n
\u201cMother Teresa was generous with her prayers but rather miserly with her foundation\u2019s millions when it came to humanity\u2019s suffering. During numerous floods in India or following the explosion of a pesticide plant in Bhopal, she offered numerous prayers and medallions of the Virgin Mary but no direct or monetary aid. On the other hand, she had no qualms about accepting the Legion of Honour and a grant from the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. Millions of dollars were transferred to the MCO\u2019s various bank accounts, but most of the accounts were kept secret, Lariv\u00e9e says. \u2018Given the parsimonious management of Mother Theresa\u2019s works, one may ask where the millions of dollars for the poorest of the poor have gone?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
3. She was deliberately promoted by BBC journalist Malcolm Muggeridge (a fellow anti-abortionist), and her beatification was based on phony miracles.<\/p>\n
.\u201d . .In 1969, [Muggeridge] made a eulogistic film of the missionary, promoting her by attributing to her the \u201cfirst photographic miracle,\u201d when it should have been attributed to the new film stock being marketed by Kodak. Afterwards, Mother Teresa travelled throughout the world and received numerous awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance speech, on the subject of Bosnian women who were raped by Serbs and now sought abortion, she said: \u2018I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing\u2014direct murder by the mother herself.\u2019<\/p>\n
. . . Following her death, the Vatican decided to waive the usual five-year waiting period to open the beatification process. [JAC: As I recall, it took only a year.] The miracle attributed to Mother Theresa was the healing of a woman, Monica Besra, who had been suffering from intense abdominal pain. The woman testified that she was cured after a medallion blessed by Mother Theresa was placed on her abdomen. Her doctors thought otherwise: the ovarian cyst and the tuberculosis from which she suffered were healed by the drugs they had given her. The Vatican, nevertheless, concluded that it was a miracle. Mother Teresa\u2019s popularity was such that she had become untouchable for the population, which had already declared her a saint. \u201cWhat could be better than beatification followed by canonization of this model to revitalize the Church and inspire the faithful especially at a time when churches are empty and the Roman authority is in decline?\u201d Lariv\u00e9e and his colleagues ask.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of these echo, substantiate, and expand the criticisms leveled by Hitchens.<\/p>\n
But at the end of the press release, the university (and, I presume, the investigators) offer what I see as a complete sop to those who might be disheartened by the above. I quote directly:<\/p>\n
Positive effect of the Mother Teresa myth<\/p>\n
Despite Mother Teresa\u2019s dubious way of caring for the sick by glorifying their suffering instead of relieving it, Serge Lariv\u00e9e and his colleagues point out the positive effect of the Mother Teresa myth: \u201cIf the extraordinary image of Mother Teresa conveyed in the collective imagination has encouraged humanitarian initiatives that are genuinely engaged with those crushed by poverty, we can only rejoice. It is likely that she has inspired many humanitarian workers whose actions have truly relieved the suffering of the destitute and addressed the causes of poverty and isolation without being extolled by the media. Nevertheless, the media coverage of Mother Theresa could have been a little more rigorous.\u201d<\/p>\n
A \u201clittle more rigorous\u201d? Now there\u2019s an understatement!<\/p>\n
Yes, perhaps the inspirational effect of Mother Teresa\u2019s work is a theoretical possibility, but has it happened? Is Mother Teresa\u2019s order now actually doing something to cure illness? What\u2019s the evidence that she has inspired people to do something they wouldn\u2019t have done otherwise? Have they found the lost donations?<\/p>\n
I will be curious (and a bit surprised) if, when the paper finally comes out, the authors actually provide some evidence that Mother Teresa has had a substantial positive effect, much less a net positive effect (don\u2019t forget her work against abortion). This last bit of the press release is there, I think, to stave off the inevitable criticism that will arise from Bill Donohue and other Catholic cheerleaders when such an idolized religious figure is brought down. But Catholics should be used to that!<\/p>\n
One good thing, despite the sop, is that the faithful won\u2019t be able to dismiss this as easily as they could the criticisms of Hitchens. (\u201cHe\u2019s just a militant atheist who hates all religious people.\u201d) This is a peer-reviewed paper written by academics, not a hatchet-job written by an atheist with strong opinions.<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s one thing that Catholics should have learned by now, it\u2019s that their heroes often have feet of clay. But that\u2019s not surprising in a faith that encourages chastity, sexual repression, and authoritarianism. In Mother Teresa it found perhaps its most bizarre flowering: a woman who actually wanted her charges to suffer because it brought them closer to Jesus.<\/p>\n
I ran into Mother Teresa once: we were flying on the same plane, and as I disembarked from the coach section, she appeared right in front of me as she exited from the first-class section. Not even wondering why a woman who professed humility was flying first class, I was elated and gobsmacked, feeling quite fortunate to have run into her. But I had bought into the myth, and that was well before the pushback began.<\/p>\n
I will make the Montreal paper available when it\u2019s finally published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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