The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

Rating:
Summary: A necessary read
Review: While many attack this book, the attacks usually just prove one of Hitchens' points; that many people have a knee-jerk reaction to Mother Teresa, considering her beyond all criticism, while not really knowing anything about her.

One of his themes is that Teresa is not primarily concerned with helping people. She is more concerned with glorifying God (or the church) than loving mankind, and has a regrettable tendency to put the glory of God ahead of the comfort (or even the lives) of the people she tended.

Hitchens also asks what real benefit to the poor Teresa produced, especially considering the huge amounts of money that flow in from around the world. Often, the 'care' seems to be little more than being given a cot and allowed to die, even if simple treatment could save their life.

And while it's been pointed out that there's nothing wrong with taking money from evil people and using it to do good, this misses the point. When Teresa accepts money from someone like Keating, she isn't taking money from an evil man, she is taking it from all those who Keating stole it from. She is, in other words, stealing from the poor to give to the poor.

Ultimately, one's opinion of Mother Teresa will probably be determinied by one's priorities. If you consider the glorification of God to be most important, then you will probably not have a problem with the building of churches instead of schools and hospitals. If you consider the next life to be more important than this one, you probably won't be bothered by the philosophy that it is better to love the poor than to feed them, better to love the dying than to cure them. And if you believe that God's will is to be trusted over all, then you probably don't mind the encouragement of reproduction in lands where millions already starve. To each his own.

Rating:
Summary: Tells It Like I Experienced It
Review: I was a volunteer for the Missionaries of Charity at their "Gift of Peace" hospice in Washington, D.C. Christopher Hitchens's account of how places like this are run rings true with my own experience. For example, I was tending to an AIDS patient who had to go to the bathroom and I needed serious assistance. None was to be found because the sisters were at their prayers. It may strike some as strange that the nuns were attending to a god they cannot see while neglecting the poor man (who ended up leaving a quite visible souvenir of their neglect in his bed), but such are the lives of those who end up in such places.

Hitchens does a great job of documenting in this thin book the dictators and flim-flam artists who used Mother Teresa's iconographic presence to lend a patina of divine approval to their nefarious deeds. That Mother's approach to misery was to counsel others, especially the poor who usually had no other choice, to offer it up, rather than seeking to eliminate or ameliorate it, comes through loud and clear. The most egregious hypocrisy: Mother's houses reject such creature comforts for the poor as air conditioning and elevators for the handicapped and, most telling of all, adequate pain medication. But Mother Teresa herself was treated at some of the finest medical facilities in the world. To take vows of poverty in imitation of Jesus is one thing; it is quite another to insist that those you purport to serve must share in your misery.

This is an honest book. Some may conclude that it is derivative from the author's anti-religion bias. I very much doubt it. Rather, from the evidence amassed herin, as well as by such other scandels that the Church has (unsuccessfully, finally) tried to cover up, there may be some very good reasons for people to conclude that it is precisely when living vessels of clay are raised to altars around the world, it is a darn good time to check your wallet or pocketbook.

Rating:
Summary: Oh God!! At least she is dead
Review: Hitchens is an absolutely confirmed atheist and lives by the credo that Orwell established for estimation of the pious: all saints must be presumed guilty until proven innocent. Even if Hitchens were to presume that Mother Teresa were not the hypocritical fanatic that he exposes her to be in this short polemic before he began the book, his exposure of her core rotteness when dealing with the poorest of the world's poor, coupled with her permanent leniency towards most tyrannical and corrupt of the world's rich and powerful is enough to make anyone who ever had even a passing kind thought about her question their own intellectual prowess. Hitchens deserves praise for writting what is absolutely a class A piece iconoclastic work that exposes a favorite emblem of piety as nothing more than a well polished turd, and this work shows that he has some real guts to boot.

Rating:
Summary: A 4-Page Article Crammed Into a 98-Page Book
Review: Somebody had to say it -- Mother Teresa was an egotist of limited intelligence who cared little for the material welfare of her charges and sucked up to the rich and powerful. The problem is that Hitchens does not say it particularly simply or well.

This is curious, since he wrote another book, "Why Orwell Matters," which is a paean to that writer's spare writing style. Unfortunately, Mr. Hitchens seems unable to follow Orwell's example.


Rating:
Summary: A Master of P.R.
Review: It is astonishing how many intelligent, skeptical people have fallen for the legend of MT as saint and epitome of selfless devotion to the poor. Her actions are indeed judged in light of her "reputation;" not the other way around as for most of us. Regardless of one's opinion of her life, she was a master of self-promotion to an unparalleled degree.

Had the young Agnes Bojaxhiu chosen to make her living in the same manner as John Gotti, it's doubtful that Hitchens would have paid much attention to her. However, she presented herself as a deeply religious person, the founder and leader of an order of nuns, and as such must be held to a higher standard than we hold criminals and gangsters. Even an atheist like Hitchens can expect a certain level of decent behavior from religious celebrities like MT.

The real tragedy is that MT chose to use her position of power and influence in such a negative way. The excuse that she was a "Catholic Nun" and therefore would be expected to hold certain beliefs is disingenuous. We have the example of Archbishop Romero in El Salvador, and other priests in Central America who espoused "liberation theology," and even Pope John Paul II who supported the Solidarity movement and apologized for the Church's past mistreatment of Jews. Religion at its best has been an ennobling influence on humanity, and at its worst, an excuse for the lying, hypocrisy, fraud, and oppression exemplified by Mother Teresa.

Rating:
Summary: pugnacious polemics hit the mark
Review: It would be an interesting exercise to have two people, whose perceptions of the world are at diametric odds with one another, sit down to expound upon their vision of the world. Picture Karl Marx and Adam Smith knocking back a couple beers at the local pub and you get the picture. Now, imagine that one of our participants casts herself as pious and sedulous and the other, he is direct, blunt, incredulous, skeptical, and, no doubt, an atheist. And, he has no qualms about casting aspersions on the motives of a woman otherwise regarded as a saint by most of the (religious) world. Thus, you have the conflict central to Christopher Hitchens's book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Hitchens, by turns brutal, incisive, critical, observant, and, above all, unrelenting in his attacks of Catholicism and its most famous adherent after the Pope has slaughtered all sacred cows; Hitchens most certainly is not, to put it pithily, a Hindu.

So what do we have here? In part an ad hominem attack against Mother Teresa, in part an intellectual exercise in repudiating religion's corrupting influence over the course of man's history, and in part an expose of the ignorant and credulous idolators who lionize Mother Teresa, the book operates as an indictment of her and the religion and god to which she devoted her life. Indeed, Hitchen's rhetorical style is that of a legal pugilist: he marshals his facts together and uses them, unrelentingly, to take apart the case for the other side. He effectively demolishes any claim that Mother Teresa's organization takes care of the world's poor. He illustrates convincingly that, in consideration of several odd affiliations Mother Teresa engineered for herself and her charities, she is at best naïve and at worst calculating and mendacious. To wit, she: (1) took in millions from wealthy crooks like Charles Keating (he of the S&L crisis in the 1980s), (2) affiliated herself with despots (the Duvaliers of Haiti), and (3) acknowledged the authority of the Communists in her native Albania (those famous practitioners of religious freedom). It seems fair to say that her claims of ignorance about the implications of these affiliations fall flat. He casts her as a cold and calculating woman whose purpose is to solicit as many donations as possible for her charities, affiliate herself with western politicians (witness Mother Teresa and Hillary Clinton at an adoption center in Washington, DC), and insist that the poor for whom she cares focus on the suffering that is their fate ordained by God.

All of these descriptions and affiliations would likely be harmless were it not for the connection Hitchens makes between Mother Teresa's work on behalf of her charities (the donations and affiliations she seeks) and the conditions of the various shelters and clinics she runs around the world for the destitute and hopeless. Despite raking in millions from crooks and from perfectly honest people alike, she refuses to give the sick and dying medical treatment; instead, they are to smile more, to wear their suffering gladly, so to speak. Medical attention, one assumes, would be prideful. Instead of using her money to educate poor Indians in overpopulated slums about birth control, she is a fierce opponent of abortion, contraception, and any strain of thought that deviates from the dictates of the Catholic Church on human sexuality. This is a problem because it is the poor who are less able to afford large families, and it is the dense population of the world's slums that leads to many of the otherwise manageable health risks, which the rich world no longer endures. Despite a lifelong ignorance of human passion due to her celibacy, she deigns, as do all devout Catholics, to tell others how to handle their sexual lives.

All of these criticisms leveled at Mother Teresa are also criticisms of Catholocism, for Mother Teresa was its most outspoken exponent, outside of the Vatican. Therefore, per Hitchens, the conniving and calculating way that Mother Teresa worked for her charities, and the lack of palliative care that these charities provided for their clients, is morally repugnant. Mother Teresa used the ecclesiastical tools of authority and ontological mania to refuse medical treatment for those whose suffering she alleged to be God's will. Hitchens thus argues that Mother Teresa usurped the authority of her God to pursue her own ends, in which the suffering of those she tried to help was but a mere tool to use in extracting money from the wealthy people of the world who, by dint of guilt, wanted merely to ameliorate the condition of the world's wretched.


Rating:
Summary: Getting a little desperate, isn't he?
Review: Hitchens cute carpetbagger scholarly style in this book outweighs the small impression it might otherwise have made. He reminds us once again that he is still one of the chief apologists for the political division of the school of resentment, the post-post-modernist informed, new bureaucratic academic conformist's solution to Noam Chomsky. It's funny how this book is really not about Mother Theresa's fallability, but about Hitchens' intended audience; this is merely entertainment for self-styled intellectuals who like to make space for their own mediocrity and inaction by destroying others reputations. Even if Mother Theresa were to truly be a saint, if there is such a thing, it wouldn't have changed anything Hitchens had to say.

Rating:
Summary: What does first-world journalist-as-guru offer? More words.
Review: I was a volunteer for the Missionaries of Charity at their "Gift of Peace" hospice in Washington, D.C. Christopher Hitchens's account of how places like this are run rings true with my own experience. For example, I was tending to an AIDS patient who had to go to the bathroom and I needed serious assistance. None was to be found because the sisters were at their prayers. It may strike some as strange that the nuns were attending to a god they cannot see while neglecting the poor man (who ended up leaving a quite visible souvenir of their neglect in his bed), but such are the lives of those who end up in such places.

Hitchens does a great job of documenting in this thin book the dictators and flim-flam artists who used Mother Teresa's iconographic presence to lend a patina of divine approval to their nefarious deeds. That Mother's approach to misery was to counsel others, especially the poor who usually had no other choice, to offer it up, rather than seeking to eliminate or ameliorate it, comes through loud and clear. The most egregious hypocrisy: Mother's houses reject such creature comforts for the poor as air conditioning and elevators for the handicapped and, most telling of all, adequate pain medication. But Mother Teresa herself was treated at some of the finest medical facilities in the world. To take vows of poverty in imitation of Jesus is one thing; it is quite another to insist that those you purport to serve must share in your misery.

This is an honest book. Some may conclude that it is derivative from the author's anti-religion bias. I very much doubt it. Rather, from the evidence amassed herin, as well as by such other scandels that the Church has (unsuccessfully, finally) tried to cover up, there may be some very good reasons for people to conclude that it is precisely when living vessels of clay are raised to altars around the world, it is a darn good time to check your wallet or pocketbook.

Rating:
Summary: Just more anti-religion loathsome propaganda
Review: Christopher Hitchens finally bought his one-way ticket to Hell with this one! Anyone that thinks this book is "fair and balanced" should read one that balances this bunk, and then make an informed judgment. For instance, read Susan Conroy's wonderful "Mother Teresa's Lessons of Love and Secrets of Sanctity."

Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Review: Mother Teresa probably wasn't an evil person. Rather, the portrait of her that emerges in Hitchens's book, for me at least, is of a rather pious egotist, with a considerable amount of worldly power, who believed herself to be so holy that she was incapable of seeing the appalling evil she inflicted and, believe you me, if half the things Hitchens says about her in this book are true, she did much harm in this world. Which is not to say she also didn't do good things, because she paradoxically did. The point is, she unfortunately also brought suffering and death to countless people that was easily preventable. If this lady, as the current regime in the church thinks, was a saint, then my name is Rasputin.