What are your thoughts on canonisation ceremony of Mother Teresa at Vatican?
Do you think it is necessary to prove her greatness?
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
45 Answers
Considering that she was actually a bad person, it does not surprise me.
And how exactly was she a bad person?
I know she did great things but I don’t understand how that equates to being a saint.
Ah, yes, someone who separated dying people from their families and withheld medical treatment because suffering is the closest thing to Godliness, totally deserves the name of “saint”.
And people wonder why the Catholic church is losing members.
They idolize torturers and kiddie-fiddlers, and demonize women and healthcare. Ridiculous.
Probably shouldn’t have fired the devils advocate.
Disappointed that this sort of thing is still happening. I thought with the new pope that some fresh air would blow into the institution.
Listened to an interview with the person who investigated the miracles and realized it’s the same old stale air being recycled.
I find it interesting that Mother Teresa experienced a crisis of faith that she never really got over. She was told by her confessor that the perceived absence of Jesus was a sure sign of his presence, and she apparently accepted that. Sounds to me like Karen Armstrong’s theological gobbledygook.
I don’t see the purpose in Canonization, it is nothing more than an ego move to assign some extra, superior meaning to a dead persons deeds. She was a caring woman, but so are lots of women, people, and there are thousands that work tirelessly to promote compassion in this world whether that is rescuing animals or caring for the poor and downtrodden. Yep, just more religious gobbledygook.
Conceptually, the whole idea of Sainthood is rather silly. @Coloma said most of what I wanted to say.
Calling someone a name after they are dead seems pointless.
This all raises an interesting question:
Given how society has such a rosy view of this woman, despite that even a cursory look at the actual facts reveals how repulsive she was in reality,
how much of a jackass was Jesus really, assuming he actually existed?
@ragingloli – Well, he got violently angry at the moneychangers in the Temple. He destroyed a tree for not giving fruit during not-fruit season, he drove a farmer’s whole herd of swine down a hill to drown without so much as a by-your-leave, he told a woman asking for his help that she was worth less than a dog begging for scraps, and he stole a horse that was tied to a fence, because he didn’t feel like walking into town.
So, yeah, pretty much a schmuck.
She’s ok in my book. If half the people who criticise her were to do half the good deads she did, the world would be a vastly better place.
And I don’t care much for the voodoo ceremonies around her sainthood undertaken at the Vatican… I leave that to the believers. It’s nothing to me.
Yeah, people are somehow convinced that holding a dying person’s hand and not getting them medical help or working to improve their lives is somehow ‘good deeds’. She LOVED suffering. She could watch it for hours.
She was an example for how to repair a negative life experience by giving whatever and whenever she was capable of.
Regarding medical care, she was poor and most of these people had no medical cures to look forward too. She did with waht little she could offer and that was her devotion to stand by and offer emotional support.
Even though a person had done misdeeds in life one has a chance to change their lives to the better through thankless service for humanitarian needs.
She should had been canonized earlier but she passed away the same time as Princess Diana, who by the way also had reasons to seek acceptance and approval though service to the poor. She other than Mother Teresa had the means to do something materially for the poor,simply because she was born of a Rich pedigree.
People make mistakes but they should be allowed to correct them in whatever means tht uplift the people.( ex: Bill Clinton is a Peacemaker now after his scandel of which he will forever be labelled.
@Inspired_2write
“she was poor”
Her charities took in millions of donations.
She intentionally let her patients suffer.
@ragingloli
I don“t think that she herself managed the donations, rather organizations used her as a figure head perhaps?
And THAT was her contribution to mankind.
It is amazing how easily you people get fooled by propaganda.
@ragingloli
It is amazing how negative and judgemental some people are towards some who go above their own needs to assist another?
I try to understand the person involved.Perhaps she had her own conscience that was the cause of her own suffering? She had the option to work out her own way of giving back, in whatever was conmfotable to her?
@ragingloli She intentionally let her patients suffer.
Any evidence of that?
“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.”
Perhaps SHE felt that way after her Religious upbringing?
Everyone is entitled to their own views regardless if anyone else agreess of not?
Sounds like she may had thought that that was her means to cope with her situation?
To accept whaever life gives her?
Her own means of accepting her life?
That’s not saying that she intentionally let people suffer.
From the link that @ragingloli already provided above:
“Teresa’s free clinics provided care that was at best rudimentary and haphazard and at worst unsanitary and dangerous, despite the enormous amounts of donations she received. Multiple volunteers at Teresa’s clinics, such as Mary Loudon and Susan Shields, have testified to the inadequate care provided to the dying. Despite routinely receiving millions of dollars in donations, Teresa deliberately kept her clinics barren and austere, lacking all but the most rudimentary and haphazard care.
Volunteers such as Loudon, and Western doctors such as Robin Fox of the Lancet, wrote with shock of what they found in Teresa’s clinics. No tests were performed to determine the patients’ ailments. No modern medical equipment was available. Even people dying of cancer, suffering terrible agony, were given no painkillers other than aspirin. Needles were rinsed and reused, without proper sterilization. No one was ever sent to the hospital, even people in clear need of emergency surgery or other treatment.
Again, it is important to note that these conditions were not the unavoidable result of triage. Teresa’s organization routinely received multimillion-dollar donations which were squirreled away in bank accounts, while volunteers were told to beg donors for more money and plead extreme poverty and desperate need. The money she received could easily have built half a dozen fully equipped modern hospitals and clinics, but was never used for that purpose. No, this negligent and rudimentary care was deliberate – about which, see the next point. However, despite her praise for poverty, Teresa hypocritically sought out the most advanced care possible in the Western world when she herself was in need of it.”
But people see what they want to see, I guess. Or what they’re told by the church to see.
“In early 2000, Susan Shields, a former Missionaries sister who left the organization “unhappy”, created a furor by saying she herself had “written receipts of $50,000″ in donation but there was no sign of the “flood of money.” Forbes India talked to a volunteer in the Los Angeles office of Missionaries of Charity who admitted that “even when bread was over at the soup kitchens, none was bought unless donated.” A report in German magazine Stern, revealed that in 1991 only seven percent of the donation received at Missionaries of Charity was used for charity. Former volunteers and people close to the Mother House revealed that the Vatican, home to the Pope, has control over the “monetary matters” ever since Missionaries of Charity came under its fold in 1965. The control got stronger after Mother Teresa died in 1997.”
http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/10/forbes-india-mother-teresa-charity-critical-public-review.html
Okay so while the Vatican makes her a saint, you guys are busy making her a demon. To each his own.
@olivier5 How can you read this information and conclude that we are “making her” into anything? Do you think this is all misreporting? Did you read the linked articles? I’m genuinely interested in how you arrived at this.
^^ I suppose you and I have a different understanding of what “information” is. If it’s important for you guys that she’d be demonized—as a sort of exorcism to her canonization—be my guest. But this is just a witch hunt, it’s not information.
Any blogger can write any shit about anyone, it doesn’t make it “information” in my mind. The blog entry shared by ragingloli has some factual inaccuracies and approximations. E.g. it mentions the International Health Organisation, which does not appear to exist… (I checked, you didn’t) And it doesn’t share its sources. Why do assume it’s genuine information? Because it tells you what you want to hear, period.
The Forbes article your shared starts with these words, which you of course omited in your quote:
“She was compassion incarnate; she didn’t think twice before touching a leper on the road or cleaning a festering wound on an unfortunate soul. She was equally at ease breaking bread with the homeless at Nirmal Hriday or standing toe-to-toe with world leaders exhorting them to do good. She was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in faraway Albania a 100 years ago on August 26. The world knows her as Mother Teresa. Social workers all around the world have drawn inspiration from her work and commitment to her cause. Yet, today in her centennial year, her legacy has lost its shine and is in disrepair.”
This article was not a critique of Mother Teresa but of what became of her foundation… yet you made it look like it was about her. That’s DISinformation, not information…
My bottom line is: if any one of you thinks that he or she can bring better health care to the dying poor of Calcuta or anywhere else, you’re most welcome to try. Go at once! Leave your little confort and go across the globe caring for people who have nowhere else to go. Or you can stay confy at home, complain that those darn Catholics—because it’s always bad when it’s them Catholic, right?—are ruining the whole world, without moving a finger yourself.
Pitty Christopher Hitchens died to soon to accomplish his dream of saving all of India’s destitutes…
Can’t attack the Hitch’s journalism, so you attack Hitch himself?
You’ll note that India has over a billion people, most of whom are destitute. Theresa’s legacy is one of hype masking inefficacy, at best.
Did i speak ill of one of your saints, perhaps?
I haven’t read his ‘journalism’. I didn’t read his numerous op-eds in favor of the Iraq war either. Did I miss something? Thousands of people died in Iraq for a useless war of choice supported by this buffoon. He’s a criminal.
Nothing you’ve said so far is a valid rebuttal to the arguments presented about Theresa’s corrupt activities.
If an argument was presented that Teresa commited ‘corrupt activities’, I haven’t seen it. Please point it out.
Nothing you’ve said so far is a valid rebuttal to the argument that those criticizing Mother Teresa are a bunch of whiners who never did anything to help the poor themselves, and are motivated in criticising her by their biggoted hatred of Catholicism.
”Nothing you’ve said so far is a valid rebuttal to the argument that those criticizing Mother Teresa are a bunch of whiners who never did anything to help the poor themselves, and are motivated in criticising her by their biggoted hatred of Catholicism.”
That is not an argument. That is a baseless ad hominem designed solely to put down the opposition without having to put forth any argument whatsoever.
”If an argument was presented that Teresa commited ‘corrupt activities’, I haven’t seen it. Please point it out.”:
The argument has been presented. Including evidence and testimony from people who have actually worked at Teresa’s facilities.
Which you have tossed aside out of hand by simply calling them “bloggers who write shit about anyone”.
As for your attack on Hitchens himself:
He had no part in the decision making regarding the Iraq War, he was not involved in the torture camps of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. All he had was a wrong opinion.
Contrary to Teresa, who had full control over her facilities and the policies enacted within.
This thread is almost entirely devoted to an ad hominem of Mother Teresa. Do you care?
Indeed, all Hitchens ever did was being wrong, and never being shy of speaking his wrong mind. In contrast, Mother Teresa made the fatal mistake of actually DOING something, rather than just giving her opinion about which Arabs should die ASAP… Tsk tsk tsk what a fool she was.
Since “doing something” equates to:
– making sure that dying people in agonising pain receive little to no pain medication
– making sure that there was no functioning air conditioning in high temperature climates
– making sure that there were no hygienic standards in either handling of patients, preparation of food, or medical practices.
– making sure used needles were not sterilised, but only rinsed under cold water,
(all of the above in spite of ample financial resources)
Hitchens was indeed the better person.
Did you ever wonder WHY people were joining MT’s leprosies and “homes for the dying”? Were they dragged from the street, or did they come to this places of their own accord? Maybe they enjoyed suffering, or they liked warm temperature?
I tell you why: they went there because they had nowhere else to go; because it was that or dying in the gutter. Yes, that pretty ugly but it happens all the time in India. The Hindu religion—which so many western atheists pretend to be found of—actually justifies the death of untouchables and the likes out of hunger, sheer misery or illness, as all perfectly normal and cool.
The house of the dying is not an hospital. It’s a place to die. If the people there want to go to the hospital, I trust the nuns are not stopping them.
Now, are you going to provide evidence that Mother Teresa herself commited ‘corrupt activities’, or not? Otherwise it looks like a bad case of ad hominem…
Evidence has been amply provided.
You just choose to ignore it.
“Maybe they enjoyed suffering”
”On another occasion, Teresa told a terminal cancer patient, who was dying in extreme pain, that he should consider himself fortunate: “You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you.” (She freely related his reply, which she seemed not to realize was meant as a putdown: “Then please tell him to stop kissing me.”)”
That’s evidence of a belief in the redemptive nature of suffering. Very Catholic, and a very strange idea if I may, but it has nothing to do with “corrupt activities”.
My question after reading the article is, Why is there no attempt at healing these people? Wasn’t Mother Teresa supposed to be running a clinic rather than a hospice? With all the money flowing in, why were there no medical supplies?
And where did that money go?
@LostInParadise
My sense is that she opened a place for the dying to die in dignity. It’s primarily a religious, missionary enterprise. Not a medical one.
I agree that the idea of refusing or strictly limiting health care is strange. I can only guess that adding more medical services would have changed the place into something else, a hospital. This could have attracted many more people, bringing massive change to the original idea.
@Seek Good idea to follow the money. I ‘ll try and look for some data.
”My sense is that she opened a place for the dying to die in dignity.”
Were that the case, she would have provided proper pain medication, hygiene, food, air conditioning.
She did not.
She even forced her underlings to subsist on rice, until the Vatican ordered her to feed them properly.
Dignity is something else.
Answer this question 
This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.
Composing members:
0
