COLUMN: The sinister side of the saintly life
Today marks the 10-year anniversary of Mother Teresa’s death. The media coverage will doubtless sing the praises of a woman unmatched in her compassion and service. In eulogizing her, however, the media commit a sin of omission: Mother Teresa was more myth than matron.
A few brave voices, like journalist Christopher Hitchens, author of “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice,”have broken with the media’s adoring chorus to expose Mother Teresa’s organization, the Missionaries of Charity, as a peddler in human misery and of a radical religious agenda. I pull many of my ideas from this book.
You’re likely offended by my taking on so “saintly” a woman, let alone a dead one. But I’m not sorry. This expectation – that her reputation be indefinitely beyond reproach – is troubling evidence of society’s undue reverence for religious figures. Moreover, I need to deflate this fictitious Mother Teresa because I’m tired of religious right bludgeoning atheists with her example to make their case that such selflessness requires religious belief – on its face, an arrogant and fallacious claim.
I do appreciate many religions’ attention to the welfare of others, but the Missionaries of Charity was no friend of the poor. It was, instead, a friend of poverty. Don’t take my word for it, take Mother Teresa’s: “The suffering of the poor is something very beautiful, and the world is being very much helped by the nobility of this example of misery and suffering.” Quite a sadistic fetish, but not uncommon in the Christian tradition.
Mother Teresa was, after all, only echoing the teachings of Jesus. Notwithstanding the doctrinal importance of charity, Jesus felt that poverty was ultimately insoluble, so he utilized poverty as a tool to humble people and bring them to his message. Jesus expressly sanctified poverty in his Sermon on the Mount. He promised his audiences that the meekest and poorest among them will inherit both the earth and celestial paradise. Poverty was made somewhat of a precondition for salvation. As Jesus saw things, as recorded in Matthew 19:24 of the Bible, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
It was in this vein that Mother Teresa, too, felt poverty played an integral role in Christianity. And for her personally, being near the “poorest of the poor” buoyed her faith. Remember, she found their suffering and its manifest humility to be inspiring. So while she was entrusted to alleviate their pain, she did, on some level, facilitate it. This best explains the systemic squalor throughout her humanitarian projects.
Given the crudeness of its hospices and centers, it’s surprising that, at its height, the Missionaries of Charity had hundreds of millions of dollars in its coffers. The organization received a torrent of donations, at times gladly taking money from criminals and dictators who wanted to clear their names or conscience, yet this amassing fortune was hardly touched. What little was spent financed more than 500 convents worldwide, propagating the most dogmatic brand of Catholicism – one which bemoans abortion and contraception as the greatest moral ills today. Consequently, services for the poor and dying were grossly neglected.
Sister Shields, a nun who formerly worked for the Missionaries of Charity, claims the neglect was intentional.
“Mother Teresa was very concerned that we preserve our spirit of poverty. Spending money would destroy that poverty. She seemed obsessed with using only the simplest of means for our work,” she said.
The Missionaries of Charity was to stay a modest enterprise – free of modern medicine and practices. Though this saved the organization money, it cost too many people their lives.
Despite there being many patients with infectious and fatal illnesses, hygiene was of little concern. For example, the sisters reused needles until they became blunt. An offer by some volunteers to procure newer needles was refused. Food was prepared with bare hands on the floor in the corridor. There was no soap or disinfectant, only cold and muddied water with which to wash yourself, your clothes and your bedding. In short, the care was inept and often dangerous. “The sense was that God will provide and if the worst happens, it is God’s will,” admitted one nurse. Yikes! No wonder Mother Teresa opted for state-of-the-art treatment in California when she herself was sick.
The horrid conditions at Mother Teresa’s Homes for the Dying were particularly notorious. In the overcrowded and makeshift homes, many patients had to share their death beds (cots, actually) with others. The stench of imminent death and the cries of people having maggots tweezed from their open wounds haunted the air. Worse still, no pain relief was given to these patients – just another cross for them to bear, so far as Mother Teresa’s cult of affliction was concerned. “You are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you,” was her only consolation to one man wrenching in agony. The man, infuriated, screamed, “Then tell your Jesus to stop kissing me!”
And to that I say “Amen.”
Jon Adams is a junior majoring in political science. Comments and questions can be sent to him at jonadams@cc.usu.edu.