Saint Teresa

[Bubbles]

She denied them basic pain relief.
There's an argument that the high profile nature of het charity denied funds to other more humane charities.

Society denied them basic pain relief by letting them die on the streets, they were thought of as that little.

No one helped these people, even a little bit.

Where were the more humane Charities?.

What did they do?

[floo]

MT appeared to think suffering was good for the mythical soul, anyone thinking like that is very SICK, imo.

[jeremyp]

Society denied them basic pain relief by letting them die on the streets, they were thought of as that little.

Did you read the bit about the more humane charities not getting a look-in in Calcutta because of Mother Teresa?

She had the opportunity to reduce the suffering of people under her care and she didn't take it through some misguided belief that their suffering was good for them.

The fact that there are other people in this world that did nothing does not mitigate her actions.

[Brownie]

I remember seeing a Christopher Hitchens programme devoted to this very subject, possibly on Channel 4, more than twenty years ago.  It certainly gave me food for thought.  However it was followed up by a programme featuring people who felt quite the opposite - not, I must say, blind worshippers at the feet of M Teresa but some who had been involved in her work.  At the church I used to attend there was a Mother Teresa group who collected baby and small children's clothes (never white or man made fibre because of culture/heat), and raised funds for her organisation by the usual methods, table sales and coffee things.  I wasn't involved in that but there were some who went to India to see the work and help out, mainly a centre for orphaned infants, who were quite impressed.

India honoured her, why did they do that if her mission was a complete failure?  Quite honestly I don't know what to think, neither do I care much (apart from my negative view of canonisation generally), now she has been dead for such a long time and her organisation is administered by people with more up to date ethos and practice. 

[Bubbles]

Did you read the bit about the more humane charities not getting a look-in in Calcutta because of Mother Teresa?

She had the opportunity to reduce the suffering of people under her care and she didn't take it through some misguided belief that their suffering was good for them.

The fact that there are other people in this world that did nothing does not mitigate her actions.

No but even reading critical reports such as this one, that is very critical it's obvious pills of some sort are being given to the dying. It was critical quite rightly in how they were given.

http://www.wanderingearl.com/volunteering-at-mother-teresas-home-for-the-dying/

Abuse of the vunerable is something that can happen in our care homes in the UK.

They don't have the same controls in India for charities.

What it does do is make me question the claim that no pain relief was given at the instruction of Mother Teresa.

Obviously it is being given, if it is being criticised in such a way. So is it true or not?  Obviously it isn't IMO.

I wonder if Christopher Hitchens lied,  after all, it would sell more books to knock someone like Mother Teresa off her pedestal.

I know reporters lie, I've caught them at it and complained.

Their  answer is always

" well our reporter only saw one toilet ( add lie of choice)......."

I wouldn't trust Christopher Hitchens account of Mother Teresa for the same reason I doubt what reporters write.

They make money out of lying and exaggerating the truth. ( Fox News and Birmingham uk being a no go zone for white non Muslims according to their experts is a prime example)

Christopher Hitchens is as about as trustworthy as David Icke IMO, they are both out to promote their books and make money.

I don't doubt that the Calcutta homes could be considerably improved, but Mother Teresa stopping dying people getting pain relief?

I think he made that up.
One of those conspiracy theorists IMO.

All to sell books.

[jeremyp]

Christopher Hitchens is as about as trustworthy as David Icke IMO, they are both out to promote their books and make money.

And J K Rowlings and Richard Dawkins and Nelson Mandella? Everybody who writes a book and promotes it is equally untrustworthy are they?

I don't doubt that the Calcutta homes could be considerably improved, but Mother Teresa stopping dying people getting pain relief?

Yes.

I think he made that up.
[/quote]

[Bubbles]

And J K Rowlings and Richard Dawkins and Nelson Mandella? Everybody who writes a book and promotes it is equally untrustworthy are they?
Yes.

I think he made that up.

J k Rowling writes fantasy and is honest enough to label it as such.

Richard Dawkings writes his from a perspective of a professor of biology and it is his opinion, you can put up a counter argument if you wish. In fact I suspect he would support someone's sincere attempt to do so, more than just blindly accepting what he says ( which seems to be much of his objection that people just blindly believe what they are told).  I think he would encourage someone to challenge his ideas, not just blindly accept them.

Nelson Mandela I suspect wrote about his own experiences.

None of those writers compare to Christopher Hitchins, who appears to have been a spiteful drunk with an agenda.

jK Rowling writes fantasy

r Dawkins writes as a biology professor

Nelson Mandella as someone who was persecuted his own experience.

Christopher Hitchens opinionated nobody who drank and took nasty swipes at anyone famous who was liked by the public ranging from Princess Diana, Mother Teresa and a few others.

[jeremyp]

J k Rowling writes fantasy and is honest enough to label it as such.

Richard Dawkings writes his from a perspective of a professor of biology and it is his opinion, you can put up a counter argument if you wish. In fact I suspect he would support someone's sincere attempt to do so, more than just blindly accepting what he says ( which seems to be much of his objection that people just blindly believe what they are told).  I think he would encourage someone to challenge his ideas, not just blindly accept them.

Nelson Mandela I suspect wrote about his own experiences.

None of those writers compare to Christopher Hitchins, who appears to have been a spiteful drunk with an agenda.

jK Rowling writes fantasy

r Dawkins writes as a biology professor

Nelson Mandella as someone who was persecuted his own experience.

But they all promote their own books and it is this that you claimed makes them as untrustworthy as David Icke.

Christopher Hitchens opinionated nobody

Now you are throwing insults around. Do you have any substantive points?

[Sebastian Toe]

http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/10/forbes-india-mother-teresa-charity-critical-public-review.html

[Bubbles]

But they all promote their own books and it is this that you claimed makes them as untrustworthy as David Icke.

Now you are throwing insults around. Do you have any substantive points?

Yes I've made my substantive points, you chose to ignore them.

its not the promoting of books that makes them dishonest, but whether they are spreading untruths to promote their books.

jK Rowling has never promoted her book as being reality and it hasn't hurt or been aimed at a living person.

Richard Dawkins promotes his book but it is his opinion, he attacks religion and religious ideas but doesn't make it personal

Christopher Hitchins is into character assassination, and it's promoting that in the way he did , that makes him dishonest.  He is a disher of dirt.

None of the others you mention go in for the sort of nasty character assassination that Christopher Hitchins does.

Can you really not see the difference?

He's a dirt disher!

That's how he sold his books, by dishing up the dirt on anyone who was well known.

That's why I don't trust what he writes, because his agenda was to character assassinate anyone he thought was a target.

To make money! And make a name for himself.

None of the other authors you mention stoop that low.

Christopher Hitchens made a living out of character assassination, he's the lowest of the low IMO.

He belongs on the bookshelf alongside David Icke for making money by writing books aimed at making money by being malicious about other people.

It wasn't just Mother Teresa he attacked, was it?

He was a disher of dirt of the worst sort.

[Nearly Sane]

While Hitchens could be vicious in his opinion of many people the idea that he was a muck raking journalist dedicated to writing character assassinations shows ignorance of his writings, see below for bibliography. Further that it is a personal attack on someone doesn't make it wrong.

The ongoing ad hominem on a number of posts on here about his drinking is both a fallacy and a laughable piece of hypocrisy from anyone complaining that he carried out character assainations.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens_bibliography

[Brownie]

Hitchens was extremely arrogant, pompous and ill mannered.  He had no need to be like that to get his points across but that was obviously his nature/nurture.  I formed my opinion having seen him in discussion many times on youtube or TV and I have no anti-Hitchens agenda.  That was just how he was.  He could have learned a thing or two from forum posters, ie attack the idea, not the poster (Ha!).

Years ago, Hitchens struck me as someone who would find out something negative about an individual and then go all out to dig up more of the same or worse.  I was merely an impartial observer and it mattered not at all to me one way or the other though I found him uncomfortable to watch and hear, regardless of subject matter.

Seb, thanks for that link to a really good, balanced article.  Some mixture!  What I expected really.

[Bubbles]

While Hitchens could be vicious in his opinion of many people the idea that he was a muck raking journalist dedicated to writing character assassinations shows ignorance of his writings, see below for bibliography. Further that it is a personal attack on someone doesn't make it wrong.

The ongoing ad hominem on a number of posts on here about his drinking is both a fallacy and a laughable piece of hypocrisy from anyone complaining that he carried out character assainations.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens_bibliography

Thanks for the laugh, nearly sane.

You must have searched very hard to have found such an impossibly small bibliography that said nothing negative about him or gave the absolute minimum of information.  I've never seen such a small article.

A personal attack on someone is always wrong IMO, especially from someone in the media who is abusing their position.

He was a muck raking journalist.

Yes I'm doing that, saying unpleasant things about him, because I don't like the undeserved ( IMO) acclaim he is given.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens

That one is a bit more informative!

He was also a defender of holocaust deniers and Nazis

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114066518886080999

I don't have to like the man, and I don't.

Unfortunately he has been put on that very same pedestal he spent so much of his time knocking others off.

He came out and supported a Nazi.

https://www.rt.com/uk/310878-holocaust-denier-irving-speaks/

He's scum! IMO.

You can tell a lot about a person by who they choose to associate with.

If he was a decent person and not some scumbag, he wouldn't have done that.


I wouldn't trust any criticism he made about others, given his judgment on holocaust deniers and Nazis.

The man was a pompous ass!

[Nearly Sane]

Thanks for the laugh, nearly sane.

You must have searched very hard to have found such an impossibly small bibliography that said nothing negative about him or gave the absolute minimum of information.  I've never seen such a small article.

A personal attack on someone is always wrong IMO, especially from someone in the media who is abusing their position.

He was a muck raking journalist.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens

That one is a bit more informative!

He was also a defender of holocaust deniers and Nazis

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114066518886080999

I don't have to like the man, and I don't.

Unfortunately he has been put on that very same pedestal he spent so much of his time knocking others off.

You appear not to know what a bibliography is. You post a link which covers many of the other pieces of writing and then ignore that. You make a further ad hominem, and you ignore your own hypocrisy in having used his drinking as a personal attack.

[ProfessorDavey]

Thanks for the laugh, nearly sane.

You must have searched very hard to have found such an impossibly small bibliography that said nothing negative about him or gave the absolute minimum of information.  I've never seen such a small article.

A personal attack on someone is always wrong IMO, especially from someone in the media who is abusing their position.

He was a muck raking journalist.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens

That one is a bit more informative!

He was also a defender of holocaust deniers and Nazis

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114066518886080999

I don't have to like the man, and I don't.

Unfortunately he has been put on that very same pedestal he spent so much of his time knocking others off.

Just because you don't like him doesn't mean that he is necessarily wrong.

But lets shift the focus off Hitchens for a while.

There are plenty of others who have been highly critical of her over the years. Perhaps the most notable being Aroup Chatterjee, a doctor who actually worked for her organisation and has been highly critical of her work particularly that she exaggerated the work she did and also that she raised huge amounts of money, most of which didn't seem to be channeled into helping the poor.

Also the journalist Tariq Ali and Robin Fox, who was editor of the leading medical journal The Lancet who was scathing about the quality of health care he witnessed at her organisation. He reported that there weren't routinely medically qualified staff available and 'diagnoses' were left to untrained staff, resulting in patients with curable diseases being diagnosed as dying (which of course they ultimately did through lack of basic treatment. Also lack of analgesics meaning patients suffered from unnecessary pain, and appalling basic hygiene - notable re-using syringe needles which hadn't been sterilised, but merely washed in warm water. The result being transmission of infections.

Now if it was the case that she was running her organisations on a shoestring, you might forgive her from being able to provide such basic care. But she wasn't, she was raking in millions.

[Bubbles]

Just because you don't like him doesn't mean that he is necessarily wrong.

But lets shift the focus off Hitchens for a while.

There are plenty of others who have been highly critical of her over the years. Perhaps the most notable being Aroup Chatterjee, a doctor who actually worked for her organisation and has been highly critical of her work particularly that she exaggerated the work she did and also that she raised huge amounts of money, most of which didn't seem to be channeled into helping the poor.

Also the journalist Tariq Ali and Robin Fox, who was editor of the leading medical journal The Lancet who was scathing about the quality of health care he witnessed at her organisation. He reported that there weren't routinely medically qualified staff available and 'diagnoses' were left to untrained staff, resulting in patients with curable diseases being diagnosed as dying (which of course they ultimately did through lack of basic treatment. Also lack of analgesics meaning patients suffered from unnecessary pain, and appalling basic hygiene - notable re-using syringe needles which hadn't been sterilised, but merely washed in warm water. The result being transmission of infections.

Now if it was the case that she was running her organisations on a shoestring, you might forgive her from being able to provide such basic care. But she wasn't, she was raking in millions.

Yes, I am aware things were not good.

But what I want to gauge is how much of that was down to Mother Teresa and how much down to the Roman Catholic Church.

It is a very wealthy church with very poor members.

Talking to an ex nun I get the impression they are a bit stingy with allocating funds.

They are rich because they don't give it away to the poor.

[Bubbles]

On the other hand this site says they are the largest non governmental health care provider in the world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_health_care

They can't all be denying medicines and working on a shoe string can they?

[Bubbles]

http://qz.com/773476/mother-teresas-sainthood-means-little-today-to-the-city-she-called-home/

[Bubbles]

I think this is an interesting article written by a child who grew up in one of her homes.

Interestingly the person says of Mother Teresa

It was a chaotic place, but Mother Teresa was not trying to be a social worker -- that was not her job.
She was just following her deep love of her faith and her religion, and that's what drove her humanity.
She wasn't there to cure people and provide rehabilitation. She was there to pick the dying person, the throwaways of society, up off the street when no one else cared.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/30/asia/mother-teresa-gautam-lewis/index.html

Perhaps we see the aims of Mother Teresa as being wider than it actually was.

She literally just picked up the dying and gave them somewhere to be.

We expected more, hospice care and rehabilitation.

I don't think that's how she saw it, hence the issues.

[ProfessorDavey]

She literally just picked up the dying and gave them somewhere to be.

But she failed to give them appropriate medical care, including pain relief.

She also picked up people who were ill but not dying, failed to diagnose then or provide treatment and allowed them to die when they could have lived.

We expected more, hospice care and rehabilitation.

I don't think that's how she saw it, hence the issues.

She has been described by those who criticised her as a friend of poverty, rather than a friend of the poor. And it isn't hard to see why when the following is a direct quote from her:

"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."

[wigginhall]

That would be utterly damning, if she brought in sick people, and didn't treat them, so that they died needlessly.   Not saintly at all, in fact, sadistic. 

[Nearly Sane]

But that cannot be true, after all dead she has performed miracles.

[Aruntraveller]

Seems to me that you lived your life like a......sorry sidetracked for a mo.

Seems to me that Sainthoods bestowed are the religious equivalent of an OBE from David Cameron.

Worth piss all.

[SqueakyVoice]

On the other hand this site says they are the largest non governmental health care provider in the world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_health_care

They can't all be denying medicines and working on a shoe string can they?

Catholic healthcare providers routinely deny women access to birth control and abortions. So yes they are all denying medicine.

[Bubbles]

Catholic healthcare providers routinely deny women access to birth control and abortions. So yes they are all denying medicine.

Your sentence doesn't logically follow.

Yes Catholic healthcare providers don't supply birth control or give abortions but it doesn't follow they are denying ALL medicine.

I think you have the RC muddled with the Christian Scientists.

Anyway I think medicines for abortions and birth control were probably the last of the worries of those she took off the streets.