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Mother Teresa to be declared a Saint September 4

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Keasar

Member
She won a Nobel Peace Prize. That's more significant than being a Saint.
I, for one, would definitively take the money.

Most of my kids went to Mother Teresa High School. It's a short walk from my house.
None of them are Catholics, but you meet fewer delinquents there than at the non religious public school. The street gangsters here are all Somalians. My wife makes those decisions and she's Pentecostal.

MT has been dead for almost 20 years, so it's a bit late to complain about the nature of her charity.

It is never too late to point out history's monsters to those who revere them when they are as blind as Catholics are.

She doesn't deserve the Nobel peace prize either, people who force sick and dying people to suffer because of religious nuttery doesn't deserve anything related of one of the worlds greatest prizes. I wish we Swedes could posthumously say "You know what, crazy hag shouldn't have ever gotten it" and strike her from the list.
 
The Vatican has been canonizing saints like crazy since the 2000s. Like 10-15 a year. It was never this frequent. Signs of a struggling institution.
 

Kill3r7

Member
It is never too late to point out history's monsters to those who revere them when they are as blind as Catholics are.

She doesn't deserve the Nobel peace prize either, people who force sick and dying people to suffer because of religious nuttery doesn't deserve anything related of one of the worlds greatest prizes. I wish we Swedes could posthumously say "You know what, crazy hag shouldn't have ever gotten it" and strike her from the list.

If nothing else, Mother Teresea brought attention to the often neglected and easily forgotten poor. The world abandoned/forgot these folks long before their dying days. She started her work in the 40s in a world that could not be more different than today. She was far from perfect but she tried to help the poor in her own arguably misguided way. I have always thought that Hitchens criticism of Mother Teresa stemmed more from his hatred of Catholicism, religion in general, and a sincere belief that she could have done more to help the poor. It is not as though he was accusing her of embezzling money for personal gain or a lavish lifestyle.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
If nothing else, Mother Teresea brought attention to the often neglected and easily forgotten poor. The world abandoned/forgot these folks long before their dying days. She started her work in the 40s in a world that could not be more different than today. She was far from perfect but she tried to help the poor in her own arguably misguided way. I have always thought that Hitchens criticism of Mother Teresa stemmed more from his hatred of Catholicism, religion in general, and a sincere belief that she could have done more to help the poor. It is not as though he was accusing her of embezzling money for personal gain or a lavish lifestyle.

Even if you ignore all the evidence against her that has nothing to do with Hitchens, as you must have, the other half of her canonization is the intellectually bereft and deliberately falsified claim of multiple miracles. None of which happened because for fucks sake it is 2016 this is embarrassing.
 

Monocle

Member
Even if you ignore all the evidence against her that has nothing to do with Hitchens, as you must have, the other half of her canonization is the intellectually bereft and deliberately falsified claim of multiple miracles. None of which happened because for fucks sake it is 2016 this is embarrassing.
were u there
 
Even if you ignore all the evidence against her that has nothing to do with Hitchens, as you must have, the other half of her canonization is the intellectually bereft and deliberately falsified claim of multiple miracles. None of which happened because for fucks sake it is 2016 this is embarrassing.

Hear, hear.

Isn't it 2 miracles required for canonization? I'd Love to know what she apparently did.
 

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
She won a Nobel Peace Prize. That's more significant than being a Saint.
I, for one, would definitively take the money.

Most of my kids went to Mother Teresa High School. It's a short walk from my house.
None of them are Catholics, but you meet fewer delinquents there than at the non religious public school. The street gangsters here are all Somalians. My wife makes those decisions and she's Pentecostal.

MT has been dead for almost 20 years, so it's a bit late to complain about the nature of her charity.

I don't even understand this post.

Like what does you sending your non-catholic kids to a school simply named after her have anything to do with anything?

And then complaining about Somalians.

And then saying it's a bit late to complain about something is the icing on the cake.
 

Lord Panda

The Sea is Always Right
Even if you ignore all the evidence against her that has nothing to do with Hitchens, as you must have, the other half of her canonization is the intellectually bereft and deliberately falsified claim of multiple miracles. None of which happened because for fucks sake it is 2016 this is embarrassing.

This man speaks truth.
 

Breads

Banned
All I know about Mother Theresa I got from an episode of Bullshit I found on youtube a few years ago.

My understanding is that she used donation money that was supposed to be used to help locals in one side of the world to build churches of suffering on another.
 

Kill3r7

Member
Even if you ignore all the evidence against her that has nothing to do with Hitchens, as you must have, the other half of her canonization is the intellectually bereft and deliberately falsified claim of multiple miracles. None of which happened because for fucks sake it is 2016 this is embarrassing.

What other evidence? Are you talking about allegations from medical personnel who complained about the standard of care at her hospitals or the allegations that she tried to convert people to catholicism on their death bed (totally plausible given the catholic faith). If society was so ready to help the needy then why are there so few organizations that are in fact helping the poor in third world countries. Complaining about the standard of care in places where little or no care was previously being provided to the needey seems a bit like not seeing the forrest for the trees.

Also, the conferring of Beatification or Sainthood on someone is not a confirmation that a person was perfect (because no human being is) rather it's about the fact they lived their life in an exemplary manner in accordance with their faith. Whether it is intellectually bereft I cannot say as her being named a Saint by a religious organization has no bearing on my existence.
 

adj_noun

Member
Hear, hear.

Isn't it 2 miracles required for canonization? I'd Love to know what she apparently did.

http://www.npr.org/sections/paralle...church-documented-mother-teresas-two-miracles

In Mother Teresa's case, a woman in India whose stomach tumor disappeared and a man in Brazil with brain abscesses who awoke from a coma both credited their dramatic recovery to prayers offered to the nun after her death in 1997.

John Paul's were the same kind of thing. People crediting their recovery to him.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
What other evidence? Are you talking about allegations from medical personnel who complained about the standard of care at her hospitals or the allegations that she tried to convert people to catholicism on their death bed (totally plausible given the catholic faith). If society was so ready to help the needy then why are there so few organizations that are in fact helping the poor in third world countries. Complaining about the standard of care in places where little or no care was previously being provided to the needey seems a bit like not seeing the forrest for the trees.

Also, the conferring of Beatification or Sainthood on someone is not a confirmation that a person was perfect (because no human being is) rather it's about the fact they lived their life in an exemplary manner in accordance with their faith. Whether it is intellectually bereft I cannot say as her being named a Saint by a religious organization has no bearing on my existence.

So your entire defense of her behavior and subsequent beatification is that it was "better than nothing?"

That's a high bar.

We're not talking about someone who's getting a nice card and some flowers at her funeral. She is being made a saint. People will literally pray to her. And it's all a carefully orchestrated PR campaign by an institution that is desperate for relevance and adherents, having done tremendous harm to the world for hundreds of years.

I don't really care about one egotistical old crone creating her own cult of personality, but I do care about HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people being deceived into believing useless or harmful falsehoods.
 
the only miracle she ever done is fooling the entire planet that she "actually cared " for the "patients" in her death hospices

denying children proper healthcare just to have them suffer slowly and die in her death hospices should not be grounds of sainthood.

she was a fraud
 

Audioboxer

Member
So your entire defense of her behavior and subsequent beatification is that it was "better than nothing?"

That's a high bar.

We're not talking about someone who's getting a nice card and some flowers at her funeral. She is being made a saint. People will literally pray to her. And it's all a carefully orchestrated PR campaign by an institution that is desperate for relevance and adherents, having done tremendous harm to the world for hundreds of years.

I don't really care about one egotistical old crone creating her own cult of personality, but I do care about HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people being deceived into believing useless or harmful falsehoods.

Well you should expect a lot of furious defending. The members of the Catholic church in my family would literally be out for my blood if I even showed 1 thing she done which if an everyday person done they'd either be arrested or they'd be flogged by criticism.

It's the way of the hierarchy of the Catholic church. If the message comes down from the Pope or those in positions of power, the followers at the bottom have to agree and furiously defend.

To be defiant and use your critical thinking faculties is to find yourself ostracized or looked down on/kicked out by your local communities. It's why in the Western world Catholicism, the Pope and Vatican City will probably go down as the most successful and influential cult ever. You don't need the sword to reign control over millions. Although at one point in the past they did use the sword... As did most major religions, and some still do.
 

Kill3r7

Member
So your entire defense of her behavior and subsequent beatification is that it was "better than nothing?"

That's a high bar.

We're not talking about someone who's getting a nice card and some flowers at her funeral. She is being made a saint. People will literally pray to her. And it's all a carefully orchestrated PR campaign by an institution that is desperate for relevance and adherents, having done tremendous harm to the world for hundreds of years.

I don't really care about one egotistical old crone creating her own cult of personality, but I do care about HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people being deceived into believing useless or harmful falsehoods.

As I said above, I have nothing to say on the topic of her beatification. It is ultimately a title given to an individual by the Catholic church for meeting a set of arbitrary requirements. You and I can argue until we are blue in the face and nothing will change this fact. However, building 500+ hospitals and spending a lifetime trying to help the needy, whether misguided or not, is more than most of society has done.

Also, if society wants to stop the spread of Catholicism they would be wise to reach out and help the poor in third world countries instead of leaving the missionaries to do their work for them.
 

Audioboxer

Member
As I said above, I have nothing to say on the topic of her beatification. It is ultimately a title given to an individual by the Catholic church for meeting a set of arbitrary requirements. You and I can argue until we are blue in the face and nothing will change this fact. However, building 500+ hospitals and spending a lifetime trying to help the needy, whether misguided or not, is more than most of society has done.

Also, if society wants to stop the spread of Catholicism they would be wise to reach out and help the poor in third world countries instead of leaving the missionaries to do their work for them.

Hah... "hospital".

In 1991, Robin Fox, editor of the British medical journal The Lancet visited the Home for Dying Destitutes in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and described the medical care the patients received as "haphazard". He observed that sisters and volunteers, some of whom had no medical knowledge, had to make decisions about patient care, because of the lack of doctors in the hospice. Fox specifically held Teresa responsible for conditions in this home, and observed that her order did not distinguish between curable and incurable patients, so that people who could otherwise survive would be at risk of dying from infections and lack of treatment.

Fox conceded that the regimen he observed included cleanliness, the tending of wounds and sores, and kindness, but he noted that the sisters' approach to managing pain was "disturbingly lacking". The formulary at the facility Fox visited lacked strong analgesics which he felt clearly separated Mother Teresa's approach from the hospice movement.

Fox also wrote that needles were rinsed with warm water, which left them inadequately sterilized, and the facility did not isolate patients with tuberculosis. There have been a series of other reports documenting inattention to medical care in the order's facilities. Similar points of view have also been expressed by some former volunteers who worked for Teresa's order. St. Mother Teresa herself referred to the facilities as "Houses of the Dying".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalighat_Home_for_the_Dying
 

IISANDERII

Member
Saw this on redit

Copying this message from /u/be_my_plaything:

What evil? This evil....

She ran hospitals (If an institution with a 40% mortality rate is actually classifiable as a hospital) like prisons, particularly cruel and unhygienic prisons at that. Children in her care were tied to their beds to prevent them misbehaving. She let the terminally ill (and even those with illnesses that would have been curable if her 'hospitals' were run better) die without pain relief because suffering bought them closer to Jesus

Most of the money donated to her causes was filtered back into the (already exceedingly rich) Catholic Church, or used to expand her 'charities' to new regions, rather than actually helping those in her care, many of whom were starving and lacking basic medical care... Basically she didn't love the poor and hungry, she loved poverty and hunger, she saw suffering as a grace and despite being lauded as a humanitarian given the fame and donations she had at her disposal did relatively little practical good.

She befriended and defended a genocidal dictator, Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier, and accepted donations from him of money extorted from the very poor she was supposedly helping as well as drug dealing and body part trafficking.

She accepted and refused to return profits of criminal activity. Including one and a quarter million US dollars in cash and use of a private jet from convicted racketeer and fraudster Charles Keating who stole over $3 Billion from US taxpayers in the 80's and 90's... Upon his conviction not only did Mother Teresa and The Catholic Church refuse to return the money they had received from him, Mother Teresa actually tried to use her influence to have him let off or at least sentenced leniently.

She publicly defended known pedophiles from within the clergy, including trying to use her influence to have leniency shown in sentencing of convicted child rapist Donald McGuire and campaigning to have him reinstated to the priesthood and allowing him to continue his work... even though this work would inevitably bring him into regular contact with children.

Because so much of the money she raised went to the church not the poor she hated waste in her hospitals, insisting staff reused needles until they were too blunt to continue using... even in known HIV high risk areas.

She directed a mere 7% of the monies her charities raised directly those she was supposedly helping... With much of the rest ending up in secret bank accounts and as yet still unaccounted for.

She routinely baptised those dying under her care regardless of their own wishes or religious beliefs.

She opposed both abortion and contraception, even in cases of incest, abuse and rape.

She praised and supported Ireland's anti-divorce laws... even in cases where spousal abuse was apparent, forcing countless women to live out lives of slavery and torture.

Basically pretty much everything about her was evil, but the churches PR machine didn't have a hard job spinning a kindly looking old women stood amongst some of the poorest people in the world to look lie a saint, and once that side of the story was cemented in the press it became all most people saw of her.

Possible sources:

1.

http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news/20130301-mother-teresa-anything-but-a-saint.html

2.

Les côtés ténébreux de Mère Teresa

3.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...many-critics-mother-teresa-is-still-no-saint/

4.

Christopher Hitchens - Mother Teresa: Hell's Angel

5.

http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/i-dont-think-she-deserved-the-nobel/284270

6.

http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/on-the-same-page/284274

7.

http://newamericamedia.org/2013/03/city-of-doubts-kolkatas-uneasy-love-for-mother-teresa.php

8.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa

9.

http://www.salon.com/2016/01/03/the..._had_little_impact_on_her_glowing_reputation/

10.

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

11.

More sources in this comment by /u/BlunderLikeARicochet
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Go ahead and canonize her.

The truth of her "care" is out there plain as day. One more fact on the internet that will help future young people realize the church is a lie factory.
 

Cocaloch

Member
Erm, no, it's called factual accuracy. I don't see how Teresa being declared a saint should reflect poorly on Protestantism.

Catholics are christian as well. If group A contains sub groups B, C, and D, and sub group C changes in some way it isn't factually wrong to assert that group A changed as well.

It's also a bit of a moot point, it's not like Catholics are the only Christian group that have done things that reflect poorly on Christianity as a whole.
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
What if God decides to cure someone through scientific means, is it not a miracle too?

Anyway, Steve Irwin should be declared a saint more than crazy Teresa.
 

Brakke

Banned
Catholics are christian as well. If group A contains sub groups B, C, and D, and sub group C changes in some way it isn't factually wrong to assert that group A changed as well.

It's also a bit of a moot point, it's not like Catholics are the only Christian group that have done things that reflect poorly on Christianity as a whole.

No. The very nature of Protestantism is a refutation of Catholicism. There is no "group A" here.
 

ss_lemonade

Member
Man, I grew up not knowing any of these and just knowing that she was a living saint kind of person.

How did she earn a nobel prize with all these controversies?
 
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