Controversy and critics
Critics of Mother Teresa have argued that her organization provided substandard care, and were primarily interested in converting the dying to Catholicism. At the same time, Teresa received large sums in donations, the amount or destination of which has not been revealed. These donations are alleged to have been transferred to Catholic missionary programs elsewhere, rather than being spent on improving the standard of healthcare. Furthermore, Teresa's relationships with some donors and political figures has been a source of controversy. The Catholic Church has dismissed most of these criticisms.
[edit]Destination of donations
Christopher Hitchens, a British journalist now living in Washington, D.C., described Mother Teresa's organization as a cult which promoted suffering and did not help those in need. Hitchens wrote that Mother Teresa's own words on poverty proved that "her intention was not to help people." He quoted Mother Teresa's words at a 1981 press conference in which she was asked: "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" She replied: "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."
Hitchens further alleged that Mother Teresa lied to donors about what their contributions were to be used for. Donors were told that the money went to aid and the construction of healthcare facilities in India and elsewhere. Evidence points to it instead being spent largely on missionary work and that Mother Teresa was actually the controller of some of the funds. No hospitals were ever built. In 1994, Hitchens published an article in The Nation entitled "The Ghoul of Calcutta".
Dr. Aroup Chatterjee, the author of "Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict" (2003), asserted that the public image of Mother Teresa as a helper of the poor, the sick, and the dying was misleading and overstated; the number of people who are served by even the largest of the homes is not nearly as large as westerners are led to believe. [1]
Hitchens, with British journalist Tariq Ali, co-produced a television documentary for the UK's Channel 4 called Hell's Angel, which was based on Aroup Chatterjee's work. Although he has never disputed the documentary's conclusions, Chatterjee criticized what he called the "sensationalist" approach of the film[2]. The next year Hitchens published The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, which contained much of the same content, though with more references. Hitchens was the only witness called by the Vatican to give evidence against Mother Teresa's beatification and canonization process, as the Vatican had abolished the traditional "Devil's Advocate" role that filled a similar purpose.[5]
[edit]Criticism of care provided
In 1991, Dr. Robin Fox, then editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, visited the Home for Dying Destitute in Calcutta 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. Dr. Fox specifically held Teresa responsible for conditions in this home, and observed that her order did not distinguish between curable and incurable patients; people who could otherwise survive their ordeals would be at a heightened 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.
Aroup Chatterjee alleged that many operations of the order engage in absolutely no charitable activity at all, but instead use their funds for missionary work. He stated, that none of the eight facilities that the Missionaries of Charity run in Papua New Guinea have residents living there; their sole use is converting people to Catholicism. In an open letter to Mother Teresa Chatterjee asked for clarification. In the letter, he quotes her as having given numbers of 57,000 helped at a single facility, 250,000 helped at another, thousands helped daily at another. He cast doubt upon these numbers. [3]
Chatterjee contends that families of the residents of its homes were not allowed to visit their loved ones and that, among India's charitable organizations, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity is the only one which refuses to release a public financial account.
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.
Attitude toward political leaders
Mother Teresa made some public statements regarding political leaders that have produced controversy. After Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's suspension of civil liberties in 1975, Mother Teresa said: "People are happier. There are more jobs. There are no strikes." These approving comments were seen as a result of the friendship between Teresa and the Congress Party. These comments were criticized even in Catholic media. (Chatterjee, p. 276). In 1981, she made a trip to Haiti to accept an honor from Jean-Claude Duvalier, who was notorious as a repressive kleptocrat, and praised the Duvalier family as friends of Haiti's poor. In 1989, she travelled to Albania and laid a wreath at the grave of Enver Hoxha, the nation's hard-line Stalinist leader throughout the Cold War era, who had outlawed religion and sometimes brutally repressed religious expressions, including those of the Catholic Church.
Another example of Teresa apparently abandoning her convictions where the famous and powerful were involved concerns the subject of divorce. Hitchens wrote that in spite of her hostility to the practice, she nevertheless told the Ladies Home Journal that, with respect to the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, "It is a good thing that it is over. Nobody was happy anyhow." The question of whether or not she personally felt that divorce for all should be allowed among Catholics was not raised, but rather was left for the Pope, in his role as Holy Father of the Catholic Church, to discern.[6]
The Tamil Nadu Government headed by the Late Dr.M.G.Ramachandran established a women's university in Kodaikanal named after Mother Teresa.
[edit]Baptisms of the dying
Mother Teresa has garnered criticism for her encouragement of sacramental baptisms being performed on the dying (a majority of which were Hindus and Muslims), thus converting them to the Catholic faith. These were done without regard to the individuals' religion. In a speech at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego, California in January, 1992, she said, "Something very beautiful... not one has died without receiving the special ticket for St. Peter, as we call it. We call baptism 'a ticket for St. Peter.' We ask the person, do you want a blessing by which your sins will be forgiven and you receive God? They have never refused. So 29,000 have died in that one house [in Kalighat] from the time we began in 1952."
The Catholic Church's response to criticism
In the process of examining Teresa's suitability for beatification and canonization, the Roman Curia (the Vatican) pored over a great deal of documentation of published and unpublished criticisms against her life and work. Vatican officials say Hitchens' allegations have been investigated by the agency charged with such matters, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and they found no obstacle to Mother Teresa's canonization. [7] Due to the attacks she has received, some Catholic writers have called her a sign of contradiction. [4]
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