1. So her taking money from dictators for her order is the issue? I just want to be clear. IMO, she should not have accepted money from them. Did taking money from them help the greater massess? Probably, but at what/whos expence.

2. What geographic regions are you referring to where women are oppressed? Again, we are getting back to birth control and woman’s rights, but the point about her career seems to be lost here. Did MT seek out the press, or did the press seek her out? MT was not a spokesperson for b.c. or woman’s rights, it was never in her calling. It was others that felt she should have done these things, because she had the attention of the world. She didn’t capture our attention because she denounced her faith, on the contrary, it was her faith that drew us to her.

3. Keating/money..doesn’t that go back to the first point, or are you pointing out a sin? She was a human with sin.

Yes, insofar as the Catholic Church (like all the great religions of the world) supports positions that are harmful and untrue. At the very least, she shouldn’t have been so happy to support dictators and wealthy criminals (though the Catholic church certainly has a proud record of doing so). See below.

“What is it that she should have done for women, that she didn’t? I am curious.”

In locales where women are treated as second-class citizens, MT was more interested in upholding the Catholic church’s archaic positions on birth control than on speaking out for equal rights.

Here are some other facts that Hitchens dug up: http://www.salon.com/sept97/news/news3.html

“In 1981 Mother Teresa journeyed to Haiti, to accept that nation’s highest award, the Legion d’Honneur. She received it from the Duvalier family, and made a glowing speech in which she said that dictator “Baby Doc” and his wife Michele not only loved the poor, but were loved by the poor in return.

In 1990 she made a trip to Albania, then the most oppressive of the Balkan Stalinist states, and laid a wreath on the grave of the dictator Enver Hoxha as well as on the irredentist monument to “Mother Albania”. She was herself of Albanian descent (born in Skopje, Macedonia), but many Albanians were shocked by her embrace of Hoxha’s widow and her silence on human rights.

In 1992 she intervened with a court in Los Angeles, which was about to sentence Charles Keating, the biggest fraud and embezzler in American history. His S & L racket stole a total of $252 million, mainly from small and poor depositors. A strong Catholic and right-wing campaigner against pornography in his spare time, Keating gave Mother Teresa $1,250,000 in cash and the use of a private jet, in return for which she gave him many useful endorsements, including a character reference to the court. The court had asked Mother Teresa to return Keating’s donations, which may well have been stolen, but she never replied to the request.”

The last is the most damning and has been a matter of public record for awhile.

MT was a Catholic Nun, therefore she lived her life according to the Catholic Church…Are you suggesting she should have abandoned that? What is it that she should have done for women, that she didn’t? I am curious.

1. You suggested that Hitchens’ criticisms were directed towards MT’s very human “doubts,” “fears” etc. They weren’t; they were directed towards what I (and peejz) described above. “Her lifetime of deeds” is precisely what is at issue in Hitchens’ text; you stated these deeds speak
for themselves. See the problem?

2. As to your “question” about Hitchens’ influences… If I were to write, “Who are Bush’s heroes? Hitler? Caligula? Or some other degenerate who never thought of anyone or anything but himself,” you’d be correct to note that I’m drawing a comparison between Bush and the other figures I mentioned. I pointed out that the comparison you outlined through your own “question” isn’t apt.

3. OK.

1. I said that MT was human after all, subject to human nature like the rest of us.

2. I questioned who Hitchens admired, if he didn’t think MT measured up to his standards.

3. I said imo it was wrong to publish her letters.

The first is a fact, the second is a question, the third is my opinion.

So what is wrong?

As for the comments about women’s rights: Because many of the issues that M.T. was ostensibly addressing related fairly directly to women’s rights, silence and non-engagement looked a lot like a tacit acceptance of the status quo.

Show me where I said that she treated AIDS victims like lepers.

“Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being,” the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.