Mother Teresa was not a saint!

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Interesting that the protestant bit is the title of Greene's novel about a Catholic whisky priest in Mexico.

Good book... The Power and the Glory. Not as great or enjoyable as The Quiet American which is on my list of all time favorite novels. Digression over. Carry on.

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@tsarstepan,

All I want to say is that I agree with the OP on this particular issue and very little else.

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@Alan McDougall,

The word "saint" is a religious title. A person is a Catholic saint if the Catholic church says she is. Mother Teresa was officially canonized. She is a saint.

I know that many medical people hated her because they felt she put her religious doctrine over people's actual needs. That doesn't mean that she isn't a saint.

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The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care in the world. In the United States, Church-related hospitals, first established around the turn of the twentieth century, care for more than a quarter of all hospitalized patients.
Source: 2016 Hunger Report at http://www.hungerreport.org/

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So big deal. Some people don't consider her a saint. I'm sure she is just really ticked off about that right now.

Sure, like all of us, she was a flawed human being. Maybe some of her motivation for caring for those who needed her was not as pure as we believe. Big deal. She still did a heck of a lot more for the downtrodden than I bet anyone criticizing her on this forum has done.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Hitchens was satisfactorily debunked regarding Sr Teresa. Its an exmple of how pople, of little knpwledge ove to perp these silly conspiracies.
Im ab atheist yet its possible to read the Vatican Accounting offices own independent (outside) audits of Sr Teresa that was conducted during her beatification process.

Sometimes we atheists go way too far by disposing of facts and evidence.

To me,McDougall is just another one of those Evangelical douche bags who sees Christianity in a very limited range. Hes been printing his bile via his" fake" piety . His concept of a God seems more a self directed crusade to ridicule folks who dont believe in his silly theology..
Dont get me wrong, I think most theologies are silly( they are based not upon

facts but fears), but whenever this far right wackadoo begins criticizing those of other different (but genetically related)"Christian cults", its a prfect demonstration of how religions are busy fighting each other rather than doing good.

Catholics have sex scandals in their clergy, but In the US, so do the Charismatic Christians. Our newspaqpers are full of weekly reports of ministers embuggering their child wards and using their positions to force underage girls to have sex.
Theres where you ought to be focuing , rather than make up spome BS about a dead pietist nun who visibly raised thousands out of deepest poverty and poverty derived illness.
Its easy to make up **** about the dead and Im never surprised at how quickly its done. WHy? Because you can.
SCuse me if I call you out on what you are

To see a really vile person full of hate and bile, go to the nearest mirror and you will see evil looking back at you!

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@CoastalRat,

Quote:

Maybe some of her motivation for caring for those who needed her was not as pure as we believe. Big deal. She still did a heck of a lot more for the downtrodden than I bet anyone criticizing her on this forum has done.

There is a legitimate question about whether she did more harm than good for "the downtrodden" by putting religious dogma over real human need. This is particularly an issue considering the the political and economic resources she accrued. Bill Gates has done at least as much without the goal of promoting a religious ideology.

The most damning criticisms of Mother Teresa are that she put her idea about God over the real needs of people. She was said to "glorify suffering... rather than healing it".

And....of course, you have no way of knowing what anyone on this forum has done for "the downtrodden".

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@Alan McDougall,

That's a bit extreme, Farmerman has his faults, as do we all, but I don't doubt he's a decent enough bloke.

When you use extreme, and quite nasty, language like this you just turn people off.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

And....of course, you have no way of knowing what anyone on this forum has done for "the downtrodden".

Max, Max, Max. Of course I don't know. I never said I did know. I did say I would bet on it though.

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@CoastalRat,

There is a man who helped my family in a very difficult time at a cost of a couple of thousands of dollars to himself, and more than the money he offered friendship, support and help in a time when we really needed it. He did it without any motive; no religious motive, no recognition, no fame, no power... he did it because to him it was the right thing to do.

These are the people who I respect.

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@maxdancona,

Absolutely. I fully agree. And I am not and have not said that Mother Teresa was not motivated by something to do everything she did. But what does it matter what it was that motivated her? Again, I'll bet that all the people that she helped did not care a lick about her motivation. They were simply thankful she was there when they needed her.

Quote:

He did it without any motive;

And if he had a motive, whether religious or whatever, would that discount what he meant to you and your family in that moment of need? No, of course not. People do good things for all kinds of reasons. Or for none at all. So I just don't get why Alan is making a big deal over whether people should consider Mother Teresa a saint. I'm sure she had her faults as we all do. But neither her faults or her motivation should discount what she did in her lifetime.

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@CoastalRat,

Yes, Motives do matter when it comes to someone with political and financial power makes decisions impacting the lives of people who are suffering. Motives matter because they impact how you act in the times when caring for people conflicts with your primary motive.

Mother Teresa accrued a good deal of power and fame. She had political leverage, and she had control over a bureaucracy that had a considerable amount of money.

The legitimate question is, given the amount of resources and political power she had, did she really do that much good. I have a good friend who is a professor of ethics at a nursing school. He is especially upset at what Mother Teresa did, in some cases people suffered more because of her work... particularly she rejected pain management for people in her homes to the chagrin of medical professionals.

Mother Teresa had a knack at promoting her charities. She was very good at fund raising, and she gained for herself a fair amount of political leverage.

Someone whose motives are patient care and the alleviation of suffering will use this money and power in a way that helps people. Given the money and power she had, she had the ability to help a lot of people.

The question is whether Mother Teresa did that successfully given the resources she controlled, or whether her other motives took precedence over the needs of people who where suffering.

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@CoastalRat,

CoastalRat wrote:

She still did a heck of a lot more for the downtrodden than I bet anyone criticizing her on this forum has done.

I'd recommend putting absolutely nothing of value on that bet.

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Mother Teresa was not a saint!

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