Christopher Hitchens Coming Up on Hardball To Debate M Teresa with Bill Donahue

[stopbush]

I hope Hitch gets into what an absolute fraud Mother Teresa was. After all, he wrote the book on her.

[valerief]

1. Yes, this is ABA week.

Anything but Alberto.

[sailor65]

2. Fraud?

You've got to be kidding.

[jbonkowski]

5. Not kidding

Mother Teresa was not as nice a person as most people think.

She believed that suffering got you into heaven, so the facility she ran in India, which was supposed to help the sick poor, just brought them in to die. I think they also baptized them while they were dying. It would have actually been against her philosophy to try to help these people medically, much less cure them and save their lives.

She also collected huge amounts of money, and sent almost all of it back to the Vatican, and didn't use it to help the poor, which one can assume most of the donors thought the money would be used for.

Some of the nuns who worked with her gave up and left quite disillusioned, and some gave up their vows and quit the Catholic Church entirely.

jim

[sailor65]

6. I'm assuming

you have some proof of this?

[DemBones DemBones]

23. No proof is needed for Catholic-bashers at DU.

It's always open-season on Catholics here, they say any shit that comes to mind.

Democrats are driving Catholics away from the party while the GOP is courting us.

After many years at DU, I think that if DU is at all representative of Dems in general, that Dems deserve to lose.

Hating people is not a liberal value.

[ourbluenation]

26. elected democrats aren't - many of them are catholic. n/t

[DemBones DemBones]

35. Yes, in fact Catholics are the majority in Congress.

Imagine how they would feel reading DU.

[iverglas]

39. and no proof will be acknowledged

by you and your ilk. Pick your own label; I don't give a shit. It should probably start with "apologists for" and continue with a list of things like violence against women, exploitation of the poor, and neat stuff like that.

The nun of Calcutta was a vicious, stupid, selfish person.

Hating people is not a liberal value.

Bearing false witness against the dead apparently is, as long as it's an RCer doing it to a non-RCer. Telling the truth about an RCer, that's bashing.

How 'bout exploiting the poor and the sick and the otherwise vulnerable; liberal value?

And dining with dictators, and praising princesses who did what she condemned the poor for doing, and ... oh, one could go on and on, but one can hear the wah wah you nasty catholic basher from here.

By the way, you are ROMAN Catholic. You really don't get to arrogate the term "catholic" for yourself.

[sailor65]

62. I guess that means

you don't have any proof. Vicious, Stupid, Selfish? With traits like that there must be links everywhere! :eyes:

[iverglas]

68. well, I wouldn't be giving up your day job

Your guesses aren't likely to bring in enough to buy the groceries.

Now, you could try mining the disingenuousness, and I'll bet there'd be a big market you could keep supplied for a few decades.

[sailor65]

70. Thanks, I'll hold onto the job

as to the mining, I'm in good shape. I have found enough of it here to fly me to Mars and back.

[smirkymonkey]

88. Here's a start - not from Hitchens, even....

http://macintyre.com/content/view/533/105/

By Donal MacIntyre (Irish Catholic Investigative Journalist) - excerpt

"...I worked undercover for a week in Mother Teresa's flagship home for disabled boys and girls to record Mother Teresa's Legacy, a special report for Five News broadcast earlier this month. I winced at the rough handling by some of the full-time staff and Missionary sisters. I saw children with their mouths gagged open to be given medicine, their hands flaying in distress, visible testimony to the pain they were in. Tiny babies were bound with cloths at feeding time. Rough hands wrenched heads into position for feeding. Some of the children retched and coughed as rushed staff crammed food into their mouths. Boys and girls were abandoned on open toilets for up to 20 minutes at a time. Slumped, untended, some dribbling, some sleeping, they were a pathetic sight. Their treatment was an affront to their dignity, and dangerously unhygienic."

"Volunteers (from Italy, Sweden, the United States and the UK) did their best to cradle and wash the children who had soiled themselves. But there were no nappies, and only cold water. Soap and disinfectant were in short supply. Workers washed down beds with dirty water and dirty cloths. Food was prepared on the floor in the corridor. A senior member of staff mixed medicine with her hands. Some did their best to give love and affection - at least some of the time. But, for the most part, the care the children received was inept, unprofessional and, in some cases, rough and dangerous. "They seem to be warehousing people rather than caring for them," commented the former operations director of Mencap Martin Gallagher, after viewing our undercover footage.


"I was shocked. I could only work there for three days. It was simply too distressing. . . We had seen the same things in Romania but couldn't believe it was happening in a Mother Teresa home," one told me. In January, she and her colleague had written to Sister Nirmala, the new Mother Superior, to voice their concerns. They wrote, they told me, out of "compassion and not complaint", but received no response. Like me, they had been brought up in Catholic schools to believe that Mother Teresa was the holiest of all women, second only to the Virgin Mary. Our faith was unwavering, as was that of the "international media for about 50 years. Even when the sister in charge of the Missionaries of Charity's Mahatma Gandhi Welfare Centre in Kolkata was prosecuted and found guilty of burning a young girl of seven with a hot knife in 2000, criticism remained muted."

"Susan Shields, formerly a senior nun with the order, recalled that one year there was roughly $50m in the bank account held by the New York office alone. Much of the money, she complained, sat in banks while workers in the homes were obliged to reuse blunt needles. The order has stopped reusing needles, but the poor care remains pervasive. One nurse told me of a case earlier this year where staff knew a patient had typhoid but made no effort to protect volunteers or other patients. "The sense was that God will provide and if the worst happens - it is God's will."....(more)

Do a little Google Search, there is much more on "Saint" Mother Theresa...

[iverglas]

90. ^^ it's the invisible post! ^^

quoting material written by an invisible person, about things that never happened, and besides, Christopher Hitchens is a lousy rotten drunk.

Maybe if someone accidentally clicks on my post, they'll accidentally click the "response to reply 88" link up top, and they'll see your post, and their brains will break ...

[smirkymonkey]

112. I think for some people "Mother Theresa was a Saint and

Christopher Hitchens is a Drunk" is permanently etched in their brains. There is no undoing it. However, just because someone drinks a lot and is wrong about Iraq, doesn't mean he doesn't have a point about MT. And just because MT was Catholic and manipulated the opinions of the masses doesn't mean she's a saint.

I think it's like the 29% who still approve of GWB. It's pointless to try to talk any sense into them.

[Jed Dilligan]

71. I can see bashing the party for complicity etc.

but because some people on DU don't like your religion? What the hell does that have to do with the Democratic Party?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. You're saying Mother Teresa withheld medical treatment?

That's interesting.

[stopbush]

9. Yes, she did. She prohibited doctors and even family members from

visiting the dying in her death centers. These were called "Houses of the Dying." They were not medical facilities. People died that need not have died because MT felt that observing their suffering might bring her closer to god. It wasn't a matter of "withholding" treatment, it was a matter of not providing any in the first place.

BTW - she raised millions of dollars, not to provide medical treatment or to ease suffering, but to open more Houses of the Dying to provide her religious horrors to even more poor and pathetic victims of her "love."

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. You mean hospices, eh?

Were the family members withheld at her request, or the patient's request?

[stopbush]

19. See post #16

[iverglas]

41. may you end up in just such a "hospice"

and see how you like it. Can't think of another way to get someone who asks "questions" like this to acknowledge the false nature of assertion, myself.

[Az]

16. There are several sources

That basically claim that the mission that Teresa believed she was on was to witness the suffering of the poor. Not to aid them. But just to be there and observe their pain and suffering.

To this end it is reported that she withheld painkillers, anitbiotics, and numerous other treatments that would have eased their suffering. Further more due to the oath of poverty she took she transfered the bulk of the donations she collected to the Vatican rather than using it to help the poor she collected it for.

Her recent revealed documents concerning her lack of faith for the last forty years of her life may be viewed in this light. Perhaps she could not reconcile her mission as she understood it with her own feelings but stayed committed to it in hopes that she would find her way back to God. It appears according to her confessor that she never found her way back.

[DemBones DemBones]

Got proof? Besides "Christopher Hitchens said so"?

That's not proof.

Az, you're too intelligent to respect Hitchens as an atheist. He doesn't believe in God because he thinks HE is God.

He's so unintelligent -- and I think it's due to destruction of brain cells by years of alcohol abuse -- that he can't understand that Mother Teresa experienced years of what St. John of the Cross (great Catholic mystic and confessor of another great Catholic mystic, St. Teresa of Avila) first named "the dark night of the soul." When people have had strong experience of the presence of God and then go through periods of "spiritual dryness," it is torture for their souls. It was no secret that Mother Teresa suffered this way for many years. It's to her credit that she went on doing what Jesus commanded all Christians to do.

Mother Teresa is being attacked because she talked openly with her confessors about her long dark night of the soul rather than being admired for keeping on keeping on or for her honesty. The book written by one of her confessors will help other believers who are going through spiritual dryness. Atheists who are as cynical and deliberately uninformed as Hitchens will do what he did on "Hardball" tonight: claim that Mother Teresa was an atheist.

She was not an atheist at all. You know better than that, I think, and I wish more atheists did.

[Az]

22. I am no fan of Hitchens

But it is not simply his claim against Teresa's. He has sources on this particular case. Specifically nuns that used to work with Teresa and were members of her order. There are also the financial records of the Vatican.

I am not putting this information out there as concrete claims. I am merely reporting what the issue is being raised regarding Teresa. And there is evidence to support it.

The claim regarding her loss of faith were her own words to her confessor within the Vatican. The documents were released just last week and detail that for the last forty years of her life she had lost her faith. She claims to have no longer felt the presence of God. Whether this rendered her an atheist or not is not clear. All we can tell from what she wrote is that she did not believe that God was what she had thought he should have been.

I do not claim to know what was in her mind. All you and I know of her is the public persona presented and created by the media. What she did and who she was is unclear to us. I agree that Hitchens is not the best lens to view her through. But this does not mean that the comments should be absolutely disregarded. But they should be taken with a healthy degree of skepticism.

[DemBones DemBones]

34. If I were an atheist now, as I was for many years,

I would not want Hitchens to be allowed to call himself an atheist. He makes atheists look bad.

You are under the false impression that Mother Teresa lost her faith. She didn't. She was suffering spiritual dryness, she was doubting, wondering why God no longer made Himself present to her spiritually, but she still believed. Hitchens asserted tonight that she was an atheist like him but she wasn't. (I sincerely hope that there are no other atheists like Hitchens!) As Bill Donohue said to Hitchens, "The only people who don't have doubts are dogmatic atheists like you." Of course Mother Teresa had doubts. That's normal. The only thing unusual about her spiritual drynesss was that it lasted so long.

In my experience, atheists have doubts, too, wondering what will happen to them if there really is a God. Like the Steve Martin routine where he says "What if you die and there really is a Heaven? Clouds and angels playing harps. You're walking around saying, 'In college, they said this was all bullshit. . . How many times did I take the Lord's name in vain? A million and six! Jesus Chri. . .' Having such doubts may make an atheist into a believer but usually not. In the same way, believers can have doubts without losing their faith.

It's like this: sometimes we Catholics feel God is present when we pray or at Mass, sometimes we don't. Feeling that He is present is cause for joy. Not having that feeling isn't a cause for sadness unless it goes on for a long period of time. Mother Teresa went from being often in God's presence to being denied it for many years. She was tormented by it.

The letters were released long before the new book by her confessor was written so Catholics, if not the general public, were aware of this if they read any Catholic magazines or just their diocesan or archdiocesan newspaper, which is where I read about it years ago. I think it was reported in the secular press, too.

Getting back to what Hitchen says about her, I'm not going to believe something alleged about Mother Teresa without concrete evidence. I wouldn't believe something alleged about anyone without evidence. I know people who worked with Mother Teresa in India and who met her here, when she opened one of the AIDS hospices she founded in the US. They thought she was a living saint.

I don't know whether she was or not and did not think her cause for sainthood should have been fast-tracked by John Paul II. Before his papacy there had been much more demanding criteria for canonization and people were not beatified and canonized within ten or twenty years of their death. She wasn't even dead five, IIRC, when he beatified her. Benedict XVI has apparently put the brakes on the rapid and numerous canonizations that JP II favored.

Atheists won't believe in God without concrete evidence that He exists, but too many atheists will readily believe any allegations against believers, without proof. I don't include you in that group of atheists, I think you are more fair-minded, so please tell me, where can I see concrete proof that Hitchens' allegations are true? I'd like to know the truth.

[Az]

47. I am aware of that

I am not asserting that she was an atheist. But her loss of faith are in fact her words not mine. I do not necessarily conflate that as meaning she no longer believed in a God as Hitchens seems to be trying to assert. She seems to have continued to believe that there was a God (or at least wanted to believe there was a God) but did not feel the connection she expected. That is the best I believe we can ascertain with the information we have on the matter. Neither you nor I are privy to her inner mind. We can only go on what writings we have of hers with the understanding that much of it was concealing her real feelings.

[DemBones DemBones]

60. OK, now we're on the same track

about this. And I forgot to mention that I am glad, though not surprised, to know you are not a Hitchens fan, either. His smug atheism is as irritating as the smug Christianity of, say, Jerry Falwell.

Indeed we do not know her inner mind and never will. Her letters can give us an idea but I doubt we can get the full picture.

I wonder if she got to the point where her "dark night of the soul" became a self-perpetuating expectation for her that she couldn't escape.

[Az]

65. I suspect as much

I do not envy her the torment she put herself through. 40 years ... I cannot imagine how much her doubts and fears cored her out during that time. She has my empathy for that at the very least.

[iverglas]

48. do you actually doubt,

let alone deny, that Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was rather extremely chummy with a certain piece of filth by the name of Duvalier?

Just for starters, now.

Do you actually doubt, let alone deny, that she sought favour for a man at the centre of the savings and loan scandal in the US that ruined so many people's lives? Do you not suspect that the favour she granted him herself in so doing was bought and paid for by the $1.25 million he gave her for her "work" -- for which she was accountable to no one? How about Robert Maxwell? How about the obvious fact that she took money that had been stolen from people who did not agree to give it to her, and who needed it for their own basic needs, and allowed them thieves to bask in her glory, while she left their victims to fend for themselves, without evening mentioning how she left the poor and sick to die in misery?


Would you support any candidate for your party's nomination who had those foul skeletons in his/her closet? If not, why in hell would you try to shut up criticism of this individual on the basis that it will hurt your party? Why would you want your party to be tied to Haiti's Duvalier, or Charles Keating, or Robert Maxwell, in anyone's mind? Why would you not want your party to dissociate itself in the public mind from all such ties?


What does anyone's religion have to do with any of this, by the way?



Atheists won't believe in God without concrete evidence that He exists, but too many atheists will readily believe any allegations against believers, without proof. I don't include you in that group of atheists ...

Yeah? Then maybe you should name one whom you do include.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

24. Jesus the Christ healed the sick..

Not so with Mother Teresa.

If a person is fortunate enough to have the presence of God revealed to them personally then why should it be necessary for that person to continually need God to reinforce the revelation?

That's an honest question, I'm genuinely interested in the answer.

[Az]

32. He didn't use meds

In fact one of the supposed signs of knowing that a person is a true believer is that they are able to heal the sick by laying hands on them.

As to the presence thing... I suspect that believers expect it to be a continuous presence.

[DemBones DemBones]

36. No, believers do not expect God to be continually present,

nor are true believers expected to be able to heal others by laying hands on them.

Jesus gave His disciples that power, but it's incorrect to say that true believers today are expected to have the power to heal.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

38. Would Jesus the Christ have approved of using medicine to cure the sick?

In your opinion of course.

[Az]

40. Um... thats not quite what the bible says

Mark
16:17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
16:18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

Seems pretty straight forward to me.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

46. LOL, you know the Bible is metaphor..

Except when it isn't. :D

[Az]

49. It depends on who you are talking to

Not everyone believes the bible is literal. Many see it as a metaphor. As long as they are not trying to press it on me then I have no problem with them.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

51. I think that's what I said..

In a little more lighthearted manner.

BTW, I enjoy your posts, you are a good spokesman for atheists.

[Az]

59. Thats cool

And thanks for the compliment. :blush:

[Gabi Hayes]

30. wise up. do some, uh, reading. start with this

post 29 here

[DemBones DemBones]

20. What are these sources, please? nt

[Gabi Hayes]

33. see if you can summon the energy to CandP this into google

'mother theresa savings and loan scandal'

[DemBones DemBones]

37. Why should I? Your attitude is quite off-putting.

You're making the allegation, you provide the evidence. I'm not doing your research for you.

[Gabi Hayes]

42. and yours isn't?

jesus

where did that saying come from...you know the one about nobody being so blind as those that will not see?

http://www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/a-le04su-laughter.php

[Gabi Hayes]

43. people with whom you agree?

[China_cat]

17. Millions in the bank ($10m in a NY bank alone)

and many other accounts and she wouldn't even buy aspirin for those dying in pain. She would tell them that their pain was just 'Jesus kissing you'.

[spoony]

27. Nope, there really are lunatics on this site

who so deeply and bitterly hate anything having to do with religion that there is no depth to which they won't sink in slandering anyone associated with it.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

56. Lunatics can be made...

Just teach a child he will be tortured for eternity for perfectly natural behavior.

The nerve of some people to actually resent such loving training.

[sailor65]

69. Boy, am I learning that fast! n/t

[iverglas]

72. seems to be a pretty flat damned learning curve

You don't seem to have added a sig line. Wouldn't you like one? I think many here would highly recommend that you quote yourself:

Your thought process really is so flawed that you could never really have a meaningful philosophical or political conversation with one of us.

[sailor65]

73. 10,000 Comedians out of work

and you're trying to make a joke.

Well, as a "Military, Christian, and Less-Left then Some," I've had plenty of those thrown my way.
So I'll take a Mulligan for tossing a few back.

And the poster to whom that response was directed was condescending in the extreme.

[spanone]

3. thanks for the warning, he gives me gas.

[monmouth]

4. As a Catholic I say Donahue is the fraud....

[BurtWorm]

7. One of the rare instances in which I would love to see Hitch kick his opponent's worthless ass.

To "kingdom come," if you will.

[malaise]

11. I love Hitchins with these religious freaks

otherwise I hate the fugger.

[spoony]

28. Maybe that should make you reflect

Why do you like a surly drunken jerk in the one instance? Because his prejudices overlap yours?

[JerseygirlCT]

63. They are BOTH jerks. I aree with you

There's nothing about Hitchens to make him worth listening to, either.

[youthere]

12. What a pompous ass that Bill Donohue is. Do you believe that shit?

"As an Englishman you should be quiet when an Irishman speaks"

fuck you.

[durrrty libby]

13. He sure got that christian spirit, doesn't he?

[DemBones DemBones]

44. You obviously think Christians

are supposed to roll over and allow themselves to be kicked by scumbags like Hitchens, who is NOT a liberal. We aren't.

Please note that "Christ" "Christian" and "Christians" are proper nouns and should always be capitalized. Apparently that's no longer taught in elementary school.

[Name removed]

52. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[spoony]

74. Do you have cute little hate names for other groups of people?

Just wondering, because in my experience people who hate entire groups of people usually don't stop at one group. So who else do you have names for?

[durrrty libby]

54. Donahue is a bigger blowhard than Hitchens, He is a Total ASSHOLE

Enough caps for you now?

[DemBones DemBones]

18. Hitchens was extremely rude and kept talking over Donohue.

Matthews had to tell Hitchens to give Donohue thirty seconds to speak and Hitchens began speaking over Donohue again during that time.

Hitchens is a self-centered ass and a drunk, always rude and mean-spirited, unwilling to let others speak. Fuck THAT shit.

[iverglas]

50. my my, just full o' that Christian spirit

Hitchens is a self-centered ass and a drunk, always rude and mean-spirited, unwilling to let others speak. Fuck THAT shit.

Well there ya go. Everything he has ever said is a lie, obviously.

[Zomby Woof]

53. I guess I won't be giving her...

...a "WWCHD?" bracelet for her birthday. ;-)

[iverglas]

67. yeah, and based on recent evidence

(you got the star, and you don't have to go back more than an hour or two) I wouldn't be offering one of the standard ones, either.

I think what Jesus would do is puke, and I think the bracelet might cause warts and oozing sores to appear ...

[spoony]

75. Get new lines.

Please. This jejune game of "kick the Christian and wait till they defend themself, then say they're being unChristian" is the oldest, lamest page in the book. Tear it out. Find something new. You're supposed to be a little smarter than that, from what I've seen.

[iverglas]

78. get a clue

I don't believe that lying, or using the fallacy of smearing the speaker in the hope someone will believe his speech is false, are tactics endorsed by Christian churces or in their principles or by their figurehead.

If you recognize any such tactics in this:

This jejune game of "kick the Christian and wait till they defend themself, then say they're being unChristian"

then I guess you can wear what I've said.

The person whom I was addressing would have had no doubt as to my meaning. If you wish to know what you're screeching about before you start screeching, I'm sure you can find someone to tell you. A quickie search in threads currently up near the top of the list should start you off.

And trust me, I am indeed far too smart to recognize anything *I* have said or done in your words. I also have far too much experience with having my own words misrepresented, whether ignorantly or intentionally, to fail to notice that when it happens.

[Bryan]

14. Matthews, Hitchens, and Donohoe in the same building?

The fire department should be called. That much gasbaggery in an enclosed space is a public safety hazard...

[XemaSab]

15. Gonna need a SCuBA for that...

"(SCuBAs) are normally used when there is a short-time need to enter and escape from atmospheres which are or may be immediately dangerous to life and health (IDLH)."

[DemBones DemBones]

21. An unsubstantiated book. nt

[mitchum]

31. Are you referring to Hitchens' book or the Bible?

sorry, couldn't resist

[Forkboy]

80. LOL

Touche!

[stopbush]

55. And what, exactly, is the Bible but an unsubstantiated book?

[spoony]

77. Lol, it took two of you to finish one thought? Yikes.

[mitchum]

83. No, we can think independently

just one of the major differences between thought and belief

[spoony]

84. Then you're simply predictable.

That's even worse, and certainly not an indication of independent thought.

[mitchum]

87. You have no proof of that (just as you have no proof of your Abrahamic fairy tales)

[spoony]

91. Yes, never heard that one before either.

You're beyond predictable, beyond clearly going for low-hanging fruit. You eat the shit that falls off the tree.

[mitchum]

93. Fuck off, you foot washing, psalm singing fool

I imagine you've heard that one also

[spoony]

96. Reduced to that already? You're no fun.

[mitchum]

106. Y'know, I missed that part where He said, "Blessed are the assholes"

Apparently, you didn't

[spoony]

107. Then you missed the whole bloody point.

Yes, bless the assholes. And the jerks. The idiots and the blowhards. Bless humanity, full of fault.

[iverglas]

95. awwwww

A thread spoony doesn't like. A thread where people are saying things that make him mad. A thread where he isn't getting proper recognition as the downtrodden pure of heart victim he apparently craves. A thread where people have posted facts about lies. A thread he is trying desperately to get locked ...

[spoony]

97. If you want to see madness, look at your little buddy.

He's almost frothing at this point. A few more posts and he'll probably get into insulting my mother.

[mitchum]

105. No chance of my insulting your mother; you have already captured that honor

Madness? I'm not the one with an invisible friend.

[iverglas]

92. oh my

http://www.fstdt.com/winace/pics/index.htm

[spoony]

100. Can't even find words now? Gone to pictures like some l33t teenager?

Sad. I'd always thought you were a better opponent than that. What next? A P0wn3d picture? A post of all smilies?

[Evoman]

109. ....................

http://www.freewebs.com/theallmightycow/PWNED!.JPG

[Anarcho-Socialist]

25. Good. Mother Teresa was a nasty piece of work

She seemed to have great PR though.

[Gabi Hayes]

29. you willfully ignorant mother theresa defenders should try this thing called 'google:'

start with charles keating, or 'mother theresa savings and loan scandal'


it might take you a second or so to find this

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n5_v27/ai_16947718

save your vitriol for the myriad others who've done the work on scumbags like Keating, and, yes, dear, sainted Mother Theresa

what a load

oh...wait a sec.....

[terrya]

45. I was going to mention the Charles Keating connection.

But you beat me to it. Thanks.

Why is so difficult to believe that Mother Teresa may not have been as saintly as is thought?

[Buttercup McToots]

57. Thank Gawd...

Some people are waking up...

[stopbush]

58. Bingo! Old MT's goodness is just another urban myth that received opinion bolsters.

People think Reagan was our greatest president. People believe that Al Gore said he invented the internet. People believe that Oliver Stone's "JFK" movie is based entirely on fact. People believe MIHOP about 9/11.

People believe all this crap when the truth is just a click and a google search away. Say the name "Mother Teresa" in a gathering of Americans and you'll most likely get the response, "what a saint. We should all be more like her." The truth tells a different story.

[sailor65]

64. wow, all those brain cells

and that's the best you can come up with? Someone who gave money to her cause turned out to be a crook? By your standards, we won't be able to elect anybody from either side of the aisle anymore.

[NuttyFluffers]

66. this is as ridiculous as saying libraries are evil because Carnegie established some

i sat and read all freaking 9 pages of that damn thing and the only connection is Keating donated $1.4 mil to Mother Teresa. seriously, that's all there was. that seriously cannot be the fact based argument against Mother Teresa; it's absolutely devoid of any real argument. it's about as stupid as saying "cheese is evil because a tobacco company owns Kraft," or "compact fluorescent bulbs are the devil's work because Bush Jr. has a few in his texas ranch," or "Goodwill is abusive because they took the donation of the asshole bank who repossessed my car." this is a non-related fact. countless NGOs take charity donations from countless jerks, assholes, and criminals.

what i want to see is what keeps being touted here. where's the documentation of criminal medical neglect and abuse of donation funds? there should be another source besides Hitchens. this is just bad research if i can only get one source to cite an incident; basically it's a level of research that would be inexcusably lazy and slanderous if not backable by at least 2 or more sources. obviously i'm not finding it, and it's not everywhere on the net because people should've put up other sources already. after 30+ some posts there's no excuse to not have more facts to back up such an accusation. i couldn't care either way, i just want the truth -- but this sort of intellectual laziness and logic circles are just running headlong into plain rumormongering. let's not get to that point, provide real hard evidence of such criminal neglect. smear campaigns, such like any ol' swiftboat group, do not count.

(ps: we can cite that colonists were assholes in their colonizing of the americas because we have hard data to verify. we have the torture implements, the victims' bones, first-hand accounts verified by cross reference, etc. the same should be available -- especially in an age with so much technology and accounting -- for such accusations about this situation. so let's not be lazy scandalmongers about this.)

[spoony]

76. Then Google Vince Foster and find out how the Clintons killed him!

And how man never walked on the moon, and a whole lot of other idiotic tripe.

[iverglas]

79. here's a really easy assignment

Provide some data about the expenditure of the funds amassed by the nun. Provide some documentation or testimony to demonstrate that she provided pain relief for her victims. Provide some argument to justify her consorting with the Duvaliers, and her absolution of Diana for doing what the nun insisted that no other woman, not even women in poverty abused by their husbands, be permitted to do. Provide ANYTHING AT ALL to establish that what this woman did was, on balance, a help rather than a hindrance to the world at large and huge numbers of people in it.

You people -- and your institutional governors -- adored her because she was a fanatic about everything you want, the biggest item on the wish list being that women be kept oppressed and un-free to the greatest extent possible. I know that you are not really surprised to find that not everyone shares your goals, and so you are not really surprised to know that not everyone adores an individual who pursued them with fanatic zeal. And you also know as well as the rest of us do that Roman Catholics are neither a vulnerable nor an oppressed population.

So maybe you could get all over the hokey indignation and claims to victimhood some day and actually engage in some kind of discourse about the subject matter instead of engaging in name-calling and assorted other diversionary tactics whenever anyone who doesn't share your values and goals dares to say so.

Some of my best friends are Christians. I was reared in a Christian church, and I am grateful for the progressive values it conveyed, values that were in the vanguard of our society at that time, and in fact still are, in the case of that particular church, the United Church of Canada. I don't really have a bad word to say about it; it ordained women decades ago, it has been ordaining gay men and lesbians for quite a while now, it opposes any effort to criminalize abortion in any way, it performs same-sex marriages, it is currently involved in a world-wide grassroots campaign to ensure that freshwater resources remain a public good. The funeral of my grandfather, a life-long member and choir soloist, in his home church, was officiated by the local minister, whom my grandfather had not known well because he was in a nursing home, and a Mennonite layperson and a Roman Catholic nun who had both been kind and ministered to my grandfather during his illness. By the choice of my mother and myself. At the informal gathering held in the church basement when my grandmother, a non-believer, died, a United Church minister who had known them when she was a child, who is a lesbian, and a former neighbour, who is a fundamentalist Baptist, spoke in her memory. Again, at the family's invitation. I have campaigned actively for Roman Catholic candidates for public office, including a priest who was my municipal councillor for many years and the woman who was mayor of Canada's capital city, and later an MP, around the same time; and I know, because they told me, that RC priests have voted for me when I ran for office. I have worked closely with Roman Catholic laypeople and clergy and nuns in international solidarity work (perhaps you've heard of Development and Peace) and in immigrant and refugee settlement work.

These are things you need to know, because now you can't claim not to know them, and now if you address remarks like the one you have made to me in this thread, you and I and the world will know that you are not speaking what you know to be the truth.

And so then maybe we can move beyond the hokey indignation and hokey claims to victimhood coming from your side, there being nothing about which you could genuinely get indignant or claim to be a victim of coming from my side.


By the way, having now watched the television program in issue here on tape, I think I probably agree with Hitchens, although I will want to learn more: the woman was herself a victim of the Vatican, who exploited her for its own ends when it should have been helping her. Hitchens' comments struck me as tremendously lucid in that regard. I think his position on international events at present is foul, but I see no reason to disregard his analysis in this matter purely because of that apparently wilfully blind spot. Not all atheists are above reproach, just as not all Roman Catholics are unworthy.

And Dark Side of the Moon is one great movie. Be sure to see it if you haven't.


(edited to clarify a confusing sentence)

[The Vinyl Ripper]

81. Nice post.. And I expect..

[iverglas]

82. yes ...

the choir falls silent.

But the day is young, and hope springs eternal!

[spoony]

86. Yes, forgive me for not immediately replying to each grueling rehash

of warmed over conspiracy drizzled with prejudice that MT haters post. I really should just quit my job, family, friends, and hobbies in order to be at your convenience.

And, funny that, when I think of the repetitive churring of some of you, the drone of crickets pops right to mind. Silence, now that would be a nice change of pace.

[spoony]

85. In all that rambling, you've missed a key element

Your side is making the claims, so the onus is on you to prove--not merely insinuate--that MT was corrupt or cruel etc.

And we'll need something more than sprawling excerpts from your autobiography.

[iverglas]

89. oh dear

First, you'll notice that I did not issue any prompts for a reply. I observed your postings in the thread, and saw that they had happened in a rat-a-tat-tat burst just after 5 a.m. I therefore chose to wait the appropriate 24 hours before prompting.

Second, while my immediate reaction would have been to suggest that you go sit on a crucifix, making sure that it was upright, I realized, on reflection, that this wasn't actually necessary. What I see before me is actually miserable and risible enough.

[spoony]

94. I'll take that as an admission that you have nothing but insults.

Vulgar, unimaginative ones at that. It's easy for someone to sit at a keyboard and trash a woman who worked amongst the poor and dying, nitpicking at her life as if smearing the people around her could diminish the work she did. Go back to the gun forum, where you at least make a modicum of sense. Your postings on this topic are...uninspired. lol.

[iverglas]

98. you can take it and wash it in the blood of jezus, for all I care

I think I can say that I have actually never seen such an appalling display at DU in all the years I have been here. You are beyond the pale. Name a pale, and you are beyond it. Every other appalling display pales before your appalling display.

HAHAHA. I made you look.


smirkymonkey
Wed Aug-29-07 08:04 PM
Response to Reply #62
88. Here's a start - not from Hitchens, even....

http://macintyre.com/content/view/533/105 /

By Donal MacIntyre (Irish Catholic Investigative Journalist) - excerpt

"...I worked undercover for a week in Mother Teresa's flagship home for disabled boys and girls to record Mother Teresa's Legacy, a special report for Five News broadcast earlier this month. I winced at the rough handling by some of the full-time staff and Missionary sisters. I saw children with their mouths gagged open to be given medicine, their hands flaying in distress, visible testimony to the pain they were in. Tiny babies were bound with cloths at feeding time. Rough hands wrenched heads into position for feeding. Some of the children retched and coughed as rushed staff crammed food into their mouths. Boys and girls were abandoned on open toilets for up to 20 minutes at a time. Slumped, untended, some dribbling, some sleeping, they were a pathetic sight. Their treatment was an affront to their dignity, and dangerously unhygienic."

"Volunteers (from Italy, Sweden, the United States and the UK) did their best to cradle and wash the children who had soiled themselves. But there were no nappies, and only cold water. Soap and disinfectant were in short supply. Workers washed down beds with dirty water and dirty cloths. Food was prepared on the floor in the corridor. A senior member of staff mixed medicine with her hands. Some did their best to give love and affection - at least some of the time. But, for the most part, the care the children received was inept, unprofessional and, in some cases, rough and dangerous. "They seem to be warehousing people rather than caring for them," commented the former operations director of Mencap Martin Gallagher, after viewing our undercover footage.

"I was shocked. I could only work there for three days. It was simply too distressing. . . We had seen the same things in Romania but couldn't believe it was happening in a Mother Teresa home," one told me. In January, she and her colleague had written to Sister Nirmala, the new Mother Superior, to voice their concerns. They wrote, they told me, out of "compassion and not complaint", but received no response. Like me, they had been brought up in Catholic schools to believe that Mother Teresa was the holiest of all women, second only to the Virgin Mary. Our faith was unwavering, as was that of the "international media for about 50 years. Even when the sister in charge of the Missionaries of Charity's Mahatma Gandhi Welfare Centre in Kolkata was prosecuted and found guilty of burning a young girl of seven with a hot knife in 2000, criticism remained muted."

"Susan Shields, formerly a senior nun with the order, recalled that one year there was roughly $50m in the bank account held by the New York office alone. Much of the money, she complained, sat in banks while workers in the homes were obliged to reuse blunt needles. The order has stopped reusing needles, but the poor care remains pervasive. One nurse told me of a case earlier this year where staff knew a patient had typhoid but made no effort to protect volunteers or other patients. "The sense was that God will provide and if the worst happens - it is God's will."....(more)

Do a little Google Search, there is much more on "Saint" Mother Theresa...



now grab some counting aid or other, and say 50 WAH-WAHs

[spoony]

101. You're revealing a rather spoiled inner child

Oh, I'm sorry, am I supposed to be mortally wounded that you misspelled Jesus' name? Oh no, what can I do to fight that?

Perhaps such stunts are to detract attention from the lame critique you copied and pasted. Basically all I see are people judging her missionaries for the conditions. Yeah, it wasn't a modern American hospital. And? They had to make children take medicine? And? Should they have not given it to them then? So some of the people she worked with committed offenses, what does that have to do with her? Are you really trying to say that she ordered that woman to scald that girl?

Shoddy, biased, and as immature as your huffing and puffing. I'm going to take a break for dinner before you start picking your nose and trying to rub it on me or some cyber equivalent.

[iverglas]

103. the fact that there are people in the world

who can generate such truly appalling things in their own brains is enough to make one despair for the universe. It certainly makes one hope that there really is not deity, since if it had created such people, it would truly be an ugly force to be reckoned with.

But then one always has to stop one's self, and remember that even though there isn't a deity that created them, there are many retail outlets to provide them, and the alcoholic beverages that came from somewhere will, after a short sojourn, pass on to somewhere else, leaving the consumer with nowhere near the after-effects s/he deserves, but at least a little transitory discomfort to remember his/her utterly appalling behaviour by.

[spoony]

108. Whilst you're at that retail outlet

Do consider buying a thesaurus. Or...continue to use the word 'appalling' like you've got an expiring coupon for it.

G'night!

[iverglas]

104. oh, p.s.

Those really are some nasty drunken boorish crickets you got.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

99. Actually there are dueling claims..

One side claims Mother Teresa was a near saint who did nothing but good, eased people's suffering and provided the best medical care possible to those in her charge.

The other side claims that Mother Teresa was a regular human being with the mixture of good and evil that is in all of us and that MT's own theological bent was that observing the suffering of others brought her closer to Jesus the Christ as He suffered at Calvary.

So far, neither side has provided anything like what I would call adequate evidence for their claims so the question of who is correct is an open one.

[iverglas]

102. actually, I'd meant to point this out

And the fact is that this:

Mother Teresa was a near saint who did nothing but good, eased people's suffering and provided the best medical care possible to those in her charge

is the first claim. The initial burden of proof therefore rests on those making it. That burden only shifts to anyone else once a prima facie case has been made out, at least.

That would then leave the nay-sayers having to prove a negative:

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was NOT a near saint who did nothing but good, eased people's suffering and provided the best medical care possible to those in her charge.

Proving a negative can be a special kind of task. But here, it isn't really a problem. All one has to do in order to prove that someone was NOT a near saint who did nothing but good is to demonstrate that she did some horrible shit. Post 88 is just one example of the proof needed.

Oh look:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_proof

The fallacy of appealing to lack of proof of the negative is a logical fallacy of the following form:

"X is true because there is no proof that X is false."

It is asserted that a proposition is true, only because it has not been proven false. The negative proof fallacy often occurs in the debate of the existence of supernatural phenomena, in the following form:

* "A supernatural force must exist, because there is no proof that it does not exist".

"X is true because there is no proof that X is false." Gee. That sounds kinda familiar.

The problem those bleating that noise around here have is that there IS proof that X is false. There IS proof that Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was NOT a near saint who did nothing but good.

Now, I get the feeling some of them want to get around that proof (i.e. not just pretend it doesn't exist) by redefining things like "good" to suit their own purposes. It was good that Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu hung around with things like the Duvaliers. It was good that she accepted donations from people who had stolen the money from other people and thus ruined many lives. It was good that she condoned the wealthy and privileged Diana's divorce while doing her damnedest to keep poor and oppressed women abused and subjugated. It was good that she presided over the abuse and neglect of little children? I dunno, I just don't understand how "good" can be stretched quite that far, myself.

Anyhow, when that happens, one just has to realize that there's no talking to some people.

The other side claims that Mother Teresa was a regular human being with the mixture of good and evil that is in all of us and that MT's own theological bent was that observing the suffering of others brought her closer to Jesus the Christ as He suffered at Calvary.

Actually, the other side has generally claimed that Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was a vicious turd who devoted her life to causing misery to millions of people, and that there is very little about anything she did that could be called "good" by any reasonable person of goodwill. But it may be that she was mentally ill, and able to hurt a lot more people than your average paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of persecution/grandeur can, only because a lot of rich and powerful men lent her their moral authority and exploited her for their own oppressive ends. So she may bear less of the blame for the horrific things she did, but they were still horrific.

If you want to join in the wah-wah chorus and pretend there isn't ample evidence of the horrific things she did, and no reason not to extrapolate from the evidence there is about some things she did to the conclusion that what she did in one place she did in others, for instance, go right ahead!

[The Vinyl Ripper]

111. Whoa there..

I'm not part of any chorus, I sing solo always.

[JerseygirlCT]

61. I'd like to lock those two in a cellar and leave them there.

One's a bigger blowhard than the next. They deserve each other; we just don't deserve to have either of them forced on us.

[Jack Sprat]

110. Mother Teresa was no fraud and I hope Hitchens tackles

Donahue against the far wall and gores him with the sharpened end of a cross through the heart to ensure Donahue's demons do not wander between the winds on an otherwise beautiful, moonless night.