Hi, everyone. Some of you may already know me. I often comment in threads that interest me on this forum. Moreover, some of you may know that I study the history of early Christianity. I once wrote an extensive comment on the historicity of Jesus' existence in one of the threads. This is to say that I am interested in history of Christianity; however, it is important to note, before you continue reading my response, that whenever I study Christianity and members of this religion, I do so from the historical perspective. I am not interested in apologetics nor in theology, though I may from time to time offer some insight on the latter topic.
Accordingly, I have been studying Christianity for quite some time now. However, it occurred to me recently that I, even though I have studied many myths that people believe today, have never looked into the beliefs that people so commonly hold about "Mother" Teresa. If I have learned anything from my studies, it is that whenever most members of the public believe that a claim is true, it is likely false. For instance, many individuals believe that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth was flat. Nonetheless, as it happens, almost everybody—likely even the poor people—believed that the earth was round! Scientists of the time were even able to give an approximate circumference of our planet.
Now, how does that connect to Teresa of Calcutta? Well, most people—in my experience—do believe that she was a good and ethical person. The Catholic church even scheduled her canonization to occur on September 4th, 2016. I personally attended high school that was named after her. Many students in my high school, whenever we had discussions about what it meant to be true to oneself and to be a good person, often spoke of how Teresa was an example to follow. It is often believed that Teresa cared for the poor and for the dying.
However, the skeptical "me" was very suspicious of those claims. Was she actually a good and ethical person? To put it briefly, if I were to judge her upon her actions, she was not a good person at all. In fact, I would go as far as to claim that she was a delusional fool at best. Why is it the case?
Firstly, we know that Teresa's organisation had millions of dollars to spare. Her organisation often received multi-million donations to help the poor and the sick. The volunteers for her cause were often encouraged to beg the donors for more, claiming that it was for the work of God who was interested in improving the state of our world. The thing to understand is that with the money Teresa had, she could have easily built half a dozen modern and fully equipped hospitals.
However, what was so common about her actual hospices? As is the case, Teresa actually glorified suffering and poverty. You may think that it is a good belief to hold; nevertheless, Teresa went to the extremes with her ideology. She believed that suffering and poverty were a blessing—a blessing!—from God. As a result, her hospices had no modern equipment available. According to her, people should be allowed to suffer as it could draw them closer to God. She herself said, "I think it is very good when people suffer. To me that is like the kiss of Jesus." As it happens, she said that to one of her patients who was suffering from a terrible illness and was denied painkillers. The patient replied, "Please ask Jesus to stop kissing me."
If you thought that it could be just an individual case, it would be reasonable of you to believe so. Unfortunately, that is not true at all. At her hospices, needles used were never properly sterilized; instead, they were rinsed in cold water and reused. Additionally, she called human suffering beneficial and “beautiful”—whatever that was supposed to mean. Teresa once said, “I think it’s 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.”
The above would be best illustrated by an example of when Teresa’s organisation, in 1990 in New York, was given two buildings by the city so that it could be used to help people with disabilities—even though Teresa at first wanted to use the buildings to help only the poor. Accordingly, the city asked her to install an elevator in the buildings so that the disabled persons could be allowed to move freely, on their own, with dignity. The city even offered to pay for the elevator on their own, although she could easily afford to pay for it herself.
However, Teresa denied to install the elevator. What was so wrong with it? Teresa and the “sisters” wanted the disabled people to experience their charitable work in poverty while being carried. After all, poverty, along with suffering, is sacred, right? Frankly, I don’t think this is how disabled persons view personal dignity.
Moreover, when people at the hospices were in need of emergency surgery or other immediate treatment, the patients were not allowed to go to any hospital. I personally have no knowledge of any case when a patient was allowed to go to a hospital when in need of emergency surgery.
On the contrary, I know of a case when a patient, with the help of a friend of a friend, broke free from one of Teresa's hostels for people with AIDS. When his illness worsened, he had to return to the hostel, even though he made it clear to his friend that, under no circumstances, he wanted to go back. He feared that he would not receive necessary medication for his illness—not even morphine. Interestingly, people in this hostel—which claimed to help people with AIDS—were often depressed because they were denied watching TV, and they were not allowed to see any visitors, including friends. The patient I just spoke of was lucky to break free, even though only temporarily, because the friend of a friend was a journalist by name of Elgy Gillespie. To make the case worse, Teresa once spoke about people with AIDS when the International Health Organization honoured her in 1989. She said that AIDS was a "just retribution for improper sexual conduct." Why were those patients denied medication, visitors, and even watching TV? Was it not because of Teresa's delusional fundamentalism?
To add to those terrible circumstances in which the hospices were, Susan Shields, an eyewitness, wrote an article in Free Inquiry in which she states,
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 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 clothes. 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.
Was all of the above because Teresa’s organisation could not afford better equipment for the hospices? As I have already stated, the money donated would be enough to build half a dozen of modern hospitals, fully equipped. Therefore, no, it was not the reason at all. All of the above was caused by Teresa’s delusional ideology that poverty and suffering were a blessing from God.
So what happened to the money that her organisation was donated—millions of dollars? In 1991, a German magazine Stern revealed that only 7% of the money was used for actual charity. The rest was likely used for missionary causes or was funneled into secret bank accounts.
In fact, the former leads to another problem. Being a fundamentalist Catholic, Teresa put missionary work above any medical attention. Her ideology resembled that of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to whom spirituality is more important than life—except that she even encouraged secret baptisms at her hospices, often against the will of her patients. The “sisters” would ask an ambiguous question to the patients as to whether they would want to have “a ticket to heaven.” The “sisters” that worked with Teresa were to pretend that they were cooling the patients’ heads with a wet cloth, while saying quietly the necessary words for baptism. The secrecy was much needed so that it would not become known that they were baptising Hindus and Muslims.
Furthermore, Teresa was, to put it blatantly obvious, a hypocrite. Note that, as I have already stated, her hospices lacked modern equipment, and people were not allowed any medication, except for aspirin and, at times, ibuprofen. She considered suffering sacred. Would you imagine yourself suffering from cancer and being given only aspirin? Having that said, how was Teresa hypocritical? When she herself was in need of medical attention, she sought the best and the most advanced care possible in the West! Did she not want to be kissed by Jesus as well?
To conclude my extensive response—which is in total, rather unexpectedly, 1,800 words—to what I have learned of Teresa, I must say that she was not a good and ethical person people believe her to have been. Was she evil? I personally would not categorise her as such. It would be a mistake to compare her to individuals like Hitler or Stalin. In case of Teresa, it was her mistaken, delusional, fundamentalist ideology that encouraged her to pretend to do “the work of God.” Did she believe she was doing the good thing? I think she did. She was just mistaken. She was delusional. In effect, she was not a good or ethical person by any standards.
For more reading on the subject, please refer to Christopher Hitchens’s book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. There is much more that could be said of Teresa that I have not mentioned in this response. There are many eyewitnesses of which testimonies I have not included.