The Rhenish Missionary Society ( is Re: GRGR (15): Good & Evil (was Enzian...)

[Jerky]

At 09:28 AM 12/16/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Not all missions and missionaries are the same.
>How feeding a starving person or making a dying person's last few moments
>on this earth a bit more comfortable can produce the catalog of ill effects
>that have been trotted out in this thread is beyond me.
>Hitchens' book on Mother Teresa is a cranky, biased, distorted jeremiad. I
>recommend reading what people who have actually worked with her and her
>nuns have to say.

Her nuns?  Wouldn't that be like trying to get an accurate view of L. Ron 
Hubbard by talking to Scientologists?

>It's very easy for comfortable, well-fed folks in the West to say that
>those who feed the hungry elsewhere are in fact harming the people they're
>trying to help. Some of these folks can also convince themselves that they
>are doing good by passing up the people who are dying in the streets right
>here in the U.S. of A.

Listen, I'm not coming at this Theresa question from a Randroid POV or 
anything like that.  I'm not saying "helping is bad," and I don't think 
even truly believe that's where I'm coming from.  All I'm saying is, you 
have to look at the whole package.  Hitler built a pretty good road system 
when he was in power, and the Soviets went from horse-and-buggy to Sputnik 
in three generations. The issue isn't black and white, but I thought that 
would go without saying.

When I think of Mother Theresa, though, I think of her shouting at the 
families of the 10,000 victims of Bhopal's catastrophic cyanide leak to 
"Forgive!  Forgive!" as she stepped off a plane chartered for her by Union 
Carbide.  I think of a woman standing in the middle of a teeming, 
sweltering hell on earth where the streets are clogged with beggars and 
naked children, telling people that they will go to hell if they use 
contraception.  I think of a woman who's "hospital" was basically a place 
where sick people could go to lie down and be preached at before dying of a 
curable disease (there weren't even any pain-killers at the Little Sisters 
of Mercy Hospital in Calcutta, because Mother believed that pain brought 
you closer to Jesus), while she herself received only the finest of medical 
attention at the most modern facilities money could buy. I think of a woman 
who went before the United Nations and declared that abortion was the 
gravest threat to mankind, while a dozen wars raged around the world.

There's lots not to like about Mother Theresa.

>Doug
>P.S. I'm biased, it's true. Read my article at
>http://www.online-journalist.com/homeless.html for the gory details of my
>crimes against humanity.

Good for you!

Cheers,
Jerky