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

[Jerky]

At 06:42 PM 12/16/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Jerky misunderstood thoroughly and wrote: "You seem to assume that we would
>get a more accurate picture of the woman, her works, and her place in
>history from the members of her cult then we  would from other sources"
>which of course is not what I said.
>I said (and I quote my previous post)

Actually, you're about to quote from a completely different post than the 
one to which I was responding. But by all means, go ahead...

>"if you wanted to put together a complete picture of L. Ron Hubbard, in
>addition to talking to his critics you would indeed want to talk to
>Scientologists" -- but please don't let that little fact get in the way of
>the fable you're constructing about what I've said.

And please don't let the fact that you're being dishonest (by quoting from 
a different post than the one to which I was responding) get in the way of 
your smug delusions of journalistic and/or humanitarian superiority.

>  To make it perfectly
>clear, if you wanted to put together a well-rounded picture of Mother
>Teresa, you'd talk to her critics, to experts familiar with the various
>issues involved in her life and work, and to her co-workers and admirers.
>Yes, that's what a good journalist would do.

Nice try (and it's true, of course), but that's not from the post to which 
I was responding.  The post I replied to was this one:

"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.***

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."

I await your apology.

>But Hitchens -- whose
>journalistic integrity was seriously challenged earlier this year, in The
>Nation magazine to which he is a contributor, among other publications --

Are you referring to the Blumenthal kerfuffle?  And if so, are you serious?

>has had a hard-on for Mother Teresa for years, and has written anything but
>well-rounded accounts of her work.  Unfortunately, they seem to provide
>fuel for more than a few Catholic-haters out there.

And, unfortunately, the myth of Mother Theresa seems to provide fuel for 
more than a few self-righteous windbags and apologists for the most 
dangerous, blatantly anti-human cabal the world has ever known.

>Later, "Jerky" said, "But I think you know what I meant" and again I have
>to disagree. I hear "Jerky" slandering a 20th century humanitarian hero

Is it slander if it's all true?

>and, in a previous post if I understood correctly, I hear "Jerky" putting
>Mother Teresa in the same category as Hitler, but for the life of me I
>can't say I know what "Jerky" means by so doing.

I put Mother Theresa is in the same category as Hitler only insofar as 
she's in the same category as every other human being. Along with Hitler 
and me and you.

Cheers,
Jerky