Posted on 08/05/2005 8:11:31 AM PDT by petconservative
Mother Teresa's House of Illusions How She Harmed Her Helpers As Well As Those They `Helped' by Susan Shields
The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 18, Number 1.
Some years after I became a Catholic, I joined Mother Teresa's congregation, the Missionaries of Charity. I was one of her sisters for nine and a half years, living in the Bronx, Rome, and San Franciso, until I became disillusioned and left in May 1989. As I reentered the world, I slowly began to unravel the tangle of lies in which I had lived. I wondered how I could have believed them for so long.
Three of Mother Teresa's teachings that are fundamental to her religious congregation are all the more dangerous because they are believed so sincerely by her sisters. Most basic is the belief that as long as a sister obeys she is doing God's will. Another is the belief that the sisters have leverage over God by choosing to suffer. Their suffering makes God very happy. He then dispenses more graces to humanity. The third is the belief that any attachment to human beings, even the poor being served, supposedly interferes with love of God and must be vigilantly avoided or immediately uprooted. The efforts to prevent any attachments cause continual chaos and confusion, movement and change in the congregation. Mother Teresa did not invent these beliefs - they were prevalent in religious congregations before Vatican II - but she did everything in her power (which was great) to enforce them.
Once a sister has accepted these fallacies she will do almost anything. She can allow her health to be destroyed, neglect those she vowed to serve, and switch off her feelings and independent thought. She can turn a blind eye to suffering, inform on her fellow sisters, tell lies with ease, and ignore public laws and regulations.
Women from many nations joined Mother Teresa in the expectation that they would help the poor and come closer to God themselves. When I left, there were more than 3,000 sisters in approximately 400 houses scattered throughout the world. Many of these sisters who trusted Mother Teresa to guide them have become broken people. In the face of overwhelming evidence, some of them have finally admitted that their trust has been betrayed, that God could not possibly be giving the orders they hear. It is difficult for them to decide to leave - their self-confidence has been destroyed, and they have no education beyond what they brought with them when they joined. I was one of the lucky ones who mustered enough courage to walk away.
It is in the hope that others may see the fallacy of this purported way to holiness that I tell a little of what I know. Although there are relatively few tempted to join Mother Teresa's congregation of sisters, there are many who generously have supported her work because they do not realize how her twisted premises strangle efforts to alleviate misery. Unaware that most of the donations sit unused in her bank accounts, they too are deceived into thinking they are helping the poor.
As a Missionary of Charity, I was assigned to record donations and write the thank-you letters. The money arrived at a frantic rate. The mail carrier often delivered the letters in sacks. We wrote receipts for checks of $50,000 and more on a regular basis. Sometimes a donor would call up and ask if we had received his check, expecting us to remember it readily because it was so large. How could we say that we could not recall it because we had received so many that were even larger?
When Mother spoke publicly, she never asked for money, but she did encourage people to make sacrifices for the poor, to "give until it hurts." Many people did - and they gave it to her. We received touching letters from people, sometimes apparently poor themselves, who were making sacrifices to send us a little money for the starving people in Africa, the flood victims in Bangladesh, or the poor children in India. Most of the money sat in our bank accounts.
The flood of donations was considered to be a sign of God's approval of Mother Teresa's congregation. We were told by our superiors that we received more gifts than other religious congregations because God was pleased with Mother, and because the Missionaries of Charity were the sisters who were faithful to the true spirit of religious life.
Most of the sisters had no idea how much money the congregation was amassing. After all, we were taught not to collect anything. One summer the sisters living on the outskirts of Rome were given more crates of tomatoes than they could distribute. None of their neighbors wanted them because the crop had been so prolific that year. The sisters decided to can the tomatoes rather than let them spoil, but when Mother found out what they had done she was very displeased. Storing things showed lack of trust in Divine Providence.
The donations rolled in and were deposited in the bank, but they had no effect on our ascetic lives and very little effect on the lives of the poor we were trying to help. We lived a simple life, bare of all superfluities. We had three sets of clothes, which we mended until the material was too rotten to patch anymore. We washed our own clothes by hand. The never-ending piles of sheets and towels from our night shelter for the homeless we washed by hand, too. Our bathing was accomplished with only one bucket of water. Dental and medical checkups were seen as an unnecessary luxury.
Mother was very concerned that we preserve our spirit of poverty. Spending money would destroy that poverty. She seemed obsessed with using only the simplest of means for our work. Was this in the best interests of the people we were trying to help, or were we in fact using them as a tool to advance our own "sanctity?" In Haiti, to keep the spirit of poverty, the sisters reused needles until they became blunt. Seeing the pain caused by the blunt needles, some of the volunteers offered to procure more needles, but the sisters refused.
We begged for food and supplies from local merchants as though we had no resources. On one of the rare occasions when we ran out of donated bread, we went begging at the local store. When our request was turned down, our superior decreed that the soup kitchen could do without bread for the day.
It was not only merchants who were offered a chance to be generous. Airlines were requested to fly sisters and air cargo free of charge. Hospitals and doctors were expected to absorb the costs of medical treatment for the sisters or to draw on funds designated for the religious. Workmen were encouraged to labor without payment or at reduced rates. We relied heavily on volunteers who worked long hours in our soup kitchens, shelters, and day camps.
A hard-working farmer devoted many of his waking hours to collecting and delivering food for our soup kitchens and shelters. "If I didn't come, what would you eat?" he asked.
Our Constitution forbade us to beg for more than we needed, but, when it came to begging, the millions of dollars accumulating in the bank were treated as if they did not exist.
For years I had to write thousands of letters to donors, telling them that their entire gift would be used to bring God's loving compassion to the poorest of the poor. I was able to keep my complaining conscience in check because we had been taught that the Holy Spirit was guiding Mother. To doubt her was a sign that we were lacking in trust and, even worse, guilty of the sin of pride. I shelved my objections and hoped that one day I would understand why Mother wanted to gather so much money, when she herself had taught us that even storing tomato sauce showed lack of trust in Divine Providence.
Yes, I think that is at the root of it. The author mentions 'helping' women. Did she mean helping them to abortions and contraception while they starved? And so now they exact their vengeance at a time when none can defend, as though they need defending, their words and actions. Cowards. Heinous.
The donations rolled in and were deposited in the bank, but they had no effect on our ascetic lives and very little effect on the lives of the poor we were trying to help. We lived a simple life, bare of all superfluities. We had three sets of clothes, which we mended until the material was too rotten to patch anymore. We washed our own clothes by hand. The never-ending piles of sheets and towels from our night shelter for the homeless we washed by hand, too. Our bathing was accomplished with only one bucket of water. Dental and medical checkups were seen as an unnecessary luxury. Mother was very concerned that we preserve our spirit of poverty. Spending money would destroy that poverty. She seemed obsessed with using only the simplest of means for our work.
She missed the point entirely and apparently her head was turned by the money. Mother Teresa wanted the sisters to live like the very poor of India that they helped, and it seems they do.
As a Missionary of Charity, I was assigned to record donations and write the thank-you letters. The money arrived at a frantic rate. The mail carrier often delivered the letters in sacks. We wrote receipts for checks of $50,000 and more on a regular basis.
Sounds like her head was turned by the money.
She became disillusioned and left the community. Only speaking out now long after Mother Teresa's death and shortly after Pope John Paul II's passing, he being a great friend of hers and admirer of her work. How cowardly. Truly someone who doesn't get it. And to slander Mother and her sisters so long after her death, at a time of increased violence against the Christians of India, wow. She has added to the misery of the poor Christians, and other poor, of India. Pathetic.
Kool Aid cooler talk...
Forget the theological musings, which amount to about five or six lines of the whole piece. Can anyone refute the facts that are alleged? These are not new issues, and have been raised for years, well before Mother Theresa's death. The only way to answer the critics is through transparancy, something Mother Theresa went to great pains to avoid. Get beyond the PR and look at what she really did. Much of it was good, some of it was not.
A vow of poverty is one thing, having to beg for your food is another.
And even if this is 100% true, I don't see that as such a big deal. People are imperfect.
Mother Teresa practically rose to saint hood (in my eyes) when I heard the story of how she sat with a dying woman in an alley in Calcutta. The woman was beyond help, had maggots in her mouth, and had been an Untouchable. MT sat with her, soothed and comforted her, until she passed on. I doubt Hitchens, or the dimwit who wrote this other piece, would have the mercy to do that.
When Hitchens implied that she embezzled donations, although he offered no substantial proof. Takes a big tough guy to make such a claim, especially when the subject of the piece can't fight back.
You haven't been here very long, have you?
Christopher Hitchens was a commentator during coverage of her funeral and spent all his time bashing her.
Sounds very much like the Clinton Administration and liberals in general.
Oops, see #21, not 17. Hiccup!
Right! "Luxuries" such as basic medical and dental care. I'm glad I'm not your spouse.
You are a moron of the first water.
When donations are solicited for helping the poor, and are not used for that purpose, that's what we call fraud. That's just as true whether the funds are used for gambling sprees or just sit around in a bank. Mother Theresa took money under false pretenses, pure and simple.
Why thank you very much. I take that as a compliment from the likes of...
Agree. But it does raise an eyebrow. It'd be interesting to see if any others step up to address this "from within." Also, I had no idea that her "organization" was that large. I was always under the impression that she operated with a much smaller number of people out of a single location overseas.
Based on ever-evolving news, I also wouldn't be shocked if this were in fact true. Who knows, we may never find out.
What I do know is that while very generous charity wise, I only give to organizations where I know the money is going to "end causes." I won't give a dime to any organization without a high degree of visibility and tangible/visible results.
Samaritan's Purse and the Marine Christmas program are two such charities.
You have not a shred of evidence that these funds were not used to help the poor.
Mother teresa's been dead for years - nobody's discovered her Maserati collection yet. No word about any private islands or all-night cocaine binges either.
The woman was a saint, you'll never do as much for the poor, neglected and suffering in your life as she did in one week.
"Mother teresa's been dead for years - nobody's discovered her Maserati collection yet. No word about any private islands or all-night cocaine binges either"
rotflmao... now that's funny! Mother Theresa doing 90 mph in a maserati flinging loafs of bread to the road side poor. Shame on you for fueling my imagination.
Sorry, it's diet coke not scum. I do drink to many of them. Thanks for the concern.
400 million of her 500 million collected donations when into the Vatican Bank. 75% of the remainder fed her staff.That can be verified.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.