Now all together ... Let's kill the messenger.
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.
I heard that Mother Teresa was bitching to God about the size of her halo compared to that of Princess Di's and then God pointed out that Di's was not a halo but a steering wheel.
That means that if you live in India you get the same medical care as a poor Indian does.
Very few women join the order because it is an uncompromising self-sacrifice.
"Luxuries" such as basic medical and dental care. I'm glad I'm not your spouse."
Oh my wife gets her teeth cleanings every six months. But she is not working with poor in an ascetic order of nuns. I believe BASIC MEDICAL CARE was indeed provided to the Order. You don't really believe this malcontent author do you?
Now all together ... Let's kill the messenger.
No way!
What a scandal!
Is that really all you have to back the slander up? That the Missionaries run a tight ship and save their money for future charity work?
I was one of her sisters for nine and a half years, living in the Bronx, Rome, and San Franciso...
I don't believe Mother Teresa spent too much time in any of these locales. This slanderer former sister must be mistaken.
Actually, I am a personal friend of the author of this piece.
The job with Mother Teresa was actually Sue's third occupation after leaving school. Her first job was tasting pies at a local pie factory; she quit that job because she decided she didn't like pie. Then she went to work at the mattress plant testing out mattresses, but she soon decided that was too stressful.
I never will forget the time my dad had paid several thosand dollars for a special hunting dog that could walk on water - he didn't have to swim to retrieve game. I invited Sue to go hunting with us, but didn't tell her about the dog's amazing talent. We shot ducks and Ol' Shep trotted across the water to get the birds every time. Sue never acknowledged Shep's ability. Finally, I turned to Sue and asked. "Do you notice anything about the new hunting dog?"
"Yeah", Sue said, "The sumbish can't swim."
This story is about as true as the author's!!
"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."
Oh boy. A badly cathecized Catholic convert. Why do they join austere orders in the first place?
I think she really misunderstands the concept of attachments and how one overcomes every attachment to every creature other than God and by creature I mean his creations and gifts. That attachment also extends to one's comfort and pleasure.
I am concerned about you, in reality, since you apparently hate Jesus with such a passion.
This woman has obviously not read "The Story of a Soul", about Saint Therese of Lisieux. I am almost done reading it now, and I am sickened by my actions in comparison with one that provides a true example of how to Love the Lord.
I mean, it's not like we've ever been told that's impossible or that the poor would always be with us.
Perhaps she had another goal in mind for the sisters and the people they served. But seriously, what could ever be more important than providing material goods.
So clearly the effort should of concentrated on spending all the money as soon as it was collected. After all, if there's one thing our socially engineered society has taught us it's that wealth is our only salvation.
Maybe there is some truth in what she is saying, despite a lot of good the sisters accomplished and still accomplish.
This entire "debate" has nothing to do about Jesus the living Son of God and much to do about personal sacrifice to appease God in some fashion. Salvation was/is a gift not a reward for behavior. I shouldn't have baited you.
Anyone with a copy of the Bible or the Catechism could refute this ridiculous "leverage" idea in five seconds.
When people abandon the truth for a lie, they need to lie about the truth to feel better.
Nothing we could ever do could "appease" God's righteous wrath or ever "earn" salvation. It's God's free gift to us which we could never deserve or merit.
I shouldn't have baited you.
That's a big statement. I applaud you and I apologize for my angry reaction to the bait.
Yup. Some silver linings have very dark clouds above them.
Wow! It can?!?!? Please verify it for me.
Obviously not an Old Testament, or Bob Dylan Fan...
Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
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