Indeed, may God have mercy on his soul. R.I.P.
He took a full look at Mother Teresa, beyond all the marketing and found her a hypocrite and thought she caused more poverty and did not help it.
“She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?”
This may, or may not, provide a clue:
"He was born Christopher Eric Hitchens in Portsmouth, England, on April 13, 1949. The elder of two sons, he had a cool relationship with his father, Ernest, a commander in the British Royal Navy, but a warmer one with his mother, Yvonne. ..."
"In 1973, when he was 24 and living in London, his mother committed suicide with her lover, ____a defrocked vicar____, during a trip to Greece.
Years later, he discovered one of her secrets: She was Jewish, which made him Jewish. "My initial reaction, apart from pleasure and interest, was the faint but definite feeling that I had somehow known all along," he wrote in a 1988 essay, "On Not Knowing the Half of It." But he remained anti-religion and anti-Zionist. ...."
bttt
You wrote: “What I can’t understand is why Hitchens “hated” Mother Teresa, from his youth.”
In addition to my previous post, here’s something else I found. bttt
American Thinker
December 16, 2011
Christopher Hitchens Is Dead. Dammit.
By James G. Wiles
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/christopher_hitchens_is_dead_damnit.html
[....Large snip.....]
“.....Nevertheless, one item about Christopher Hitchens which made the blogs must be told here. I thought of it when I first learned of Hitchens’ cancer diagnosis in 2010. ....”
[NOTE: “made the blogs” is a hot link to a 2007 thread on FR: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1901636/posts ]
[...snip...]
<>
Here is the thread he links to:
In Drunken Rage, Atheist Guru Hitchens Bullies Hero Priest of 9-11 (Father Rutler!)
Poe ^ | 9-19-07 | Richard Poe
Posted on Monday, September 24, 2007 8:19:12 PM by Diago
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1901636/posts
Two of the comments in the above thread:
Hitchens is bitter against God because when he was still a boy, his mother committed suicide...his younger brother Peter, who was much younger and didn’t remember his mother, is not as bitter.
My oldest (adopted) son had a similar deep set rage because his mother died, and although he continued to believe in God directed this rage against me and others in terrible outbursts .
So pray that Hitchens finds the love of God. Unlike other “anti God” professionals, Hitchens doesn’t hate God out of pride but out of sorrow. .......
30posted on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 9:19:18 PMby LadyDoc
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1901636/posts?page=30#30
To: LadyDoc
“Hitchens is bitter against God because when he was still a boy, his mother committed suicide...”
Absolutely so, which he has now so many years later conveniently disguised — buried in the dirt, so to speak — as a lark against a teacher who merely suggested certain botanical features were of God’s making.
“So pray that Hitchens finds the love of God. Unlike other “anti God” professionals, Hitchens doesn’t hate God out of pride but out of sorrow.”
On the contrary, I find that he does so as he has found the much baser but far more common sin of pride extremely self-rewarding. atheists thrive on the notoriety it brings, and for Hitchens, some rare lucre.
If memory serves, Hitchens addressed an atheist convention in Virginia earlier this month, no doubt for his 30 pieces of silver. Yet it takes nothing more to expose Hitchens as a “bright” fraud than to review his passion for grounding the Hitchen children in religious instruction ...[Are You There, God? It’s Me, Hitchens.] http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/31244/
New York Magazine: “And what if one of your children found God? Would that be a problem?”
Hitchens: “Not at all. My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them. The schools won’t do it anymore. And I even insist, though my wife [who is Jewish] isn’t that thrilled, on having for our daughter a little version of the Seder.”
Almost all of Hitchen’s major debates/monologues are on Youtube. I highly suggest everyone watch as many of them as they find tolerable. I find him pedantic on the topic of religion — hypocritical (see above); strident; fearful; loaded with strawmen and appeal to emotion; and totally ignorant of the destruction and genocide that was wrought in the name of atheism in the 20th Century.
33posted on Wednesday, September 26, 2007 4:22:18 PMby StAnDeliver(=)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1901636/posts?page=33#33
<>
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Hitchens.
Christopher Hitchens on religion (no thanks), Iraq (not a mistake), and his own loud reputation.
http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/31244/
By Boris Kachka
Published Apr 26, 2007
Excerpts:
Hitchens, who started questioning his faith at age 9 (and wrote a polemic against Mother Teresa called The Missionary Position), has finally written the ultimate attack book, God Is Not Great. He spoke to us about his favorite religious stories, Karl Rove (infidel?), and the one time he found himself praying.
You say in your acknowledgments that you’ve been writing this book your whole life. Do you think it’ll mean as much to others as it means to you?
No, it’s one small step for C.H. into one enormous argument dominated by giants in philosophy and theology and science.
So what makes it different from recent atheist screeds by the likes of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins?
I don’t think Richard Dawkins would mind me saying that he looks at religious people with this sort of incredulity, as if, How possibly can you be so stupid? And though we all have moods like that, I think perhaps I don’t quite.
And what if one of your children found God? Would that be a problem?
Not at all. My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them. The schools won’t do it anymore. And I even insist, though my wife [who is Jewish] isn’t that thrilled, on having for our daughter a little version of the Seder.
Has anyone in the Bush administration confided in you about being an atheist?
Well, I don’t talk that much to them maybe people think I do. I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.