Was Mother Teresa really that bad?

KingMerv00

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I saw Penn and Teller's BS! on religious icons recently. I have to say that their commentary on Mother Teresa left me kind of unconvinced. Basically, they said:

1) Mother Teresa accepted stolen money from unsavory people.

One could counter that this blood money was ultimately used for a greater good.


2) Alot of the money donated to her cause was used to contruct nunneries and missions instead of used to lessen the suffering of the poor.

What if she thought that the spread of Catholicism was the best good possible? For the record, I don't agree with that concept. I am merely saying that she might have just been wrong...not evil.


3) She did nothing to stop the physical suffering of those in her care. She felt that corporal suffering would bring them closer to Jesus.

Let's say she failed to act and her philosophy is creepy. On the other hand, who among us is aiding the poor at all? She kept no one against their will (as far as I know) and tended to their emotional and spiritual needs. I have not helped the poor at all. Am I despicable?


I'm sure she wasn't perfect. I'm sure she wasn't the flawless saint she is made out to be. At TAM3, Christopher Hitchens called her every name in the book. Did I miss something?
 
Yes she was, she believed that some people should suffer.

Now you may say that is because she thought that "was for the best", but that line of reasoning means that the word "bad" or "evil" can never really be used to describe anyone.
 
Well, I think the point of the show is that she certainly wasn't "saintly" in the general sense of the word. She deliberately allowed suffering that she could have alleviated, and her view as a flawless moral icon is glossing over some rather disturbing issues.

Whether someone who works with the poor with questionable results is better than someone who does nothing is one of those fun philosophical questions, but I think the point is that you can make some very strong arguments that Mother Teresa was not the icon of pure Catholic benevolence she's been made out to be.
 
Darat said:
Yes she was, she believed that some people should suffer.

Now you may say that is because she thought that "was for the best", but that line of reasoning means that the word "bad" or "evil" can never really be used to describe anyone.
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What specifically did she say and what was the source?

Did she ever directly CAUSE suffering?

Don't think I am trying to go easy on her. I am merely ignorant of what she did with her life. The little I do know seems nebulous at best.
 
KingMerv00 said:
What specifically did she say and what was the source?

Did she ever directly CAUSE suffering?

Don't think I am trying to go easy on her. I am merely ignorant of what she did with her life. The little I do know seems nebulous at best.
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Almost bedtime for me, and I don’t have any handy links to hand. My argument rests upon the fact that she was a Roman Catholic and that religion believes that personal suffering "earns" someone their salvation. She thought suffering was good, and that was why she didn’t use effective pain relief in her "clinics". There are some speeches of hers I've read in the past that indicates she believed there was something inherently "beautiful" in poor people suffering, that somehow the suffering was a gift from God (or rather Jesus). If I get chance and no one else provides them I’ll look for some links to her own words on the subject tomorrow.
 
bignickel said:
Well, you could read some of the stuff that Hitchens has to say about her.

Googling Hitchens and "mother theresa" produces:

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/hitchens_16_4.html
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A quote from your link:

FI: Hence the title of your book: The Missionary Position.

HITCHENS: That has got some people worked up. Of the very, very few people who have reviewed this book in the United States, one or two have objected to that title on the grounds that it's "sophomoric." Well, I think that a triple entendre requires a bit of sophistication.

FI: And your television program in the United Kingdom was called "Hell's Angel."

HITCHENS: Yes, very much over my objection, because I thought that that name had not even a single entendre to it. I wanted to call it "Sacred Cow."


LOL....Sacred Cow....whether he is right or wrong....that's just plain funny.
 
Darat said:
Now you may say that is because she thought that "was for the best", but that line of reasoning means that the word "bad" or "evil" can never really be used to describe anyone.
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Darat, would you mind trying to define what you mean by "bad" or "evil"? I see so many posts around here which seem to imply some concept of a moral absolute, as opposed to the relativistic definitions of morality as being simply a type of behaviour which has evolved to benefit society as a whole even at the expense of the individual who is carrying out the "right" action. But then when I ask whether the poster does in fact accept the existence of a moral absolute, the answer is no, they don't.

Can you perhaps explain?

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
Darat, would you mind trying to define what you mean by "bad" or "evil"? I see so many posts around here which seem to imply some concept of a moral absolute, as opposed to the relativistic definitions of morality as being simply a type of behaviour which has evolved to benefit society as a whole even at the expense of the individual who is carrying out the "right" action. But then when I ask whether the poster does in fact accept the existence of a moral absolute, the answer is no, they don't.

Can you perhaps explain?

Rolfe.
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When I use the terms as I do in this thread I am meaning a "moral absolute" but I recognise that just means a moral absolute for me. In other words I am quite happy with making judgments based on what I believe to be good and bad even though I also know there isn’t an agreed objective measure of good and bad, that all such judgments are in essence subjective (although of course being subjective does not mean that they can not be explained by for example biology).

I do subscribe (at least partly) to the idea of utilitarianism for a good starting point on determining what is good and bad (I describe my “personal philosophy” as – “A smattering of Bentham style utilitarianism, with a dash of Pragmatism shading towards Instrumentalism all mixed with a measure of disdain for –isms”). However contrary to that I also place a high value on individuals to be free from coercion. Which of course results in a “moral code” that isn’t totally logical and even when applied consistently to each to each and every situation doesn’t always result in an answer I agree with!
 
KingMerv00 said:
I saw Penn and Teller's BS! on religious icons recently. I have to say that their commentary on Mother Teresa left me kind of unconvinced. Basically, they said:

1) Mother Teresa accepted stolen money from unsavory people.

One could counter that this blood money was ultimately used for a greater good.
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But shouldn't the people the money was stolen from make that call? They weren't given the option.
 
From wikipedia:
In the aftermath of the Bangladesh Liberation War, it was determined that more than 450,000 women in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had been systematically raped, giving birth to a few thousand war-babies. Even in these circumstances, she asserted her rejection of abortion by publicly renouncing abortion as an option and by calling upon the women left behind to keep their unborn children. She characterized her views later when asked in 1993 about a 14-year-old rape victim in Ireland, "Abortion can never be necessary... because it is pure killing."
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she was a hypocrite:

suffering is a gift from God. easy to believe this when you get flown to the Mayo Clinic when you're ill.

divorce is wrong and she campaigned to keep it illegal in Ireland. Yet, said Princess Diana's (her friend and benefactor) divorce was acceptable.
 
suffering is a gift from God. easy to believe this when you get flown to the Mayo Clinic when you're ill.
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Quite. She stated on several occasions that suffering bought people closer to God. So, when she got sick, why didn't she take a bed in one of her own clinics where she could set an example in suffering?
She had several bouts of treatment in private hospitals and clinics, in Switzerland and America, travelling by jet each time. It's possible that it was all paid for by generous patrons, with not a penny coming out of her charity - but how much suffering in India could have been relieved by that kind of cash?

And I believe that the many domestic Indian charities, both religious and secular, were pretty PO'd by the picture she persistently painted of India as a backward country where nobody but a few Western Christians cared about the poor and sick.
 
Darat said:
When I use the terms as I do in this thread I am meaning a "moral absolute" but I recognise that just means a moral absolute for me. In other words I am quite happy with making judgments based on what I believe to be good and bad even though I also know there isn’t an agreed objective measure of good and bad, that all such judgments are in essence subjective (although of course being subjective does not mean that they can not be explained by for example biology).

I do subscribe (at least partly) to the idea of utilitarianism for a good starting point on determining what is good and bad (I describe my “personal philosophy” as – “A smattering of Bentham style utilitarianism, with a dash of Pragmatism shading towards Instrumentalism all mixed with a measure of disdain for –isms”). However contrary to that I also place a high value on individuals to be free from coercion. Which of course results in a “moral code” that isn’t totally logical and even when applied consistently to each to each and every situation doesn’t always result in an answer I agree with!
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Fair enough, but in that case, if another person sincerely holds a different view from you as to what is good or bad, how indeed can you call them "evil"? If it's just a personal disagreement?
Now you may say that is because she thought that "was for the best", but that line of reasoning means that the word "bad" or "evil" can never really be used to describe anyone.
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I agree. If "good" or "bad" are just personal opinions, how can you call someone "evil" just because their sincerely held belief about what is right differs from yours?

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
Fair enough, but in that case, if another person sincerely holds a different view from you as to what is good or bad, how indeed can you call them "evil"? If it's just a personal disagreement?
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My most honest answer has to be "I'm human" and since humans make judgements about one another that's what I do.

Rolfe said:

I agree. If "good" or "bad" are just personal opinions, how can you call someone "evil" just because their sincerely held belief about what is right differs from yours?

Rolfe.
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The simple answer is because I have a definition of what evil is i.e. (simplest form) purposely causing harm to another person without consent and with no regard for them or society. Therefore someone who acts in such a way is evil.

How do I decide that is the definition I use? Well it isn't just "because that feels right" although my feelings do play a part of it. I believe there are some tools that can help me (in a human sense) to understand what my definition really means, that help me understand the consequences of using that definition to make judgments.

Does it mean I can be 100% confident in saying “That person is evil”? Not at all but I do think it means my judgments of someone being “evil” are less subjective (and can be supported by reason) then say a judgement by (for example) a Christian or a Muslim who can only ever make a totally subjective judgement.
 
[Edited: Never mind, should have read the rest of the thread first.]
 
Moose said:
Can they ever really, Darat? I like your sig.
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I've thought a lot about it and I think they can be. Let me quote a reply I made from a thread that was about someone who most people Know would describe as "evil" – Hitler - in which I also quoted myself:

pmckean said:

...snip...

Let me give you a provocative example; Adolf Hitler. Here is a man whose actions led to acts of brutal barbarity on an enormous scale. He persecuted and murdered minorities and usurped other nations. His philosophies were misguided and his actions cataclysmic.

So was he evil?

Might one say that despite the undoubted wrongs he presided over, he was doing what he erroneously believed to be the right thing for his nation? Did he order atrocities out of sheer badness - an evil purpose, arguably, or because he and his cliche believed they were a means to an end?
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I think you have a good question there. In a discussion about Hitler that happened here a long time ago I posted this:

By Darat
As for his actions, HS4 has elegantly explained, they are totally consistent and in fact only make sense if Hitler believed in what he said.

I know it is quite horrendous to think that Hitler’s actions in any way can be said to make “sense” or were “justified”. I’ve always held that he was “insane” and that was why he did what he did - however perhaps his insanity was really his “theistic” beliefs that he then used to rationalise his actions.

Hitler may have been, if you accept the premise his beliefs were based on, totally “justified”. And people wonder what harm beliefs not based on empirical evidence can do.
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I can just about accept that Hitler himself believed he was doing good, and therefore he probably would have believe his actions were good. For me it is a hard concept to accept since I believe his actions were wrong and evil. But that is because I define evil as being some of the things Hitler did and condoned rather then necessarily believing "evil" has some actual existence or is an objective measure of an action.

It is a fact that there are people even today who consider Hitler's actions right and good. I find that fact unsettling but I think it does lead credence to the argument that good and evil are completely relative and depend on what you choose to believe in.
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Perhaps what I mean when I say someone is evil is rather then meaning that the person is evil I am saying that their actions were evil. But then again it isn’t just their actions, in extreme examples I find it very hard to consider the person separate from their actions, as in the example of Hitler above. I still believe Hitler was insane and evil even though he may have considered himself doing good.
 
I'm no great fan of Mother Teresa, and I think at best her use of resources was less efficient than it should have been, but I do wonder if that means the world would have been better off had she not practiced at all. Does her failure to do what we would have liked to see her do constitute net harm? Can we reasonably assume that the donations she used so poorly would have been better used, or even made at all, if she had not been around? I realize that history doesn't much allow for controlled experiments, but are we confusing "bad" with "not good enough?"

Many people who try to do what they think is right and important fall short of what others think is right and important, but I think we have to guard against what I think of as "moral triage." Whatever cause or action you choose, whether it be animal rights, clean air, promoting science, distributing Bibles, or treating sick children, it's pretty certain someone will say something else is more important, more worthy, more pressing. As Jesus (you know, that guy some of us still think might have existed) is reported to have said, "the poor we will always have with us," and if you insist on curing the world's ills from the top down it's likely nothing at all will ever be solved. I think we're better off trying to do what we think we can do best.

That said, I reiterate that I'm still no fan of Mother Teresa, who I believe was highly overrated, overfunded and fundamentally misguided. Nonetheless, I suspect that even so her contribution to the world may have been greater than its cost.
 
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