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Who knows?
Maybe she had distorted ideas of suffering and birth control.
Maybe others that were less publicized, did more in humanitarian work.
I don't really care.
What I see in Mother Teresa is an icon - a symbol that represents caring for those in need, as if they were Christ, or God - or the person you love the most.
That is a good principle to represent - even if it is not 100% accurate.
What matters is the spirit/GOoD that is inspired - not so much his-story.
Glad you're keeping track. It gives me that oh so warm and fuzzy feeling.
Whatever humanity I assumed you had has been belied by your virulent and tenacious trashing of MT for whatever stupid reason you have. It breeds nothing but evil and negativity, whatever noble purpose you THINK you are pursuing. You are fostering an evil vibe that is actually harming you without your apparent knowledge. That mordant has joined you in this campaign of evil and negativity has been a supreme disappointment to me. You are not adding anything positive or beneficial in this forum with your malignant campaign. Evil breeds evil. Negativity breeds negativity. Apparently you have been breeding so much of it you have passed some threshold and are losing whatever humanity you did have.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,920,960 times
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I
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Whatever humanity I assumed you had has been belied by your virulent and tenacious trashing of MT for whatever stupid reason you have. It breeds nothing but evil and negativity, whatever noble purpose you THINK you are pursuing. You are fostering an evil vibe that is actually harming you without your apparent knowledge. That mordant has joined you in this campaign of evil and negativity has been a supreme disappointment to me. You are not adding anything positive or beneficial in this forum with your malignant campaign. Evil breeds evil. Negativity breeds negativity. Apparently you have been breeding so much of it you have passed some threshold and are losing whatever humanity you did have.
Going a bit overboard with the hyperbole, don't you think?
Sorry if the truth hurts. MT may have had good intentions when she started out, but it was in her power and she had the funds available to give proper care to the sick, many who did not have to die except due to the lack of care.
That is at there very least negligent. However, using available funds to expand her order makes her the evil one, not me. People DIED unnecessary deaths. People died painful deaths.
She chose not to mitigate that. It does not make her a saint.
Try spinning it any other way makes you complicit in the deceit.
Try spinning it any other way makes you complicit in the deceit.
are you reading the things that you write?
so now anyone who can see and value the goodness and kindness and inspiration that millions of people see....is also evil and deceitful?
you are saying that not only must you be right, and everyone who sees things differently is wrong....
but you are also saying that anyone who does not agree with you is deceitful and malicious
why are you unable to allow that other people see things very differently than you do?
without insisting they are wrong and deceitful, and insist that only you are right and truthful?
that is.....scary.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 12-23-2015 at 08:57 PM..
I am surprised at the level of denial and vitriol even from non-Catholics on this matter. This is really nothing more nor less than some people feeling that MT was a well meaning individual whose misguided asceticism doesn't deserve the level of unquestioning hero worship that it has engendered, mainly because it caused her to underserve and mis-instruct the people she was trying to help.
Folks are free to disagree but to call it "evil" to simply not be more than about 25% impressed with MT's life and accomplishments while quite a few others are near 100% impressed seems excessive. I do not agree with Hitchens calling her an "old bat" although I understand his desire to shock people out of their complacency. I do not agree even with cupper calling her a "witch" although I scarcely see him as the agent of Satan for doing so.
I think that MT was completely convinced she was doing the Right Thing. I think she was largely misguided and often wrong, and it's sad that her substantial determination and courage could have been put to much better use than they were. Her actual positive accomplishments were drawing attention to the plight of the "poorest of the poor" and taking appropriate symbolic stands against some particularly nasty and harmful social attitudes in Indian society; in addition, had it not been so ill spent, establishing her mission and raising money worldwide would have been a net positive accomplishment.
Over against that, when in her own words she relates a story of airily dismissing a woman's abject terminal physical suffering -- very likely unmediated by adequate palliative care -- as kisses from Jesus and then joking about it in a speech, represents an unseemly vein of callous indifference to human suffering that is, in my view, an utterly deplorable display of sadism and perpetuates one of the more violent and pernicious doctrines within Christendom: the RCC's prurient and dysfunctional fascination with suffering and the naked attempt to transmute that evil into a great virtue. I cannot excuse that or rationalize it, and don't apologize for my failure to do so. The inability of some to see it much less their ability to condone it, has been an eye opener for me. I can understand the value of MT's canonization to a foundering RCC but had clearly underestimated the power of the concept to insulate it from the slightest ordinary scrutiny or criticism, even outside the church. I have always decried religious teflon and the arrogance it has historically engendered in believers, but this takes it to new levels.
For those that keep asking for proof that conditions were appalling, and unsterilized needles were used, even though millions were available to buy sterilized ones, I have given many GOOD references.
Mordant had given some GREAT ones. Not accepting them is being obtuse.
You have given links to he said-she said hearsay and to heated "aha!"-style articles and continue to fall back on "data" that you yourself did not even read (the by-now famous academic paper).
To accept what amounts to gossip and someone else's Cliffs-Notes-ing would be obtuse.
Mordant gave, in addition to repeating a couple of your links, some more realistic, all-encompassing (v. one-dimensional) ideas that were lower on the "ZOMG!" Jerry Springer factor, more on the "Within the confines of her belief system she did think she was doing the right thing, but yes, I absolutely disagree with what that was and maintain my stance" conclusion (overall).
Mordant gracefully disagreed with what would appear to be most people's view of MT and intelligently and sensitively argued his position. I don't know that you can compare your evidence-gathering style with mordant's on here. You flail around pointing and shrieking that someone is "a witch!!!" (LOL), then follow with hostile bullet-points that you refuse to support, instead repeatedly pointing to the "paper" that, again...you didn't even read, so you don't know what it contains. You just know that it says "bad stuff bad stuff bad stuff!" so sight unseen and entirely unread except for someone else's possibly inaccurate blurbs, you're willing to believe it - no matter what it might actually say. I'm sorry, but your and mordant's support for each of your views is quite different here.
are you reading the things that you write?
so now anyone who can see and value the goodness and kindness and inspiration that millions of people see....is also evil and deceitful?
you are saying that not only must you be right, and everyone who sees things differently is wrong....
but you are also saying that anyone who does not agree with you is deceitful and malicious
why are you unable to allow that other people see things very differently than you do?
without insisting they are wrong and deceitful, and insist that only you are right and truthful?
that is.....scary.
It goes along with the constant never-ending venom spitting at anything related to Religion and those who embrace it. HUNDREDS of threads.
It is indicative of deep-seated issues. Serious issues.
It goes along with the constant never-ending venom spitting at anything related to Religion and those who embrace it. HUNDREDS of threads.
It is indicative of deep-seated issues. Serious issues.
You see now, this is the thing.
Cupper brought mordant into it as a way to draw parallels between himself and mordant (strength in numbers, etc.? Not sure) - yet in the case of the latter, the points were given in a less emotional, "angry," button-pushing style, which gives them credence and feels...to me...much less like deliberate "hate" against anything and everything religious. Instead, though I disagree with several of mordant's points, certainly I can entertain them and think about them and consider that they came from a point of rationality and genuine feeling on the matter (at least in my view they did). And above all, whether or not I agree with his conclusions I can see how he came to them. They may not be in line with my general thinking on the subject but they make sense within the frames mordant is giving them. (Again, to me. I can't speak for the next person.)
But in cupper's case, the vitriol is so high, including the sight-unseen "belief" in an academic paper he didn't even read (!!) in his anxiousness to have anything support his negative vews, that does seem like "hatred with a bias," so to speak - i.e. deliberately looking to stamp on something...or in this case, someone.
Does this difference make sense? To me it makes all the difference and unfortunately, when one has such a serious agenda ahead of time no matter what the evidence may or may not say (indeed cupper doesn't even know what the evidence actually says, he didn't read his own evidence!), I have less reason to believe what he has to say...because it will be colored by his feelings to that large an extent.
We all will have anything colored by our views to an extent but when it's overwhelming - either pro or con (parallels were made between some of the arguing on this thread and Fundie-style arguing, and I feel that's warranted) - then there's no way to really trust the person's views as having merit at all. Such "arguing" from that angry a position brings real, actual, useful conversation to a halt.
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