Book Review #28: The Missionary Position - Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice By Christopher Hitchens

First things First:

I am neither a follower of Mother Teresa, nor do I believe in such people who help the destitute by starting a full-fledged organization, that’s purpose, is highly deviated from what it must have done actually. I am also cautioning the readers to read this book before coming to any conclusion. Since, as Indians, we have more respects and regards to this saint figure. Mother Teresa is the only Non-Indian after Nelson Mandela to get conferred with Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award that Indian government gives.

The Review:

The great  Polemicist Christopher Hitchens turns his attention to Agnes Bojaxhiu a.k.a Mother Teresa, in this what seemed to be a sting operation kind of book. This book is a perfect and honest account of life and practices of Mother Theresa.

After reading this relatively short book (yep, around 99 pages). I turned on Youtube to watch his documentary film which this book was based on. This documentary is famously called as Hell’s Angel. The first half of this documentary is what is told in this book. This is probably the thinnest yet incredibly good book that I have read in recent days.

Hitchens lays the bare Teresa’s life like it should have been. After all, what’s wrong with a little bit of devil’s advocacy ? And, you have to hand it to him for his courage in taking someone who has clearly been one of the most important icons (holy cows!!) of catholic church.

As this book is relatively short, I will highlight only the important events from this book.

Hitchens recounts Teresa’s dubious links with the known dictators of the world, a special mention is Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and his wife Michele who all but bankrupted their country and fled to France. According to the author, Teresa, despite supposedly caring for the poor, does little for them – she demands that poor has to accept their condition and position and live with that.

Was she political after all?. she is not supposed to be political. Yet, she often involved herself in politics especially when it came to the subject of abortion. She travelled to spain to protest when post-franco legislation was to be passed regarding the legalization of abortion and even spoke to Margaret Thatcher about passing a bill that was in the house of commons.

The biggest criticism of mother Teresa is the way she and her order of people withheld the painkillers from the very sick and dying. In a filmed interview, she encountered an exchange she had with a cancer patient, who was almost dying, where she said “You are suffering like a Christ on a cross. So Jesus must be kissing you!!” to which the dying man replied, “Tell your Jesus to stop kissing me!!”. More than this, her order of people or the nuns who were supposed to take care of the patients are not even medically trained.! They were sterilizing the needles and injections with tap water!!

One more such incident that Hitchens mention without forgetting that, the greatest tragedy of India. The Bhopal Gas tragedy, where the cause of the mishap was a company that goes with the name Union Carbide. As usual Mother Teresa was rushed to the camp and by looking at those victims, she said “Let’s forgive” , there was a long silence among the crowd. She again repeated “Let’s forgive”, even now there was no reply. Sensing what would happen in next moment, she slowly dispersed from the crowd.!!

Hitchens also raises an important question of how Mother Teresa had got her sainthood. A must read section from the book. He also raises an important questions on the millions dollars of donations that Mother Teresa had received for her organization. There was never an audit of those things, since, it was a catholic church.

One such incidents where she received a whopping $252,000,000 as donation from the questionable source like Charles Keating, a fraud, who was imprisoned for 10 years for his part in savings and Loan scandal in the 90s. Much to everyone’s surprise, then Mother Teresa wrote a character note to the judicial bench requesting them to his acquittal, though he was under trial and the charges were proven 100%. It had no effect, but the co-prosecutor of the case, Paul Turley, wrote back to Mother Teresa explaining her why he was on trial, informing her that money she had received in the form of donation was stolen from the hard-earned money of ordinary people.  He had also requested Mother Teresa to consider his request and that she should return that money on the basic principles of humanity, for which she was famous for. He never received a reply from Mother Teresa or from her organization till today and the money was not refunded.

For which Paul W. Turley replied as below:

 Ask yourself what Jesus would do if he were given the fruits of a crime; what Jesus would do if he were in possession of money that had been stolen; what Jesus would do if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience? I submit that Jesus would promptly and unhesitatingly return the stolen property to its rightful owners. You should do the same. You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the ‘indulgence’ he desires. Do not keep the money. Return it to those who worked for it and earned it!

If you contact me I will put you in direct contact with the rightful owners of the property now in your possession.

Paul W. Turley

You can read more on this in the following blog: Paul W. Turley

Conclusion:

Was Mother Teresa really a saint ? Or just a Roman Catholic opportunist with a rather narrow minded agenda, who was at the head of a global PR movement. Read this book to question your faith in Mother Teresa’s goodness.

My Rating:

5/5