Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict
by Aroup Chatterjee
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Book Summary Information
Author: Aroup ChatterjeeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-12-20
ISBN: 8188248002
Number of pages: 415
Publisher: Meteor Books, India
Book Reviews of Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict
Book Review: Mother Teresa: a missionary neglectful of her duty of charity...
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an impressive book, conceived out of deep regard for Calcutta and its inhabitants, and an overwhelming sadness that, in the eyes of the world, the author Aroup Chatterjee's vibrant home city and its culture "have become synonymous with the worst of human suffering and degradation". This dishonest stereotype was perpetuated in the service of the extraordinarily stubborn mythology of Mother Teresa, and created by Malcolm Muggeridge, a man who famously hated Calcutta. The author has amassed much oral and recorded audio and visual evidence, to support this indictment of Teresa's Missionaries of Charity.
Some readers will feel the book might have been better edited; Khushwant Singh has written that a date is incorrect, and so concludes that all other evidence, however well documented, is automatically suspect; some readers object to the occasional use of hearsay evidence; some simply choose to ignore all his evidence on the grounds that his conclusions disagree with their preconceived ideas. Some critics assert that Dr. Chatterjee's atheism negates his testimony (his Roman Catholic wife would disagree: brought up "in Ireland on Teresa mythology, [she] felt angry and cheated when she went to Calcutta and saw how the reality compared with the fairy tale"). I'd argue that it's actually impossible to reconcile most of Teresa's philosophy and practice with the Church's teaching; the only thing they seem to agree on is birth control.
I've seen no criticism substantial enough to refute the case, well made by the author, that a grave injustice has been perpetrated on the poor of Calcutta, and of the other cities around the world where the order has made itself at home, and (not to put too fine a point on it) blagged its sisters and brothers a living (albeit a living which tends to injure the personalities of many of those sisters). His case is corroborated by other authoritative sources.
Many millions, if not billions, of dollars have been collected in Mother Teresa's name over the years, ostensibly for the relief of the poor; such vast sums could have fed and rehoused hundreds of thousands, or built hospitals and schools throughout the Indian subcontinent. There has been little to show for this cash other than a few hundred (at most, per facility) hard-won bowls of soup a day, and the most basic of shelter and care for a comparatively small number of sick and orphaned. This is a betrayal, not only of the disadvantaged whose needs were not met, but also of the good faith of well-intentioned donors.
Those donors apparently didn't realise that the money was largely used to fund Teresa's constant crusade against contraception and abortion, in clinics, parliaments and courthouses around the world, this despite the fact that one proven remedy for poverty is the empowerment of women, and their emancipation from perpetual childbearing and its consequences; even her admirer Khushwant Singh has admitted that her "views on artificial contraception and crusade against abortion made little sense in a country where the population has crossed permissible limits", and that "Teresa's admirers, chiefly journalists and film-makers, vastly exaggerated the poverty and squalor of Calcutta in order to glorify her image as the saint of the gutters". And the juxtaposition of misfortune and saintliness, in entertainment and news, is a media money-spinner. Win-win!
This book is not an 'ad hominem' attack; its purpose is not to prove some minor imperfections in Mother Teresa's character, but to document how so many of the assumed acts of charity for which she accepted donations, and for which she continues to be celebrated, simply did not happen. This continues since her death; the so-called "miracle" for which the Catholic Church had her beatified, ie the healing of Monica Besra's "cancerous tumour" through the agency of a picture of Teresa, cannot have happened, since Ms. Besra never had anything more than a benign tubercular cyst, cured through conventional treatment; her physician, Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, and her own father, would willingly testify to this, if the Vatican were willing to interview them. The Church has strict rules on how one qualifies for sainthood; should it not stick religiously to those rules? Dr. Chatterjee has been accused of attempting to prevent the Church from recognising her as a saint; in fact, his declared view is that "She subscribed to a religious point of view and it is up to the clergy of that religion to decide what to do with her. I myself am not against her becoming a saint."
I knew a deeply religious Catholic woman who volunteered to work with the order in the early 80s, and was horrified to see how so little help was given to the needy, and how funds, medicines and goods donated for that purpose were sold, used for the sisters' benefit, discarded, or left to gather dust in cupboards and corners, forgotten and unused (not deliberately stored; storing things showed "lack of trust in Divine Providence"). I worked in a London hospital where sisters from her order occasionally received treatment (Teresa preferred American clinics when she was sick herself), while the unfortunates in their care, in Calcutta as in other cities throughout the world, received little more than the odd paracetamol (acetaminophen) and a bed (sometimes shared) to die in. Dr. Chatterjee's book provides much more evidence of the hypocrisy evident in the order's practices.
In 1994, Lancet editor Robert Fox visited their facility for the dying, and was shocked to find maladministration in diagnosis and treatment practices, a failure to isolate TB patients, and refusal to use strong analgesics for intractable pain. Many volunteers have told how syringes were washed in luke-warm water before being used again; medicines and mosquito nets lay unused in cupboards; diagnostic tests were not performed; patients died needlessly from septicaemia as a direct result of the sisters' poor hygiene, and of readily curable infections for want of a short course of antibiotics (which in some instances the sisters already had in their possession); patients requiring life-saving surgery were refused transfer to hospital. Ambulances donated for the collection of the sick were used as taxis for the sisters; the sick were told to use Corporation ambulances.
Parents were forced to formally renounce their children before the order would accept them; dying Hindus and Muslims were "baptised" without their knowledge or consent.
Susan Shields, who was a member of the order from 1980-89, wrote in the Free Enquirer [...] that 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."
Ms. Shields explains Teresa's teachings, which are fundamental to her religious congregation, and "strangle efforts to alleviate misery": "[1] that the Holy Spirit was guiding Mother... as long as a sister obeys she is doing God's will... [2] that the sisters have leverage over God by choosing to suffer... He then dispenses more graces to humanity... [3] 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... 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." With the sisters' capacity for self-love reduced to tatters, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" takes on a sinister meaning. In 2005, Donal MacIntyre worked for a week at their flagship home for disabled children, and provided film footage of care which was sometimes loving, but invariably inept, unprofessional and unhygienic, and in some cases rough and dangerous.
Archbishop Zimowski specifically addressed the use of painkillers in end-of-life care in a speech he gave last year, placing it first in the context of the gift of suffering: "The suffering according to Christian teaching... especially during the last moments of life, has a special place in God's saving plan; it is in fact a sharing in Christ's passion... Therefore, one must not be surprised if some Christians prefer to moderate their use of painkillers, in order to... associate themselves in a conscious way with the sufferings of Christ crucified. Nevertheless it would be imprudent to impose a heroic way of acting as a general rule. On the contrary, human and Christian prudence suggest for the majority of sick people the use of medicines capable of alleviating or suppressing pain, even though these may cause as a secondary effect semi- consciousness and reduced lucidity. As for those who are not in a state to express themselves, one can reasonably presume that they wish to take these painkillers, and have them administered according to the doctor's advice."
As for witholding life-saving treatments, he went on: "By euthanasia, therefore, is understood an action or an omission which of itself or by intention causes death, in order that all suffering may in this way be eliminated... [it] constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator."
That's all pretty unambiguous. The order's actions fell far short of this standard of care; nor could Teresa's apologists reasonably argue that the Archbishop's is a new position; it's absolutely consistent with that of Pius XII in 1957, which she should have been familiar with, given that end-of-life care was her chosen field. So how the Catholic Church reconciles its veneration of Teresa with the practices at her house for the dying, God only knows.
As for rehousing the homeless: requests that the order contribute to such schemes were steadfastly ignored or rejected, and yet Teresa was happy to attend press events at the completion of such projects (press attention frequently being hard to come by without her presence), and content to receive the publicity arising from the mistaken belief that her order had contributed. Ironically, many buildings have been donated to the order over the years, in many cities worldwide, or sold to it for negligable sums ($1 apiece for two in New York city!); often Teresa had "worked on" the owner, for as long as need be, according to her associate and biographer (and spokesperson for her order) Sunita Kumar.
Ms. Kumar also told how "Mother Teresa saw it as her God-given right never to have to pay anyone for anything. Once she bought food for her nuns in London for £500. When she was told she'd have to pay at the till, [she] shouted, `This is for the work of God!' She raged so loud and so long that eventually a businessman waiting in the queue paid up on her behalf." Small wonder, then, that so many millions of dollars, donated to her order, lay unused in Church bank accounts even at her death, contradicting those "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" (Susan Shields).
Teresa and her sisters explicitly held that to spend money to care for the poor, to address the root causes of poverty and disease, or to use diagnostic procedures and medicines the order could well afford, would "tend towards materialism" and so contravene their vow of poverty. Yet the people in their care had taken no such vow, the money and goods had been given expressly for their earthly welfare, and the fear of materialism evidently didn't apply when Teresa and her sisters needed medical attention! If only N.T. Wright had been around, to give her a nudge: "God is rescuing us from the shipwreck of the world, not so that we can sit back and put our feet up in his company, but so that we can be part of his plan to remake the world. We are in orbit around God and his purposes, not the other way around."
Witnesses to the order's practices have found precious little audience for their evidence. As Christopher Hitchens has observed: "Ever since [Muggeridge's film] Something Beautiful for God, the critic of Mother Teresa in small things, as well as great ones, has had to operate against an enormous weight of received opinion, a weight made no easier to shift by the fact that it is made up quite literally of illusion." Those of us who have been duped into handing over money, or granting her positive publicity, have a vested interest in maintaining the myth; where donating money is the full extent of our contribution, we need to feel our offerings were not in vain, and that our nominated agents of charity are conscientiously performing acts of charity on our behalf. "In the gradual manufacture of an illusion, the conjuror is only the instrument of the audience."
Teresa could not refute, though she occasionally tried to deflect, such criticisms; for the most part she refused to acknowledge them, although she occasionally changed her itineraries as a result. This was not a case of "turning the other cheek", for she was notably litigious where she felt she had a case. Her order has maintained that same tradition since her death.
Mother Teresa may have loved the poor, but she loved poverty more. She professed that "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." In a filmed interview she spoke of how she had told a patient suffering unbearable pain from terminal cancer: "You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you." She related his reply: "Then please tell him to stop kissing me." According to Paul (Romans 4) "The words '[Abraham's faith] was credited to him [as righteousness]' were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness--for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." By what authority, then, did Teresa require that the poor also suffer, even as they pleaded for their suffering to cease?
Such offensive, and doctrinally ignorant, philosophies as that of hers, which makes a virtue of the poor's avoidable suffering, have been promoted for far too long, to justify and perpetuate inequality, and to salve the consciences of the more fortunate amongst us. She accepted money from dictators and thieves (the Duvaliers, Enver Hoxha, Charles Keating), and heaped praise on them for their charity. As Hitchens observed, "This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor." Luke 18:14 quotes Jesus: "everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
Humbling oneself is a matter of free will; we don't recommend ourselves to God by humbling or maltreating others, in open defiance to all charity or loving kindness (however we construe 'agápe'). "God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty" (1 Corinthians 1:27), not to let the mighty off the hook!
Teresa and her sisters have, in part, fulfilled their vow of poverty vicariously, through the privations of their unfortunate charges, remaining staunchly passive, offering only pious aphorisms and professions of love, where a little action on their part could have saved much anguish and many lives; the powerful, and those of us who enjoy a measure of financial security, purchase a veneer of righteousness at the expense of the sufferings of the poor, since our donations would have done more good in the hands of agencies which tackle the root causes of poverty; it's as if the Council of Trent had never happened.
Teresa herself gave the lie to the common view of her as one who worked tirelessly for the poor; it was not from modesty that she declared: "We are misunderstood, we are misrepresented, we are misreported. We are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers. We are religious, we are religious, we are religious."
As a religious person, she would hold that faith is prerequisite to salvation; but if she knew her Scripture, and her Catholic Doctrine, she should more truthfully have borne witness to the Doctrine, confirmed by Trent, that we are not justified by faith alone: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10) By reason of the gift of grace, we are absolutely commanded by God to do good works, so far as it lies within our power to do so; and with all those millions (or, indeed, billions) of dollars at her command, she was empowered to do a great deal more than she did. Empowered by undeniable charisma, great wealth and worldly influence to offer healing to the sick, and accommodation to the homeless, she omitted to do so: she offered professions of love, yet refused to perform the works of love. Nobody need doubt her faith, nor that of her sisters, but it's incorrect to assume that the existence of faith proves the existence of good works, or that good works need only tend to the soul, while ignoring the body.
Had Teresa never read James 2:14-26? because, lest anyone misinterpret Paul, James gets very specific: "What good is it... if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead... Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds... You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder... a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone... faith without deeds is dead."
She died too soon to read the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999), signed by the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, which states: "We confess together that good works... follow justification and are its fruits. When the justified live in Christ and act in the grace they receive, they bring forth, in biblical terms, good fruit. Since Christians struggle against sin their entire lives, this consequence of justification is also for them an obligation they must fulfill. Thus both Jesus and the apostolic Scriptures admonish Christians to bring forth the works of love." Works for which the Holy Spirit deserves sole credit, since they were worked in his power.
As Paul reminded the Corinthians, loving kindness (charity) is the greatest of the gifts of grace. George Whitefield preached on 1 Corinthians: "As sanctification is a progressive work, beware of thinking you have already attained... Nothing is more valuable and commendable, and yet, not one duty is less practiced, than that of charity. We often pretend concern and pity for the misery and distress of our fellow-creatures, but yet we seldom commiserate their condition so much as to relieve them according to our abilities; but unless we assist them with what they may stand in need of, for the body, as well as for the soul, all our wishes are no more than words of no value or regard."
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