Posted on 08/05/2005 8:11:31 AM PDT by petconservative
Mother Teresa's House of Illusions How She Harmed Her Helpers As Well As Those They `Helped' by Susan Shields
The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 18, Number 1.
Some years after I became a Catholic, I joined Mother Teresa's congregation, the Missionaries of Charity. I was one of her sisters for nine and a half years, living in the Bronx, Rome, and San Franciso, until I became disillusioned and left in May 1989. As I reentered the world, I slowly began to unravel the tangle of lies in which I had lived. I wondered how I could have believed them for so long.
Three of Mother Teresa's teachings that are fundamental to her religious congregation are all the more dangerous because they are believed so sincerely by her sisters. Most basic is the belief that as long as a sister obeys she is doing God's will. Another is the belief that the sisters have leverage over God by choosing to suffer. Their suffering makes God very happy. He then dispenses more graces to humanity. The third is the belief 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, movement and change in the congregation. Mother Teresa did not invent these beliefs - they were prevalent in religious congregations before Vatican II - but she did everything in her power (which was great) to enforce them.
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.
Women from many nations joined Mother Teresa in the expectation that they would help the poor and come closer to God themselves. When I left, there were more than 3,000 sisters in approximately 400 houses scattered throughout the world. Many of these sisters who trusted Mother Teresa to guide them have become broken people. In the face of overwhelming evidence, some of them have finally admitted that their trust has been betrayed, that God could not possibly be giving the orders they hear. It is difficult for them to decide to leave - their self-confidence has been destroyed, and they have no education beyond what they brought with them when they joined. I was one of the lucky ones who mustered enough courage to walk away.
It is in the hope that others may see the fallacy of this purported way to holiness that I tell a little of what I know. Although there are relatively few tempted to join Mother Teresa's congregation of sisters, there are many who generously have supported her work because they do not realize how her twisted premises strangle efforts to alleviate misery. Unaware that most of the donations sit unused in her bank accounts, they too are deceived into thinking they are helping the poor.
As a Missionary of Charity, I was assigned to record donations and write the thank-you letters. The money arrived at a frantic rate. The mail carrier often delivered the letters in sacks. We wrote receipts for checks of $50,000 and more on a regular basis. Sometimes a donor would call up and ask if we had received his check, expecting us to remember it readily because it was so large. How could we say that we could not recall it because we had received so many that were even larger?
When Mother spoke publicly, she never asked for money, but she did encourage people to make sacrifices for the poor, to "give until it hurts." Many people did - and they gave it to her. We received touching letters from people, sometimes apparently poor themselves, who were making sacrifices to send us a little money for the starving people in Africa, the flood victims in Bangladesh, or the poor children in India. Most of the money sat in our bank accounts.
The flood of donations was considered to be a sign of God's approval of Mother Teresa's congregation. We were told by our superiors that we received more gifts than other religious congregations because God was pleased with Mother, and because the Missionaries of Charity were the sisters who were faithful to the true spirit of religious life.
Most of the sisters had no idea how much money the congregation was amassing. After all, we were taught not to collect anything. One summer the sisters living on the outskirts of Rome were given more crates of tomatoes than they could distribute. None of their neighbors wanted them because the crop had been so prolific that year. The sisters decided to can the tomatoes rather than let them spoil, but when Mother found out what they had done she was very displeased. Storing things showed lack of trust in Divine Providence.
The donations rolled in and were deposited in the bank, but they had no effect on our ascetic lives and very little effect on the lives of the poor we were trying to help. We lived a simple life, bare of all superfluities. We had three sets of clothes, which we mended until the material was too rotten to patch anymore. We washed our own clothes by hand. The never-ending piles of sheets and towels from our night shelter for the homeless we washed by hand, too. Our bathing was accomplished with only one bucket of water. Dental and medical checkups were seen as an unnecessary luxury.
Mother was very concerned that we preserve our spirit of poverty. Spending money would destroy that poverty. She seemed obsessed with using only the simplest of means for our work. Was this in the best interests of the people we were trying to help, or were we in fact using them as a tool to advance our own "sanctity?" In Haiti, to keep the spirit of poverty, 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.
We begged for food and supplies from local merchants as though we had no resources. On one of the rare occasions when we ran out of donated bread, we went begging at the local store. When our request was turned down, our superior decreed that the soup kitchen could do without bread for the day.
It was not only merchants who were offered a chance to be generous. Airlines were requested to fly sisters and air cargo free of charge. Hospitals and doctors were expected to absorb the costs of medical treatment for the sisters or to draw on funds designated for the religious. Workmen were encouraged to labor without payment or at reduced rates. We relied heavily on volunteers who worked long hours in our soup kitchens, shelters, and day camps.
A hard-working farmer devoted many of his waking hours to collecting and delivering food for our soup kitchens and shelters. "If I didn't come, what would you eat?" he asked.
Our Constitution forbade us to beg for more than we needed, but, when it came to begging, the millions of dollars accumulating in the bank were treated as if they did not exist.
For years I had to write 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. I was able to keep my complaining conscience in check because we had been taught that the Holy Spirit was guiding Mother. To doubt her was a sign that we were lacking in trust and, even worse, guilty of the sin of pride. I shelved my objections and hoped that one day I would understand why Mother wanted to gather so much money, when she herself had taught us that even storing tomato sauce showed lack of trust in Divine Providence.
A Mother Theresa hit piece. Now I've seen it all.
No good deed goes unpunished. RIP Mother T.
I think the real motivation for attacking Mother Theresa is that she was Pro Life. That abortion culture has never forgiven her. When she accepted the Nobel Prize, she gave an uncompromising Pro Life pitch.
If you join an order where you take a vow of poverty, why complain about the lack of luxuries?
From someone who worked closely with her, no less. An eye witness you could say.
Pathetic.
It didn't work when Hitchens said less inflammatory garbage, and it certainly won't work when it comes from a disgruntled loser.
Satan won that unfortunate soul over. How sad. What a twisted view of the most basic of Christ's teachings. These "beliefs" weren't created by Mother Theresa.. they were established by Christ and she lived her life in "obedience" to Christ's teachings. This woman needs prayers in a big way.
No.
From someone who claims to have worked closely with her.
An eye witness you could say.,p>One could also a liar.
And the latter is more accurate.
"A Mother Theresa hit piece. Now I've seen it all."
And a hit piece after the Mother Theresa is dead. How convienent. Unreal. I read the whole article and didn't see anything wrong with Mother Theresas actions or beliefs. Strange
The giveaway is the lie in the first paragraph about Mother Teresa saying that suffering "gives you leverage over God."
She would never have said such a blasphemous thing.
She taught, of course, that suffering unites us more closely to Christ because he suffered for us.
Wouldn't surprise me a bit.
Remember a few years back when Mother Theresa was speaking to a group that included the Clintons and Gores? She didn't mince words about abortion. For some reason, the aforementioned slimes found it necessary to inspect the tops of their shoes during most of that speech. I loved it.
Yup. No matter how clearsighted he is on terrorism, I'll never forgive his punk ass for that one.
Ok, here we go….
Anybody who know anything about what nuns vows and practices are know that this piece is probably right on the money.
Self denial, mortification, renouncing pretty much every worldly connection, it is all factual representation of nun-life.
In that, I see nothing wrong with this article.
One might argue the efficacy of such a life, but the existence of it is undeniable...
She missed the point entirely and apparently her head was turned by the money. Mother Teresa wanted the sisters to live like the very poor of India that they helped, and it seems they do.
As a Missionary of Charity, I was assigned to record donations and write the thank-you letters. The money arrived at a frantic rate. The mail carrier often delivered the letters in sacks. We wrote receipts for checks of $50,000 and more on a regular basis.
Sounds like her head was turned by the money.
She became disillusioned and left the community. Only speaking out now long after Mother Teresa's death and shortly after Pope John Paul II's passing, he being a great friend of hers and admirer of her work. How cowardly. Truly someone who doesn't get it. And to slander Mother and her sisters so long after her death, at a time of increased violence against the Christians of India, wow. She has added to the misery of the poor Christians, and other poor, of India. Pathetic.
It sounds like this womans prayers were answered when she left that cult.
Don't be surprised. Some people even try and slander Elron Hubbard and the Church of $cientology
It is about a particular vocation, and if you pretend you have a vocation when you don't, if you try to bamboozle God, you don't have a beef if it doesn't work out your way.
The real clue that this article is a venomous hit-piece is the line about suffering giving one leverage over God. If Mother Teresa really thought that (which clearly she didn't) she was a heretic. Nothing gives anyone "leverage" over the Almighty. But folks who bring misunderstanding to the table often walk away with what they brought. Um, that which goeth around cometh around, as the prophets have said ....
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