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Criticism

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After the award of the Nobel Peace Prixe for 1979, Mother Teresa's adherence to the Church's condemnation of abortion and contraception attracted odium in some quarters, especially in the West, as did her closeness to Pope John Paul II. Critics of the Catholic Church resented the fact that she used her celebrity status to promote the Church's teachings, and they attempted to present her views as extreme or even fanatical whereas they were always mainstream.[1]

The enthusiasm shown for her work by people of all conditions of life, manifested by the volume of donations she received for the Missionaries of Charity also aroused hostility, from professed atheists in particular who were dismayed at what they considered to be people's gullibility.[2] Some Bengali critics accused Mother Teresa of exploiting or even fabricating the degraded image of Calcutta in order to win international fame.[3]

Attempts were made to sully her reputation by claiming she knowingly accepted donations from disreputable sources. It was said that in one notorious case she knew or ought to have known that the money was stolen; and that she accepted money from the despised Duvalier regime in Haiti, which she visited in early 1981. In neither case were these aspersions substantiated, although this did not stop her critics from repeating them.[4]

The increasing wealth of the order she founded became yet another grievance. On the one hand, large sums were accumulating in checking (non-interest bearing) accounts in the United States, and large sums were being spent on establishing houses for her order and for their missionary work all over the world; on the other, her Home for the Dying continued to maintain the same austere ethos with which it had been founded, that is to say, as a place for those who had nowhere else to go – a point even hostile sources conceded.[5]

Critics complained that she did not apply donors' money on founding a high-tech medical facility in Calcutta, or on transforming her Home for the Dying into a western-style hospice.[6] Apart from the barriers that advanced technologies and the need for specialist physicians to manage pain would interpose between carers and those they cared for (disrupting the ethos of the Home),[7] the use of opiates in India for managing cancer pain remains, ten years after Mother Teresa's death, highly problematic for legal, regulatory, cultural and other reasons (including supply interruptions, harsh punishments imposed for even minor infractions of the rules, and the fear of addiction by health workers).[8] Despite the lack of sophisticated analgesic regimes, volunteers (including those with western medical qualifications and experience) reported that her Home for the Dying was a place of joy not sadness.[9] As late as 2001, researchers could write that "pain relief is a new notion in [India]", and "palliative care training has been available only since 1997".[10] It was only in 2012 that the government of West Bengal finally amended the applicable regulations simplifying "the process of possession, transport, purchase, sale and import of inter-state of morphine or any preparation containing morphine by 'Recognized Medical Institution'."[11]

Notwithstanding these practical considerations, the advanced treatment Mother Teresa received for an increasingly aggravated heart condition (which eventually killed her) was said to evidence her personal hypocrisy, while the factors that impelled the Missionaries of Charity to prolong her active life were ignored.[12] She herself, at an advanced age, attempted to resign as Superior general of the order, but the sisters were unanimous in re-electing her in 1990 when she was already 80 years old.[13]

Her international renown and the fact that she received lavish honours from heads of state, universities and other international figures and institutions was pilloried by some. She was depicted as cunning, lacking in modesty and humility; they were either dupes or manipulators.[14]

Nor were these criticisms expressed in measured terms. Her critics frequently used vulgar, insulting and abusive language, and even grave allegations of personal impropriety were made against her, dependent on nothing but insinuations and suspicion, guilt by association, and adverse conclusions drawn from her silence.[15] Throughout, Mother Teresa maintained a stoical silence in the face of abuse, and when pressed replied only that she forgave those who attacked her.[16]

References

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  1. ^ Smoker (1980); Hitchens (1995, pp. 11, 28, 31f., 53, 55-57, 59), (2003, "ultra-reactionary and fundamentalist even in orthodox Catholic terms"). For mainstream Catholic teaching on abortion: as an "unspeakable crime", see Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, n. 51; as a threat to world peace, see, e.g., Pope Paul VI, Message for the World Day of Peace, 1977: "But it is not only war that kills Peace. Every crime against life is a blow to Peace . . as in the case of the suppression of incipient life, by abortion. Reasons such as the following are brought forward to justify abortion: abortion seeks to slow down the troublesome increase of the population, to eliminate beings condemned to malformation, social dishonour, proletarian misery, and so on; it seems rather to favour Peace than to harm it. But it is not so.". On contraception, Pope Paul VI said this in his Appeal for Peace (official French text) delivered to the UN General Assembly on 4 October 1965 : "Your task is so to act that there should be bread in abundance at the table of mankind and not to favour the artificial control of births, which would be contrary to right reason, with a view to lessening the number of guests at the table of life."
  2. ^ Hitchens (1995), p. 15
  3. ^ For fabricating, Chatterjee (2003), Introduction; for "cannibalising", Bannerjee (2002), p. 5204
  4. ^ Keating's donation: Hitchens (1993, ". . must have known or should have known that that money doesn't belong to Keating and doesn't belong to her. It's stolen money), (1995, pp. 64-71, ". . the clearest and best documented instance") – except that the convictions were overturned in 1996, a point Hitchens never mentioned. Duvaliers: Hitchens (1993, "The fact is, I don't know if she got any money from the Duvaliers"), not asserted in his 1995 book, nor in his Letter to The New York Review of Books, 19 December 1996, Mother Teresa, nor in his piece in Salon, 5 September, 1997 Saint to the Rich, accessed 3 February, 2014, but suddenly asserted as a fact by him more than 20 years after the alleged event (2003, "misappropriated"), (2007, "stolen")
  5. ^ Grievance: Hitchens (1995), pp. 46f., 64. Last resort: "[o]nly when no city hospital will take the dying are they brought to the Missionaries of Charity." review by Krishna Dutta of Chatterjee (2003), Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict in the British review Times Higher Education, 16 May, 2003, Saint of the gutters with friends in high places, accessed 29 January 2014
  6. ^ Hitchens (1995), pp. 41, 63f.
  7. ^ The dangers of "creeping medicalisation" of palliative care and of death are adverted to in, e.g. Clark (2002) passim; the difference between the ethos of the Home and hospice-type care noted by Fox (2004), quoted in Hitchens (1995), pp. 38f.
  8. ^ With reference to India, see, e.g., Rajagopal and Joranson (2007) passim; with reference to the USA, Macpherson (2009) pp. 603f. ". . access to pain relief is limited by socioeconomics, politics, culture and gender. Additionally, many physicians have taboos against opioids, and unduly restrictive regulations limit their prescription for medical use . . access to and standards of palliation vary widely even among prestigious institutions . . In 2000, only 0.3% of primary care physicians in the USA were certified in palliative medicine"
  9. ^ See, e.g., Panke (2002), p. 13
  10. ^ Rajagopal et al. (2001), p. 139
  11. ^ International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care, Newsletter, 2012 Vol. 13, No. 12 (December); for a brief regulatory overview for the previous year, see Rajagopal (2011)
  12. ^ Hitchens (1995), p. 41; cf. Fr. James Martin, SJ, Letter in The New York Review of Books, 19 September, 1996 In Defense of Mother Teresa, accessed 2 February, 2014
  13. ^ McCarthy (1997)
  14. ^ Hitchens (1995), pp. 15, 29, 48-50, 98
  15. ^ Hitchens (1995), pp. 71, 91-93, 98
  16. ^ Hitchens (1995), footnote 5 on pp. 87f.; McCarthy (1997)

Sources

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  • Banerjee, Sumanta (2004), "Revisiting Kolkata as an 'NRB' [non-resident Bengali]", Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 49 (Dec. 4-10, 2004), pp. 5203-5205
  • Clark, David, (2002), "Between Hope And Acceptance: The Medicalisation Of Dying", British Medical Journal, Vol. 324, No. 7342 (Apr. 13, 2002), pp. 905-907
  • Macpherson, C. "Undertreating pain violates ethical principles", Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol.35 No.10 (October 2009), pp.603-606
  • McCarthy, Colman, The Washington Post, 6 September, 1997 Nobel Winner Aided the Poorest, accessed 2 February, 2014
  • Panke, Joan T. (2002), "Not a Sad Place", The American Journal of Nursing, Vol. 102, No. 9 (Sep., 2002), p. 13
  • Rajagopal MR, Joranson DE, and Gilson AM (2001), "Medical use, misuse and diversion of opioids in India", The Lancet, Vol. 358, July 14, 2001, pp. 139-143
  • Rajagopal MR, and Joranson DE (2007), "India: Opioid availability - An update", The Journal of Pain Symptom Management, Vol. 33:615-622.
  • Rajagopal MR (2011), interview with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, April, 2011 India: The principle of balance to make opioids accessible for palliative care
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