If you’ve read thru Dr.Chatterjee’s book that Krishnan linked to earlier, the importance of Malcolm Muggeridge in this whole saga is quite clear. The book is well researched and is not a hate filled rant. At the very least, MT was a dogmatic catholic and constantly lied about the work her order was doing, post 1979. When she died I thought media had their priorities screwed up putting Diana on the same pedestal as her. Now I’m much more sympathetic to Diana.

yeah, well, I haven’t been there in a while. When I was there the stones were crumbling on the exterior, and half of Italy appeared to covered with scaffolding. If they’ve finished the rennovations, well done.

” –> Last I checked, it is not the primary mission of St.Peter’s in the Vatican to provide charity to sick people who come there. Teresa’s mission is just that. Apples to oranges.”

I guess my point is more what the hell are they doing with all that money they’re supposed to have. If I had seen it going into sprucing up the main tourist attraction of Rome, at least there would be evidence. But according to Puliogre, St. Peter’s is looking good these days. No, I don’t know why they don’t rennovate Mother Teresa’s edifices. Maybe they need to be reminded.

wow!

so heretofore, you will never write about any hindu, muslim, sikh, jew or buddhist or any country besides america, for that matter. also, since you are christian, you will never be able to understand [even if you obtain a phd in theology]the compulsions of another religion – you should never comment on honor killings of women or female infanticide, when the perpetrators are muslim or hindu.

of course i am being cynical, but given the above statement…..

Those are reasonable questions. But if you’ve ever been to St. Peter’s in the Vatican, that is pretty run down too, or at least the exterior is. Of course, there you’re talking about buildings half a millenium old.

–> Last I checked, it is not the primary mission of St.Peter’s in the Vatican to provide charity to sick people who come there. Teresa’s mission is just that. Apples to oranges.

i thought that place was fabulous. didnt look run down to me. the churches looked like palaces.

Those are reasonable questions. But if you’ve ever been to St. Peter’s in the Vatican, that is pretty run down too, or at least the exterior is. Of course, there you’re talking about buildings half a millenium old.

Have people read Hitchens’ book on Teresa, and what are their opinions of his arguments?

–> I read it 5 years back and was impressed, given I didnt know who Hitchens was at that time. Now that I know he is an atheist, it does cloud my recollection a bit.

I think he also says a lot about how she let her insistence on proving the superiority of simple love and faith over modern medicine probably led to more suffering than was warranted for many of these lepers (of course, this begs the question of what their alternatives would have been in the absence of Teresa, and I don’t know that living a life on the streets of Calcutta while being shunned by everybody would have been better).

–> To me, reading the book led to one question which I havent had a satisfactory answer yet. If Teresa is a paragon of love and faith, is backed by the church(evidently wealthy and powerful) and has good name recognition(She even got a Nobel), why is the state of those buildings run by her charities so bleak and rundown in pictures(I havent seen the actual buildings so I have had to base my question on pictures) ? If her faith led her to believe in the power of suffering and subsequently, to emphasize love and faith more than modern medicine in curing people who came to her, shouldnt she be held accountable ?

Plus, it is difficult for me to accept the description of kolkata as it is generally provided in the story of teresa as miserable beyond repair and that a ‘foreign hand’ had to come in to serve them, ignoring charities which are doing their bit to help people(not the target segment of teresa’s charities though) there.

“Knowledge, feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings. But not in this sense — that you are a part, a piece, of an eternal, infinite being, an aspect or modification of it… For we should then have the same baffling question: which part, which aspect are you? what, objectively, differentiates it from the others? No, but, inconceiveable as it seems to ordinary reason, you — and all other conscious beings as such — are all in all. Hence, this life of yours… is, in a certain sense, the whole… This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula… ‘Tat tvam asi’ — this is you. Or, again, in such words as ‘I am in the east and in the west, I am below and above, I am this whole world.’

Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you … For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.”