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MOTHER TERESA: 'DID SHE DESERVE A STATE FUNERAL?'
From: address.below...@web.site (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
Subject: MOTHER TERESA: 'DID SHE DESERVE A STATE FUNERAL?'
Date: 1999/09/03
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DID SHE DESERVE A STATE FUNERAL?
By Kanchan Gupta
Rediff On The Net
September 17, 1998
The live telecast of Mother Teresa's funeral by
Doordarshan has put as serious a question mark on the
''secular'' credentials of the Indian state.
How can a state funeral be accorded to a nun whose
dedicated service to the sick and the dying was only an
expression of her fierce, unflinching and dogmatic
loyalty to the Catholic church?
A dangerous precedent has been set by both these actions
which have done disservice to a person who, in her
lifetime, made it a point to spurn the glitter of
highlife for the squalor of Calcutta's back alleys.
Saturday's live telecast of the state funeral by
Doordarshan, which was taken to homes beyond Indian
shores by Star, and reportage by foreign television
networks like CNN and ABC, has left those who know little
about India (including metropolitan Indians), firm in the
conviction that no indigenous Indian's contribution to
the spiritual uplift of our society and welfare of the
poor equals that of Mother Teresa's.
That, of course, is far from the truth.
Vinoba Bhave, Swami Chinmayananda, Acharya Sushil Muni
and the Shankaracharya of Kanchi never got the publicity,
either in the national or foreign media, that their lives
richly deserved, largely because a story on a bhoodan was
considered too dry compared to a report on how Calcuttans
would be dying in the gutters of the Empire's erstwhile
second city had it not been for a foreign missionary and
her team of nuns.
There is also that other factor: A certificate of good
work that comes from the West influences how we look at
ourselves. Vinoba Bhave, Acharya Sushil Muni and the
Kanchi Shankaracharya never sought nor received any such
certificate. Hence, we have minimised their contribution.
A third factor has to do with the very nature of Indian
secularism, as defined by the liberal intelligentsia at
home. Mother Teresa may have assiduously avoided
metropolitan India's highlife; but her rejection did not
prevent her from becoming the subject of fashionable
discourse in our lib-left society. There was -- and
remains -- a percentage in appropriating an icon
celebrated on canvas by none less than M F Husain. By
adopting the foreign, they were rejecting that which was
Indian -- this alone was imperative enough to ignore the
contribution by Vinoba Bhave, Acharya Sushil Muni or the
Kanchi Shankaracharya to modern Indian spiritualism.
What better proof could there have been that they were
the right choice than Newsweek, Time, The Washington
Post, The New York Times providing lavish coverage to
Mother Teresa's work?
Cynical though it may sound, Mother Teresa knew the power
of the foreign media in moulding the Indian opinion which
matters in the corridors of power. True, she steered
clear of these corridors -- but she encouraged others to
roam them in search of ways and means to further her
work. While it is true that she did not discriminate
between the high and the low, it is equally true that she
discriminated, with great deliberation, between local and
foreign media precisely for this reason.
A former colleague at The Statesman, Santosh Basak, who
doubled as the Associated Press correspondent-cum-
photographer in Calcutta, was asked to file a report on
Mother Teresa after she returned home from her first
spell in hospital. At the Mother House, he found a crowd
of local mediapersons jostling for a quote and a shot.
The Statesman photographer and reporter were there, too.
Mother Teresa refused to make an appearance; a nun came
out and told the scribes that "Mother sends you her
blessings.'' Period.
Basak sent in his 'other' visiting card, the one which
described him as an AP correspondent. Within minutes, he
was ushered into Mother Teresa's room.
That evening The Statesman had neither a photograph nor a
report, but AP had both.
As in life, so in death. An item in one of the Sunday
papers quoted Indian photographers bitterly complaining
about how the Missionaries of Charity discriminated
between them and the foreign paparazzi. The report also
quotes a Calcutta-based photographer as saying that these
double standards were evident even when Mother Teresa was
alive: "We got a 'God bless you, my son' but they got the
exclusive photographs!"
One such ''exclusive'' photograph appeared in a little-
known, now defunct magazine called L'Assaur, the
propaganda organ of the ruthless dictator Jean-Claude
Duvalier, better known as Baby 'Doc' Duvalier. It shows
Mother Teresa holding hands with the despot's wife. The
accompanying report quotes her as paying lavish tributes
to the man (from whom she had just received the 'Legion
of Honour') who had to later flee Haiti in the face of
the wrath of his oppressed people.
There are also those uncomfortable facts, but facts
nonetheless, of Mother Teresa accepting donations from
Charles Keating, later charged with massive fraud, and
Robert Maxwell, who paid the bills of his unrestrained
debauchery with money pilfered from pension funds.
Mother Teresa, of course, had a perfect explanation for
all this, and much more -- just as she had for the
unseemly spat with Dominique Lapierre over the TV serial
based on her life for which she accepted a hefty
cheque... which fact came to light years after the
payment was made. She was an unabashed servant of God and
felt no qualms about the means so long as the end was
justified -- in her case, caring for the poor, the dying
and homeless. And so long as God's deed was done, nothing
else mattered.
She was no social worker trying to change society nor an
activist ushering in a revolution. She was a plain,
though not simple, representative of the Catholic church,
a zealous missionary untainted by thoughts other than
that of Christ.
Mother Teresa herself never made any attempt to hide this
fact; on the contrary, she would emphatically state she
was no social worker. "There is always the danger that we
may become only social workers or just do the work for
the sake of the work,'' she told Malcolm Muggeridge. But
by reaching out to the poor, she was reaching out to
Christ.
It was this devotion to her chosen calling that made her
see ''something beautiful in poverty and suffering''. Her
successor, Sister Nirmala, was merely repeating what
Mother Teresa believed all her life when she said at her
first media conference that ''poverty is a gift of God''.
That the poor should accept their poverty with
''contentment''.
It is in this acceptance that the road to Christian
salvation lies. And Mother Teresa practised this with
full earnestness. Like a good missionary, she was
interested in saving the souls of the dying, the
destitute and the homeless from eternal damnation, not in
saving their bodies from death and decay.
Tragically, a life spent in the service of Christ and the
furtherance of Christian faith was confused as a life
dedicated in the service of society. It was this attempt
to secularise Mother Teresa's work and her mission, to
coopt her into metropolitan India's secular highlife,
that resulted in Saturday's state funeral with its
attendant pomp and glitter, and its live coverage by
Doordarshan. For the first time, official India went into
mourning for a person religious, and the official media
was used to propagate a doctrine that is definitely not
secular.
In a sense, in their eagerness to convert Mother Teresa
in death into what she definitely was not in life, the
secular intelligentsia has minimised her contribution to
the Catholic faith. Worse, a great wrong has been
committed against indigenous Indians like Vinobha Bhave
and the Kanchi Shankaracharya.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the
educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Panchaang for September 2, 1999:
Pramathin Nama Samvatsare Dakshinaya Jivana Ritau
Singha Mase Krishna Pakshe Guru Vasara Yuktayam
Rohini Nakshatra Harshana Yog
Balava/Kaulava Karana Ashtami Yam Tithau
A previous post:
[ Subject: MOTHER TERESA - What is the truth?
[ From: address.below...@web.site (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
[ Message-ID: <Bharat-1729.990...@news.mantra.com>
[ Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 17:31:01 UTC
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A message to me at the Free Republic:
- To: Jai
I don't post these things to be a hater, just to tell the
truth. The truth hurts sometimes, especially when it
confronts deeply held beliefs. The Myth surrounding
Mother Theresa is one of those deep-ly held beliefs. Here
is something from someone who actually investigated
Theresa.Here is the link to the site that has this
information.
The myth created in 1969 by Malcolm Muggeridge has been
fiercely protected and amplified by the world’s
wealthiest and mightiest—but with not inconsiderable help
from Mother Teresa herself. If you want to know about the
real Mother Teresa, you may read some sample chapters of
my book
The Mother of All Myths
It is relevant that I am Calcuttan born, bred and
educated. Please note that my work is factual and wholly
evidence-based. I am neither a leftist nor a Hindu, hence
my brief is neither ideological nor religious. But THE
CELEBRATION OF UNTRUTH SHOULD NOW STOP
Please enter any comments you may have about this site to
Aroup Chatterjee. Include your e-mail address if you wish
to be contacted.
DEPOSITION BEFORE THE COMMITTEE FOR
BEATIFICATION/CANONISATION OF MOTHER TERESA
Being a lay person not versed in ecclesiastical
procedures, I am not eminently suited to make a formal or
technical deposition before the Committee. However, I
have had a keen interest in Mother Teresa for the last
few years and have researched her operations, perhaps
more thoroughly than anyone else in the world. And, as
somebody born, brought up and educated in Calcutta, I
feel I am in a unique situation to offer evidence to the
Committee. The Committee may summon me at any time to
appear personally before it to offer evidence. I also put
my audio visual evidence at the disposal of the Committee
should it want to consult them.
Over the years I have been dismayed at the discrepancy
between Mother Teresa's words and her deeds, and here I
present some of them. Mother Teresa had said many
thousands of times in her life that she "pick[ed] up"
people from the streets of Calcutta. She expounded on it
at length in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Her order
did (and does) not "pick up" destitutes from Calcutta's
streets. They do not provide an ambulance service for the
city's poorest of the poor. If one rings the Kalighat
home for the dying destitute, one is told curtly to ring
102 (the Calcutta Corporation ambulance line) so that a
Corporation vehicle would bring the destitute to
Kalighat.
I believe that Mother Teresa had deliberately misled the
world in her assertions about "picking up" destitutes
from the streets of Calcutta in order to bolster her own
image and that of her faith. Her failure to provide
vehicles (whilst continually claiming to do so) is even
more significant because she had been donated a number of
ambulance vehicles. These are used mainly (though not
solely) as vans to ferry nuns, often to and from places
of prayer. I believe that this constitutes an abuse of
other people's trust in her.
Mother Teresa is on record in various publications
(written by her friends and followers) as having said
that her order fed 4000, 5000, 7000 or 9000 people in
Calcutta everyday (the figures are not chronologically
incremental). I do not know what she meant by feeding
that number, but the fact remains that her soup kitchens
(numbering between two and three) in Calcutta did (does)
not feed more than 300 people daily (a generous over-
estimate). The Committee should also take into account
the "food cards" that poor people must possess to obtain
ration in at least one soup kitchen. The Committee should
note that such cards are not easy to come by for the
poor, and that virtually all Christians in a particular
slum have food cards, when hardly any of the poor from
the other religions have them. This policy gives the lie
to Mother Teresa's assertions that she treated the poor
from all faiths equally. On the issue of bias toward
Catholicism, I would also like to tell the Committee that
worship inside Mother Teresa's homes is solely Catholic,
and non-Catholic worship is not at all permitted therein.
This practice should be judged in the context of a minute
proportion of the residents in her homes in Calcutta
being of the Catholic faith.I would like to draw the
Committee's attention to Mother Teresa's frequent
pronouncement: "I help a Hindu to become a better Hindu,
a Muslim to become a better Muslim....." etc. The
practice of denying poor people under her care the right
to worship their own god(s) can be judged as harsh and
demeaning.
Mother Teresa once said, "If there are poor on the moon,
we will go there." She said many times that she never
refused anybody who needed help. In reality however, her
order operated strict exclusion criteria in their
selection of who to help and who not to. Mother Teresa's
order did (does) not help anybody, no matter how poor or
helpless, who had a family member of any kind -- what
they term a "family case". (That is one practice he
doesn’t like which I agree with. The family should take
care of their own first. Too bad we don’t do that here
with welfare)
One of Mother Teresa's slogans had been ,"Bring me that
unwanted child." In her Nobel Prize speech she said, "Let
us bring the child back. .......What have we done for the
child? ...........Have we really made the children
wanted?" If the Committee examines what Mother Teresa had
done for street children (in Calcutta), it may find that
she fell short of optimal standard. Despite her
assertions, she did not operate an "open door" policy at
her homes for the poor, including for poor children. A
very poor and very ill child would not be offered help
unless the parents signed (or thumb-printed) a form of
renunciation signing over the rights of the child to her
organisation. I have video evidence of such a case
happening on the doorstep of Mother Teresa's
orphanage.(Is that charity? “Sign over your child to us
or we let them starve!!!”?)
The Committee may also want to interview street children
from around Mother House who were repeatedly reported to
the police by Mother Teresa's nuns for "pestering"
foreigners who came to visit the "living saint". I have
video interviews with such children, which the Committee
may like to consult.
In her famous letter written in 1978 to the then Indian
Prime Minister Morarji Desai in protest against the
curbing of Christian missionary activities, Mother Teresa
mentioned that she operated "102 centres" of natural
family in Calcutta. The Committee should heed that such
centres do not exist. The Committee should also note that
in her Nobel Prize speech Mother Teresa had said that in
6 years in Calcutta there were "61,273 babies less" born
because of her organisation's natural family planning
activities. There is no basis whatever for this
statistic, and it was disingenuous of Mother Teresa to
mention it in her Nobel Prize speech.
In the April 1996 issue of the US magazine Ladies Home
Journal, Mother Teresa said that she wanted to die like
the poor in her home for the dying destitute in Kalighat.
This is a very outrageous statement indeed. By then she
had had numerous in-patient medical treatments in some of
the most expensive clinics around the world. This
includes the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California and
the Gemelli Hospital in Rome. She also had numerous
treatments at Calcutta's Woodlands and Belle Vue Clinics,
which are outside the reach of 99% of India's population.
She also received (on numerous occasions) sophisticated
and expensive cardiac treatments at Calcutta's Birla
Heart Institute.
When Mother Teresa died, she was surrounded in her
bedroom by sophisticated and expensive cardiac equipment,
which had been specially fitted for her. Such privilege
is usually granted to kings, presidents and dictators.
Whether such exclusive facilities befit a future Saint is
for the Committee to decide, but I would ask it to take
note of the wide discrepancy between Mother Teresa's
deeds and her pronouncements. In 1984 Mother Teresa
(publicly) declined the offer of cataract surgery from
the St Francis Medical Centre in Pittsburgh, USA, telling
the media that she could not possibly accept the £5000
treatment; but the very next year she had the same
surgery (which cost even more) in St Vincent's Hospital ,
New York.
I think Mother Teresa (or anybody else) should receive
the best possible medical treatment, but she utterly
failed giving her residents (at least in Calcutta) the
minimum dignity and treatment -- despite her vast
resources. The residents at Kalighat were denied beds --
they were forced to lie on hammocks, known by her order
as "pallets". They were not allowed to get up from their
pallets and stretch themselves. They are denied visits
from friends and relatives -- indeed they would not be
admitted in the first place if they had any relatives.
They are forced to defaecate and urinate communally. They
are given only the simplest possible treatments, such as
simple painkillers for the intractable pain of terminally
ill residents. Gloves and more importantly, needles are
routinely re-used when deadly diseases are rife within
this population. It has to be borne in mind that the home
for the dying in Calcutta is a very small operation,
catering to less than 100 people -- is it not legitimate
to expect a minimum decent standard for these few people?
What does the Committee think?
Except for adequate and simple food, the regime in the
home is very harsh indeed -- some would call it
dehumanising; apart from the above points mentioned, I
would like to draw attention of the Committee to the
compulsory shaving of the heads of residents, including
of female ones. The Committee should take cognisance of
the particular importance Indian women (however poor or
destitute) attach to long hair.
One could perhaps overlook the medical facilities at
Kalighat (although the Committee should not perhaps
ignore such dismal standards from a woman with such
resources) but where Mother Teresa failed was in
providing minimum "Love" and dignity for her residents,
despite her numerous claims that she did so. Mother
Teresa's motto had been "You did it to me", implying the
suffering of Jesus; she said many times how "beautiful"
suffering and pain were. However she had one standard for
herself and another one for her residents. She herself
had never declined painkillers or anaesthetics.
Mother Teresa, although protesting to live a life of
utter humility and suffering, frequently travelled the
world in the luxury class of aeroplanes, which is outside
of the reach of all but the super wealthy. Granted she
did not pay for her travels (the airlines usually did),
but I believe her travels were a waste of resources,
undertaken as they were mostly for religious purposes.
The majority of her journeys -- including the last
foreign travel of her life that began in May 1997 -- were
to oversee the vow taking of her nuns. She would also
travel frequently to the Vatican to meet up with the pope
-- indeed on most of her international travels she would
break journey at the Vatican, sometimes twice -- onward
and return. Can the Committee justify such frequent and
expensive travels for reasons of religion by a woman who
always claimed that she was utterly devoted to the cause
of the poor? Occasionally when on board the first class
section of an aeroplane, Mother Teresa would ask for food
to be given her so that she could take them to the poor.
This would impress those around her and would imply that
she never did anything that would detract from the cause
of the poor -- thereby she would manage to camouflage the
real purpose of her luxurious travels which were
unnecessary, at least for the interests of the poor. I
would urge the Committee to take into account Mother
Teresa's affectations which were adopted (perhaps
unwittingly) to cause deception and bolster image.
Although always protesting that she knew nothing about
politics, Mother Teresa voted in elections in India, as
acknowledged by the Catholic author Eileen Egan in one of
Mother Teresa's official biographies Such A Vision of the
Street. She also made sure that her nuns all voted. Here
again, we are getting a discord between words and deeds.
In the matter of politics, the most serious issue that
can raised about Mother Teresa's actions was over her
support of the State of Emergency in India (1975 - 77).
This was a time when democratic rights were suspended in
India and thousands of activists (both social and
political) were detained without trial. Other crimes,
much more heinous, were committed by the erstwhile
government. The Committee should take particular note of
the forced sterilisation programmes (of poor men) that
were undertaken during this period. And yet, Mother
Teresa issued the State of Emergency a certificate of
approval (acknowledged in the above official biography)
to help her friend the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
The Committee should decide if such action befits a
potential Saint. The Committee should particularly
consider the way Mother Teresa intervened in politics in
this instance and compare it with her (political)
intervention during the passage of the Freedom of
Religion Bill in the Indian parliament in 1978. In the
first instance when human rights were threatened, she
aided and abetted the powers that were threatening them;
in the second instance when Catholic rights were
threatened she made a strident protest. One could not
have criticised her if she had remained silent on both
occasions.
The Committee should also take into account Mother
Teresa's wooing of the media, which was often selective.
There are a lot of media persons (primarily in India) who
may testify to that effect. I have interviews with such
people which the Committee may like to consult. I am
aware that the help of the media is essential in the
running of an international organisation such as the
Missionaries of Charity and I certainly do not think it
was unreasonable of Mother Teresa to enlist such help,
but she always publicly maintained that she detested
publicity.
The word "saint" in the broad sense implies a person who
is uniquely kind and charitable; somebody above meanness
and pettiness, somebody who does not publicise their own
deeds and achievements, at least does not exaggerate
them. Mother Teresa was a kind and charitable person, but
whether she was an exceptional in this regard is a matter
for the Committee to decide. I strongly urge the
Committee to not simply be guided by what she said, but
look beyond that. She was an exceptional Catholic --
indeed much (if not most) of the resources of her
organisation was spent on religious activities, such as
in the training of nuns, novices, Brothers and priests,
and in the upkeep of establishments which are exclusively
nunneries and Brothers' houses. When Mother Teresa told
journalists (as she did very often during her life) how
many establishments she ran around the world, she never
made it clear that a large number of these housed nuns
and Brothers and were not homes for the poor.
In this context, Mother Teresa's fund raising from people
of dubious reputation needs to be mentioned. To give an
example, in 1991 she received a very large sum of money
from Charles Keating, who had stolen most or all of it
from the American public, many of them people of modest
means. After Keating's arrest, Mother Teresa steadfastly
refused to even acknowledge requests from the authorities
to return the money. Did she think that she was above
earthly laws? If the money had been returned, some of
Keating's poor investors who had been deceived could have
been repaid. Mother Teresa's logic was that she was using
rich people's ill-gotten money to help the poor. Such
logic is perverse, not only because she was knowingly
handling stolen money, but also because much of that
money was being spent not on the poor but for the
nurturing of her faith.
If the Committee wants to confer sainthood on Mother
Teresa for being an exceptional Catholic, then no doubt
such honour is deserved. If on the other hand, sainthood
is something the Committee would confer on somebody who
is also more than ordinarily honest, "humble", dedicated
to the poor, free of falsehoods and above all a person of
unique integrity, then in my opinion Mother Teresa falls
short of a being a shining example.
Finally I would ask the Committee whether it would do
justice to the memory and spirit of Mother Teresa -- who
had such visceral opposition to abortion in any
circumstance -- to be called "Saint Teresa of Calcutta",
for Calcutta is one of the world's most pro abortion
cities, where hundreds of institutions (one of them not
that many yards from Mother House) offer abortion
(virtually) on demand.
--------------------------
Deposition submitted by
Aroup Chatterjee
21 February 1998
Posted on 09/02/1999 09:04:19 PDT by RaceBannon
Source of the above -
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a37c9aca55496.htm
A previous post:
[ Subject: Re: Mother Terrorisa's Mission Illusion
[ From: address.below...@web.site (Dr. Jai Maharaj)
[ Message-ID: <Bharat-0544.990...@news.mantra.com>
[ References: <19990221212024.00965.00001...@ng-fc1.aol.com>
[ X-Url: http://www.flex.com/~jai
[ Date: 22 Feb 1999
I am one of the most vocal critics of the Christian missionaries
who perpetrate forcible conversions, and the destructive aspects of
Christianity, but I have met Mother Theresa on more than one
occasion and can attest to the fact that she was a very kind and
caring person. At times, she herself rebelled against the
tyrannical dictates of organized Christianity, the Church, and
acted according to what she herself thought was the best thing to
do.
Jai Maharaj
Jyotishi, Vedic Astrologer
http://www.flex.com/~jai
Om Shanti
In article <19990221212024.00965.00001...@ng-fc1.aol.com> ,
alkakpa...@aol.com (ALKAKPATEL) posted:
>
> > Title: Mother Teresa's House of Illusions
> > Author: Susan Shields
> > Publication: Free Inquiry magazine
> > Date: Volume 18, Number 1.
> >
> > How She Harmed Her Helpers As Well As Those They `Helped'
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > For nearly a decade, Susan Shields was a Missionaries of Charity
> > sister. She played a key role in Mother Teresa's organization
> > until she resigned.
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Council for Secular Humanism Web Site
> > Monday, 12 January 1998, 00:00:00 GMT
> > David Noelle / ad...@SecularHumanism.org
>
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the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Panchaang for September 2, 1999:
Pramathin Nama Samvatsare Dakshinaya Jivana Ritau
Singha Mase Krishna Pakshe Guru Vasara Yuktayam
Rohini Nakshatra Harshana Yog
Balava/Kaulava Karana Ashtami Yam Tithau
Jai Maharaj
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Om Shanti
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