Mother Teresa: Blessed Billionaire, Holy Hypocrite

Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.

— Christopher Hitchens

The Catholic Church is in a position to truly help the poor. If they wanted to, they could feed the 14.2 million hungry Filipinos for more than a month. If they wanted to, they could feed the 1.88 million Filipinos who almost always have nothing to eat for almost a year. If they wanted to, they could send a significant amount to the victims of Sendong — a donation that would exceed even the total of their many second collections — greatly helping the victims recover, rebuild, and prepare themselves for potential disasters.

But it seems like the CBCP doesn’t want to. Whatever their motivation for hoarding wealth, we know that their billions are kept invested in corporations, helping rich businessmen become even richer. And as their wealth continues to grow, the poor and hungry continue to suffer.

Well-meaning Catholics could notice this selfishness and ask: “Why can’t the CBCP be more like Mother Teresa?” Well, they already are. And based on their many similarities, no one else would make a better patron saint for the CBCP.

The CBCP claims that theirs is a Church of the Poor. This is a lie. The Catholic Church is a Church of Poverty. What’s the difference? The former would get the poor out of poverty; the latter would keep them in it. This is best exemplified by a true saint of poverty: Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.

Saint of Suffering

Who should Catholics emulate in serving the poor? Next to Jesus, the top answer Catholics would give is probably “Mother Teresa.” She has been honored by both secular and religious organizations with awards and adoration. Beatified in 2003, she is only one miracle short of canonization. It may come as a surprise to many that she isn’t already a saint, and most Catholics would agree that she deserves to be one.

Billionaires Mother Teresa and Cardinal Sin having a good laugh.

But this is only because what they know of her life is even less than what they know about the Catholic Church. In the same way that many are ignorant of the Church’s past atrocities and present scandals most Catholics remain unaware of Mother Teresa’s unsaintly actions.

These actions are based on what a former member of her order called a flawed “theology of suffering.” In Mother Teresa’s words: “The most beautiful gift for a person is that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ.” Therefore, the Catholic who suffers the most is closest to Christ. When you remove suffering, you remove Christ. Instead of minimizing their suffering, Mother Teresa ensured it. Alleviating suffering, let alone eliminating it, was out of the question. Seen from this perspective, her behavior toward her patients makes sense.

Instead of curing them, Mother Teresa gave the bare minimum of treatment, resulting in suffering for most and death for some. She gave insufficient or outdated medicine, reused old syringes, and gave cold baths to all patients, even those who could find comfort in a warm one. She’d refuse to install elevators for the disabled, even when the city government offered to pay for it. Instead of hiring competent doctors, she’d rely on incompetent volunteers because she believed strongly that ignorance was more valuable than expertise (Livemore 93, 156).

Instead of being true hospitals or hospices, the establishments run by Mother Teresa were more like prisons at best: The patients, if they were well enough to escape, probably would. At worst, they were torture chambers. She’d refuse to give painkillers even to dying patients who were suffering unbearable pain. Instead of using painkillers, she’d comfort patients by saying, “You are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you.” One poor patient replied, “Then tell your Jesus to stop kissing me.”

Holy Hypocrite

What makes all this worse is the fact that Mother Teresa had the resources to make things better. Estimates of donations reach the millions — even billions — of dollars. Unfortunately, we can never be sure. In the same way that Mother Teresa’s atrocities remain a secret, Missionaries of Charity remains the only charitable organization in India that refuses to reveal how much money they have and how they spend it:

Missionaries doesn’t keep a tab on the financial transactions that take place. No one other than the sisters knows where the money that is donated is spent.

One such sister is Susan Shields, a former member of Mother Teresa’s order for nine and a half years (emphasis mine):

Our bank account was already the size of a great fortune and increased with every postal service delivery. Around $50 million had collected in one checking account in the Bronx… The donations rolled in and were deposited in the bank, but they had no effect on our ascetic lives or on the lives of the poor we were trying to help… For Mother, it was the spiritual well-being of the poor that mattered most. [Hitchens 31]

That million-dollar bank account in the Bronx was only one of the many bank accounts owned by Mother Teresa around the world. She has admitted to establishing 500 convents in over a hundred countries. So it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Mother Teresa was running a billion-dollar business.

And while the convents and bank accounts benefit from more donations, her hospices remain unfit even for the poorest of the poor — definitely unfit for a billionaire like Mother Teresa. Instead of using one of her own establishments when she herself got sick, she flew first class on Air India to a clinic in the United States.

This hypocrisy pervades her entire order. Dr. Collette Livemore, once known as Sister Tobit, served as a Missionary of Charity for eleven years. But she was disillusioned by many experiences, such as one that she had in Manila (emphasis mine):

One day, when we were having afternoon tea, there was an urgent knock at the door. The portress reported, “A little boy is having trouble breathing.” I started to get up because I had access to the Tahanan medicines and thought I should go to help.

“Sit down, Tobit [Livemore], there is no hurry. We are not running an emergency hospital,” the superior reminded me. I thought to myself, Is afternoon tea more important than assisting the boy and giving comfort to his parents? Yet I obediently waited until after tea to get some salbutamol to relieve his distress. [Livemore 105]

Order of Obedience

Livemore continued to struggle. “I still did not fully accept that obedience to our superior considered more important than our service to the poor.” But she continued trying to help despite the order’s strict rules. Once, she tried to aid a dying child but was scolded for it because no new admissions were supposed to be made on a Thursday. For actions like these, she was removed from an important position.

You had to keep quiet, you had to suppress your intellect. Mother said that God uses the weak to confound the strong and the unintelligent to confound the knowledgeable, so it was almost lack of faith to try and use your head.

She was replaced by someone who was more obedient and, well, more ignorant:

Some of the superiors in the MCs were thrown into positions of power with little education or preparation, yet they were responsible for hundreds of people and many resources. Because Mother believed that God used the weak to confound the strong and intelligent, the Society acted almost as if preparing someone for a managerial role betrayed a lack of faith. The Society showed the same lack of logic by expecting God to make up for ignorance and lack of training in the medical work.

Despite this, Livemore continued to do her best to help. She believed that “if you see another person suffering, it becomes your business right then and there. You can’t just turn away and pretend that you don’t see.”

Blessed Billionaire

So who should Catholics emulate in serving the poor? I hope you agree: Dr. Collette Livemore would be a far better answer than Mother Teresa. Actually, so would most decent human beings.

Like Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, the CBCP claims to be on a mission of service to the poor. Both use this claim to collect millions in donations. Both have succeeded. Not in their missions, but in collecting millions.

I encourage all Catholics to ask Mother Teresa to pray for the MC and the CBCP to use their billions in service of the poor. It wouldn’t erase all the evil she committed on Earth, but at least such a miracle would finally make her a saint in Heaven. Unless, of course, the Vatican has an issue with canonizing an atheist.

30 comments

  1. If you have personally kown Mother Teresa then, I might have the time to read your story. But sorry to say, you have neither met her, had gone to live in the convent, nor have even visited the many charitable institutions. So please unless you personally know the person. Please stop this rude accusations. Unless you also don’t want to be accused when you yourself are dead.

  2. What do you expect from an Atheist, Mother Teresa kept no money for herself. We all have fee will and as long as each of us have free will there will be pain and suffering in the world. If the rich and famous spent as much time with their treasure and time on the poor we could make a large dent in it, but as long as The EVIL ONE has followers poverty will never be eliminated.

    • “so may I know what did you do to help the poor?” – Irrelevant. The answer to this question neither proves nor disproves the claims of the article.

  3. Sometimes when people open their mouths or write, they tend to think that they know everything and even know better than others. Spend a quiet monent and ask what am i doing not critizice others for their failures. Just give it a thought: why is it Christ cane and the poor remains we still get sick n die, why? If one knows the answer one will not ecen dare to judge the failures of others.

  4. Spot on. For deeper reading check out The Missionary Position, by Hitchens.

    The documentary, Hells Angel, is an eye opening piece as well.

  5. It's not an unusual experience amongst religious people, it's what St. John of the Cross called 'the dark night of the soul.

    *Before I end my venting…I need to tell you that I stopped praying at one time.It was my DARKEST TIME.
    so i will pray once again,pray so that the people of the world pray.No matter with me or without me.*
    -Teresa

    What she would probably have been mourning was the loss of that direct, powerful experience, but still have believed in the more diffuse, indirect experience.

    • //What she would probably have been mourning was the loss of that direct, powerful experience, but still have believed in the more diffuse, indirect experience. //

      We have a word for that. It's called delusion.

  6. > I have the impression that intellectual (modern medical) solutions are an insult to their faith and their traditional way of doing things. But who could blame them? I'm sure they've read about someone taking a lump of mud and putting it in a blind man's to eye to restore his vision. Or curing a leper with a single sleight of hand. Or what about raising the dead back to life? Jesus was a faith healer himself who had an attractive agenda: free health care for the poor (and the ignorant). He was a superstar, at least by Mother Teresa's standards.

    http://forbesindia.com/article/on-assignment/moth

  7. Hemley Gonzales, who runs a real estate business in Miami, reached Kolkata in December 2008 and stayed for two months:

    “I was shocked to see the negligence. Needles were washed in cold water and reused and expired medicines were given to the inmates. There were people who had chance to live if given proper care,” says Hemley. He narrates incidents of an untrained volunteer wrongly feeding a paralysed inmate, who choked to his death; and another where an infected toe of an inmate was cut without anesthesia. “I have decided to go back to Kolkata to start a charity that will be called ‘Responsible Charity.’ Each donation will be made public and professional medical help will be given,” says Gonzalez.

  8. A priest sermoned about the crimes against nature that the people in Cagayan and Iligan have supposedly committed, and that the deaths of thousands was a result of god's fury. Is he a dimwit or what? Instead of stating facts he moralized, taking CATHOLIC MYSTICISM at a windspeed faster than Sendong can travel. And yes, bishops and priests alike have summoned a "bigger" donation for its 2nd collection, but nowhere have I seen truckloads of goods near a church. Malls, offices, TV stations, and private businesses must have taken the Church's place as a defender of the afflicted. What a shame.
    These experiences taught me that scientific enlightenment is a more potent cure for our country's ills, as in the case between Livemore and Mother Teresa, which serves as a metaphor on the ongoing battle between secularists and freethinkers versus the CBCP. May this article and this website as a whole, impart on its readers that there is SOMETHING GREATER than being a Catholic after all: applying a practical solution to humanity's woes.

    Now don't start discussing what's moral.

    • this is the church mentality when it comes to donations.:

      a catholic donates
      RCC: yay the church donated!

      a secularist donated
      RCC: yay we convinced him to donate!

  9. What's riveting is that Catholics (including me) are taught from an early age on, that to question religious authority is in fact a rebellion towards the divine, hence, you don't question the credibility of virgin births. Or the resurrecion. Or even that of Crimen sollicitationis. Nor the infallibility of the pope. You go on and believe your parish priest's sermon, such as when mine had a homily about the Japanese tsunami, he attributed it to a god who punished Japan for its atrocities during World Wars I and II, and that the people deserved such calamity. He must have skipped geography classes (if the seminary ever had one) because tectonic plates within the pacific ring of fire was responsible for the catastrophe. Not god. Not the Japanese. And neither is the recent tragedy in Mindanao.

  10. // "You had to keep quiet, you had to suppress your intellect. Mother said that God uses the weak to confound the strong and the unintelligent to confound the knowledgeable, so it was almost lack of faith to try and use your head." – Livemore //

    This statement seems to be straight out from the Middle Ages! Observing Catholic doctrine throughout history, you don't have to use logic or reason because all you need is faith on skydaddy to get through life's bullshit. Scientific inquiry is not welcome. Practical solutions are shunned. Suffering and poverty are a way of life and those so-called billionare bishops (nuns) are doing a marvelous job in showing an exemplary lifestyle befitting of a hypocrite.

    • not really sure, since she is dead and all, so no one can really confirm. but in her letters; all signs point to atheism… the closeted, nihilistic, nietzchian version of it.

      if you read her letters…
      //"Where is my faith?" she wrote. "Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness… If there be God — please forgive me."

      Eight years later, she was still looking to reclaim her lost faith.

      "Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal," she said.

      As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she said, was a mask.

      "What do I labor for?" she asked in one letter. "If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true." //

      quite frankly most of us went through the same thing. i was depressed, angry and lost for over a month. but i, nor the people here, did not end up nihilistic like she and niestzche did. i'm not surprised either, there are quite a number of atheist clergy members and most do not react well, when they lose faith. which is why the Clergy Project exists.

      one of the FFF members was a seminarista, he could shed light on this phenomena. i also have a few friends who did the same thing and i find it very interesting how that happens.

      • Oh, O.K. That's interesting, actually. I read about Mother Teresa's doubts, but never thought it was to the extent it now seems to be. However, I think she more accurately qualifies as an agnostic.

        Ofcourse, I scarcely know anything about her, so any Catholic apologist is welcome to correct me.

        • in her case we can apply the age-old practice of: "It Takes One to Know One." a religious gaydar so to speak.

          as i said; her symptoms are a classic case of the turning point of a theist to an irreligious person. lost, depression, anger, sorrow etc. until you accept who you are. I myself settled for being agnostic and embraced it. never felt happier.

          given her position, it would have been very hard. she was forced to keep up her image. the closets should know this well. I would not want to experience that again, for decades like she did no less.

    • St.Thomas (the doubter)-The doubting and suffering Thomas was the first of all to see the divinity of Christ.No one of the other apostles had ever called the Lord "God" (like St.Thomas did)with such significance.
      Mama Teresa died as a Catholic and millions loved her.

      • //Mama Teresa died as a Catholic and millions loved her. //
        A Catholic deeply in doubt of her own faith:
        http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/23/evening
        "In a rare interview in 1986, Mother Teresa told CBS News she had a calling, based on unquestioned faith.

        As for being loved by millions, that doesn't say anything about the validity of her works, nor does it nullify the fact that her hospices were needlessly prolonging the suffering of their patients, out of a misguided sense of faith.

        "They are all children of God, loved and created by the same heart of God," she said.

        But now, it has emerged that Mother Teresa was so doubtful of her own faith that she feared being a hypocrite, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.

        In a new book that compiles letters she wrote to friends, superiors and confessors, her doubts are obvious.

        Shortly after beginning work in Calcutta's slums, the spirit left Mother Teresa.

        "Where is my faith?" she wrote. "Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness… If there be God — please forgive me."

        Eight years later, she was still looking to reclaim her lost faith.

        "Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal," she said.

        As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she said, was a mask.

        "What do I labor for?" she asked in one letter. "If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.""

  11. On a more intellectual note, you never fail to amaze me with your extensive research and overwhelming information about the lies, hypocrisy, and brainwashing done by the Catholic Church. I can't imagine if this article gets into the mainstream public for general viewing, because in a "predominantly" Catholic country like ours, they'll probably burn you at the stake for your radical views, let alone for your balls in exposing the bigotry of Mother Teresa. Millions loved her, you know…

    Your tenacity is inspiring. It takes a different brand of guts to write something like this.

  12. Way to go Red! I'd bet on my car insurance that another commenter is up to his eyeballs making drafts to refute this article.

    Freethinkers VS _________ —–> Round 1.

    Let's dance!

  13. I haven’t donated to the church in a long-time now. I can’t stand how they keep on building expensive and lavish structures off of the poor’s donations. I mean, do we really need air-conditioned churches???

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