Why do people hate her so much?

Oh shut the fuck up baby, not everybody begins to whine at the slightest discomfort

She didn't baptize people against their will, they were asked if they wanted to before they died and if they said no they were left alone

Because she was an evil bitch.

It's not just Hitchens: other observers quickly noticed her charity houses were less about caring for people and more about converting them. She deliberately kept them barebones and lacking (despite all the money that poured in from donations) because she knew the more vulnerable a person is, the more likely they are to convert. She kept the clinics lacking because she thought suffering brought people close to God or some shit.

Yet the moment she had a health issue, she'd go to world-class hospitals. Also, reactionary cunt: "condoms and abortion are why God sends disasters". Mind you, she said this kind of shit in Third-world nations, where family planning and sexual education would be quite sensible and the appropriate response.

Mother Teresa concerned herself with the poorest of the poor. Not just the poor or those struggling to make ends meet, but those who were beyond extreme poverty. The bottom of society with no chance of achieving prosperity in this life. If she created hospitals instead of hospices, and perhaps provided state-of-the-art care, by default her facilities no longer become places for the poorest of the poor. People who are better off already would flock there, because they feel deserving of their care. Even if she changed the facilities only slightly, the people seeking care would no longer be just the poorest of the poor. In a similar vein, in my town there are two hospitals and one is known to provide better (and more expensive) care than the other. People who can afford it would go to the better hospital because they wouldn't risk "sketchy" medical care. So who goes to the sketchy place? Well, the ones who can't afford anything better.

I don't know if Mother Teresa was actively thinking about this asymmetry of information in her ministry. She just served the poor. But it's an important reality: The structure of her facilities allowed the poorest of the poor to not die alone. Any changes to her plan would have necessarily abandoned these people, unless there was a way to treat literally everyone.

t liberal hedonist

>"condoms and abortion are why God sends disasters"
this

People cannot stand to hear that they indeed put their pleasures before their responsibility.

There are free charity clinics in third world nations that offer more comprehensive care than anything Teresa offered... One observer noted the highest painkiller they had at one clinic was over the counter pain meds. Again, Teresa deliberately kept her clinics devoid of actual medical supplies and services, IN SPITE of the huge donations she received, which she instead passed on to the Vatican, rather than using said money to have at least basic and adequate supplies. She did all this because she saw these clinics as places to CONVERT people, and not to particularly help them.

According to Hitchen's book and "Shadow Saint" she had nuns ask people if they wanted to go to heaven and then secretly baptize them, or had her nuns baptize people without telling them what they were doing.

It's always funny how people will blame the church for things like STD epidemics in third world countries. If those people actually listened to what the church taught, that you shouldn't have any sex outside of marriage, then they wouldn't be having any trouble with STD's. So clearly they don't give a shit what the church teaches so why blame them for STD epidemics?

The first one is true and only if they said yes, the second isn't and I don't see how either is bad

its suffering without the capacity to overcome suffering, its a state of perpetual weakness, weakness as a cult, Christianity

Hitchens has a habit of making unsubstantiated claims so what is his source? Any sort of baptism done through trickery or force would be invalid so it would just be an empty gesture. I think nun would know that.

Nah, I'm pretty sure it's because we're talking about third worlders who are being told that God sends earthquakes if you use condoms.

>Th-the church says...
Who cares what the church says? She did it behind their back, whether or not the spell is valid is irrelevant.

It's very relevant because she would have no motivation for forcing baptisms. If you can't establish any sort of motivation or provide evidence then why do you still believe it?

>without the capacity to overcome suffering
? What is exactly the capacity to overcome suffering
You still didn't answer the question of what exactly is bad about an unknown baptism

>who are being told that God sends earthquakes if you use condoms
it seems like you're attacking the means rather than the end

uneducated peasants aren't going to be convinced by rational debate

The Christian-Autist Union sent their defense league out in full force today.

>gets BTFO
>m-muh autism
kek

finding new strengths not to be the victim, Christianity only works when suffering is in abundance, this is why the elites create wars and misery

I am not a Catholic, but what's wrong with that? It's not that she actually hurt someone by this. She poured some water on heads of some dying people.

You don't have to be a Christian to be annoyed with the blind faith given to Hitchens. I can't imagine any historian is happy with it.

>elites create war and misery to convert people

Time to lay off that crack pipe

You mean this convent of nuns didn't provide state of the art medical care and pain medication? SHES EVIL

The money she raised is kept in the vatican bank.
They benefit from her cult of suffering, and they should be held accountable for supporting her.

The Vatican runs the biggest charities in the world.

You think the Pope uses it as toilet paper?

From an AskHistorians thread. The whole thread is actually really good.

reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hn2eh/askhistorians_consensus_on_mother_theresa

She baptized Muslims and Hindus against their will.

While we as secular first worlders might say "So what, I wouldn't care if some Gypsy witch cursed me, it's all bullshit and blah blah blah", we're talking about third worlders who believe that being baptized will damn them to hell, or will cause them to face wrathful judgement by their gods, or any number of things. Ignoring "They don't want it done to them, so it shouldn't be done to them", it's an underhanded way for someone to masturbate about how pious and holy they are for spreading their faith.

It's not a very severe charge against her none the less, but that's neither here nor there.

>She baptized Muslims and Hindus against their will.

People keep asserting this without providing any evidence for it. A baptism that is forced or done through trickery would not be valid so she would have no reason for doing it.

hitchens did criticise her for some fedora-tier reasons, attacking a nun for being a theist and so on, but in other ways he kind of had a point, theres a lot of criticism against her in india itself, where all the miscelaneous crap was better known of, things like mismanagement and corruption withing the organisation and other suchlike, and leftists generaly have a thing with her, in that she promoted a sort of paliative care sort of approach, where concrete action, reform, political organisation etc... would be more to the point in actualy changing the reasons for why people are living like that in the first place

theres usualy alot about her attitude towards the people her organisation is helping, how she somehow seemd to worship the poverty, hunger and disease itself, almost treating people as holy objects whose function is precisely to suffer

this is all rather similar to the whole ghandi problem, how while on one hand he was a great leader of a non-violent resistance movement and so on and so forth, at the same time he represented the most traditionalist and conservative aspects of india, where somehow the whole point and function of low caste people is to be low caste people, never move up, never break out of the traditional system

Wtf are you talking about, what's your source on this?

read this, you blind zealot

This, I've read articles of professional philosophers, scientists & more who say Dawkins, Hitchens & more shame them. What surprised me initially was that there were plenty of negative reviews from atheists too.

>What surprised me initially was that there were plenty of negative reviews from atheists too.

thats not suprising tho, new atheism is philosophicaly on the level of agitprop demagogy, one would think the same ways of thinking, character traits and attitudes that make someone atheist in the first place would also make them notice when a whole 'school of thought' is naive and ideologicaly biased

maybe this isnt the thread for this but it would be kinda interesting to sort out atheists on the basis of why they are atheists or how they became atheists, there would probably be some stark differences betveen say, someone who is atheist because at some point the obvious absurdity of reality and discrepancy betveen it and any one religious set of stories just got him to the spontaneous realisation that god isnt real, and someone who is atheist because he got informed that the theory of evolution is prooven and true and therefore accepted the only logical and proper conclusion that a creator god does not exist

>What surprised me initially was that there were plenty of negative reviews from atheists

In regards to religion I don't know much about Hitchens but Dawkins is a truly terrible voice for atheism. He says so many stupid things. In his book he actually tried to use the "who created god" question to refute Aquinas.

because the churches attitudes and beliefs on things like condoms have effect on the avalability and use of condoms, even if at the same time its attitudes and beliefs on fucking around dont realy have effect on the avalability and practice of unprotected sex

The church isn't stopping anyone from airdropping condoms into those countries. It's unreasonable to expect the church to personally hand them out.

>asking the church to go against their beliefs because "niggers deserve to get laid :(((("

If you want to hand out condoms to chimps you are free to do so yourself

dont think you get how religion works

It seems like the main issue to attack Mother Teresa on is whether or not the abysmal conditions of her hospices were in her power to improve. According to some of the nuns that worked there, there were attempts to start needle sterilization, warm baths, and access to higher quality painkillers (they only had aspirin) but these measures were all blocked by Teresa. I can only guess her motivations, maybe it was logistics. But she did say some genuinely creepy shit about the presence of Christ being in the suffering of the poor. One doesn't like to imagine she furnished an environment of suffering to fulfill her spiritual needs, but unfortunately there's room to suspect that.

Her politics are more controversial. For Instance, opposing on every level she could state sanctioned abortion and proliferation of birth control, often in impoverished countries with deadly overpopulation issues. It would be nice if abstinence preaching worked but it seems condoms are much more effective. This was a matter of heaven and hell for Teresa though, so she was unable to budge to reason.

Also of interest is her beatification. The church claims need a miracle here and there after the person's death in order to confirm them. Teresa has had one, supposedly in tbe miraculous recovery of a cancer pstient, a claim which even the patient's husband disagrees with. It does appear that this process was expedited for the sake of Teresa in order to polish up the reputation of the church with a beloved figure. Particularly in the wake of the sex abuse scandal, but of course that isn't her fault.

I guess it depends on where you're coming from but her actions can be taken as an attempt to keep the poor wretched and miserable, with her goal first and foremost being the expansion of the church, not necessarily on improving conditions. It entirely depends on how you feel about Christian morality.

>But she did say some genuinely creepy shit about the presence of Christ being in the suffering of the poor.

I don't see what's wrong with this. It seems like standard Catholic talk and I don't see how thinking this would reasonably lead to one believe that suffering was necessary to be with Christ.

how would that work? unless the church has the ability to set into law a prohibition of condoms all they can do is advise against it, If a person was serious about being a hedonist fuck, he can buy all the condoms he likes.

as long as there's demand, there will be people willing to supply it.

I religion, god is above law.

If god is so important to those people then why aren't they following all of gods law?

Because Hitchens wrote a book with little to no citations, and atheists, Catholic haters and other assorted Marxists jumped on it

She founded the Missionaries of Charity, which serves like 130 countries, but all the fedora keyboard warriors feel they are better people than here for some reason.

>“There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ's Passion. The world gains much from their suffering,"

Is this really standard catholic talk? I suppose then that this is the source of the discord. The sentiment that there is value in the poor being destitute.

She's describing a dying person finding peace before death, and that is whats beautiful. In that sense the world does gain when people find peace.

you people just dont get how religion works, especialy in catholic countries, especialy in third world countries, religious beliefs and attitudes have effect on all sorts of levels of society, politics, everiday life, if the church says condoms are bad every politician that wants to get close to being elected will say condoms are bad, if the church says abortion is bad, every gowerment that wants to get reelected will say abortion is bad, and you can forget about basic sex-ed, not to mention how the oppinion of the church influences the oppinions and attitudes of the general uneducated population, its not realy that complicated, i mean, its religion

you keep going at it like its some question of liberal western individualism and educated personal choice or whatever the fuck, thats not realy how humans function

The church says sex outside of marriage is bad. If people need condoms than they're not listening to the church.

its morbid, and its rather veird even for a catholic nun, the vatican didnt like it one bit either

You don't think people might need birth control even within a marriage in order to not create unsustainable families? The catholic position is that these things are always bad.

Again, if you're capable of just legislating against it, All the church can do is advise, heck a written constitution or some document that prohibits the intercession of the church with the state is ample protection enough.

if the church says condoms are bad, then they are against industrial giants who wants to sell condoms, they are against a huge group in one's population who wants sex, and they are against different ideological minded people.

let's take the Philippines for example, Its third-world and heavily catholic, yet it just passed a bill allowing the selling of contraceptives.

Religion isn't the sole political power. There are lots of factors that can determine what happens politically.

hospices talk about morbid stuff all the time, since it's role is to provide solace for the unwanted, the lame, and the dying.

It's silly to blame the church for the actions of people that aren't even listening to it. The church teaching is that all sex outside of marriage is immoral, and that contraception is immoral. If people were listening to the church there wouldn't be a problem with STDs. The church isn't stopping people from buying condoms, and they're not stopping people from using them. They just don't support it and they shouldn't blamed for people aren't even following their teachings.

Well, they at least knew how to market her and give her sainthood.

and yet they are listening to the church, every sunday and couple times a month on talk shows and other media outlets, they are listening to the church a lot, its just way easier for people to hark and obey the no condoms rule than to actualy stop fucking around, this exactly is the problem, not all religious prohibition is equaly effective, in fact they are most effective in what seem to be little things and maintaining outward apperances, but generaly do little modify basic human behavior patterns unless they are attached to some heavy dose of force and repression

but whats weird here is how you approach this, its like youre giving a logical argument about something that in the simple reality of how it is makes the argument moot - yes off course they dont listen to the church, except when they listen to the church, but why do you pretend like you dont get this, havent you lived among humans all your life?

What else could you expect from somebody that gave up everything and dedicated their life to the dying?

It's not about whether condoms/abortions are good or bad for society; it's about doing what the church says.

See here: >It would be nice if abstinence preaching worked but it seems condoms are much more effective.
This user sees a problem, overpopulation, lack of resources, children not getting adequate resources, STDs, etc, and he weighs the options to prevent them: Go against the single most basic instinct all life has evolved to have, or a rubber sheath on your dangle. He sees the latter is more effective at stopping the problem, so it should be done.

But the you have someone, like The problems are not at all overpopulation, lack of resources, children not getting adequate resources, STDs, etc, those are entirely irrelevant to whether or not condom usage is good or bad. The problem is that people aren't listening to the church. If the Pope said "Condoms are good, wear one all the time", would be ranting and raving about how pious he is for quadruple wrapping his pecker.

Preaching abstinence does not work, since people crave pleasures and refuse to hear anything about not following their bodily pleasures

abstinence works by definition

>If the Pope said "Condoms are good, wear one all the time", would be ranting and raving about how pious he is for quadruple wrapping his pecker.

You assume the church doesn't have a good reason to be against contraceptives. Why don't you at least try looking up their reasoning for being against it? This isn't just something that they can change on a whim. Christians are not moral relativists.

Truth is, if you truly wanted to solve the problem you'd pull out every charity out of there and forbid them from going there. But that's not considered moral; and the Church considers handing out condoms immoral; therefore you can't force them to do it.

Then maybe people should learn to rein in their urges and try to be better than baser animals

>Then maybe people should learn to rein in their urges and try to be better than baser animals

Well that's a nice idealistic solution that has no practical application.

There is absolutely nothing stopping you from going to Africa and handing condoms out and teaching them they they're good to use. Blaming the church for STD epidemics is ridiculous because the people aren't even following the churches prescribed treatment for this problem.

I wouldn't call not having unprotected sex outside of marriage idealistic.

It is pretty idealistic.

How so? That is how most of us behave already. Having unprotected sex outside of marriage is not the norm.

You're an idiot. Fidelity in marriage is a recent invention. For most of history, wives were for having children with, and prostitutes/concubines were for pleasure.

It certainly is, unless you have a tyrannical government that chops off your dick for going to a cafe with a single woman, a la Saudi Arabia, it just doesn't happen.

Most of these people probably would wrap up were it available to them but if we're talking for instance, Sub-Saharan Africa or India they lack the resources to get their own and they lack the sex education to know why it's so important. Often they don't even know how to put on condoms, that's a genuine problem in Africa right now. It's not a matter "well they could go to the corner shop and buy a pack of trojans if they're so horny", that isn't even on the table.

The church doesn't help with this matter but I would agree that it isn't their fault either. The main problem is lack of education, lack of income, and lack of government initiative on this matter. Which have far deeper roots than this thread could be capable of addressing.

Might I add that marriage was about family ties, not love.

You haven't explained how teaching monogamy and to not have unprotected sex outside of marriage is idealistic.

Because it doesn't achieve the desired effect

the church long standing advocation for monogamy didn't work?

Idealism is "the unrealistic belief in or pursuit of perfection."

How can you say that when it is the normal state of things. I don't care about the history or how things used to be, this is how things are right now. To be idealistic wouldn't it have to a change from the status quo?

Fisrts of all
>[citation needed]

Secondly, even if so then who cares? Why should I care that some stupid people believe in curses, magic, baptism and other bullshit? If she actually done that, then she was of exactly the same mindset as all these Muslims and Hindu. Why again should someone from Europe be required to abide to higher standards than others?

What the fuck are you even talking about. We don't have unprotected sex outside marriage because birth control is really easy to access. You think if it wasn't people would stop fucking? Cause it ain't never been like that my man.

>its a state of perpetual weakness
>what is being alive

>Christianity
>Cult of Weakness
Right, and I bet you complained about Le Brutal Crusades earlier today.
This is some Varg type of shit.

If you outlawed birth control (not that I support this) then yeah, people would think twice before fucking

>abstinence works by definition

its hard, or impossible, to maintain in a population, so its not realy effective

but in a sense this is similar to most such prohibitions in christian cultures

most churches today condemn certain behaviors, practices, acts, these are designated as sin, but this notion of what is a sin is then given to the population as simply a prohibition, most religious people in the world would probably equate the notion of sin with the notion of something being forbiden

forbiding such things rarely works tho, and the actual idea of sin as can be interpreted from the gospels isnt realy about prohibition at all, at least not external prohibition, rather a christian should himself prohibit things to himself, behave in ways that avoid sin, stay away from temptation and so on - in this sense abstinence functions only on a individual level, if at all, and actualy has nothing at all to do with stds or birth control, that part dosent even come into it

so realy its the difference betveen a selfimposed internal practice as a form of selfdiscipline, and the observance of external prohibition

the problem is that both are variably effective, there would be no need to prohibit a thing designated as sin if people didnt have a tendency to do exactly those things designated as such, and individual selfdiscipline cannot be applyed on the level of population unless it comes along with a ton of systematic conditioning or is ingrained and reinforced in the culture, and even then its all notoriously uneffective when it comes to things like fucking

thats kind of the point tho, not fucking around and practicing abstinence and ascetism instead is a form of spiritual practice, part of which is avoiding sin, while 'listening to the church', obeying, or pretending to obey, a external prohibition is not

neither are ways to stop stds or overpopulation, they arent even about that to begin with

They would, and the majority would keep fucking anyway. Hence the fact that right now, in countries where they don't have access to birth control, there is a non-stop festival of fucking spreading disease and producing babies people can't take care of.

>Hence the fact that right now, in countries where they don't have access to birth control

What's stopping you from changing that?

She certainly wasn't the 'angel' that the Church holds her up to be.

There is the issue of her rather questionable ties to rather corrupt political figures. For one, her praise of dictator Jean-Claude of Haiti (known for his corruption and embezzlement of state funds, as well as involvement in the drug and black market organ trade, as well as his repression). Of course, she didn't care about that: for her, it was simply good enough that he was "pro-Catholic" (nominally).

There is also the issue with her houses of charity, which were many times observed to be lacking in even the most basic of medical supplies despite generous donations. Of course, this was because Mother Theresa saw these homes not as places of healing, but of conversion to Catholicism - she herself referred to them as 'Homes of the Dying'. She glorified pain and suffering, seeing it as beautiful - quite hypocritically, she herself received quality medical care when she needed it.

You think I have the money to dump condoms out of helicopters over Calcutta? There are charities that try to provide sex ed and contraceptives but of course there's a lot of ground to cover. Not sure why you're asking me though.

Non Catholics have a very weird way of looking at saints. Nobody holds them up as angels in life. We recognize them for the flawed human beings that they were because that's what we all are.

With the way you guys blame the church its almost like you think they're stopping people from handing out condoms.

>The church teaching is that all sex outside of marriage is immoral, and that contraception is immoral. If people were listening to the church there wouldn't be a problem with STDs

Can you name a single event in history when this is actually occurred? Actual stats at that.

I'd imagine not, because for all its passion, the folly of "no sex before marriage" is that it tries to stifle the most base biological desire that we are built. The flock as well as the church are hypocrites on this matter.

Pragmatically, is it better to hope that every single follower adheres to this command, or educate them and not discourage what protection they can get.?

A parent who is strict often breeds fear or resentment in a child, and your ancient doctrine lacks the sophistication of reaching people in a more nuanced, effective manner. So yes, the Church bears some responsibility.

>Not sure why you're asking me though.
To bait out a "you're not personally doing as much good as Mother Teresa, therefore you aren't allowed to criticize her morally-ambiguous actions" probably.

>be hindu
>live a life of grinding poverty but try and care for the guy next to you so that you can have a better next life
>some old bitch baptizes you as you die
>get sent to christian hell because you lived a life of sin and worshipped idols.
ebin

>The flock as well as the church are hypocrites on this matter
In what way are they hypocrites on this?

/r/AskHistorians is strictly history though.

>& Humanities was a mistake