| The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice | 
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Sales Rank: 25143
Category: Book
Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher: Verso
Studio: Verso
Manufacturer: Verso
Label: Verso
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 98
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.3
ISBN: 185984054X
Dewey Decimal Number: 271.97
EAN: 9781859840542
ASIN: 185984054X
Publication Date: April 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, feted by politicians, the Church and the world's media, Mother Teresa of Calcutta appears to be on the fast track to sainthood. But what, asks Christopher Hitchens, makes Mother Teresa so divine? In a frank expose of the Teresa cult, Hitchens details the nature and limits of one woman's mission to the world's poor. He probes the source of the heroic status bestowed upon an Albanian nun whose only declared wish is to serve God. He asks whether Mother Teresa's good works answer any higher purpose than the need of the world's privileged to see someone, somewhere, doing something for the Third World. He unmasks pseudo-miracles, questions Mother Teresa's fitness to adjudicate on matters of sex and reproduction, and reports on a version of saintly ubiquity which affords genial relations with dictators, corrupt tycoons and convicted frauds.
Amazon.com Review
What's next--The Girl Scouts: The Untold Story? How could anybody write a debunking book about Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity order? Well, in this little cruise missile of a book, Hitchens quickly establishes that the idea is not without point. After all, what is Mother Teresa doing hanging out with a dictator's wife in Haiti and accepting over a million dollars from Charles Keating? The most riveting material in the book is contained in two letters: one from Mother Teresa to Judge Lance Ito--then weighing what sentence to dole out to the convicted Keating--which cited all the work Keating has done "to help the poor," and another from a Los Angeles deputy D.A., Paul Turley, back to Mother Teresa that eloquently stated that rather than working to reduce Keating's sentence, she should return the money he gave her to its rightful owners, the defrauded bond-holders. (Significantly, Mother Teresa never replied.) And why do former missionary workers and visiting doctors consistently observe that the order's medical practices seem so inadequate, especially given all the money that comes in? (Hitchens acidly observes that on the other hand, Mother Teresa herself always manages to receive world-class medical care.) Hitchens's answer is that Mother Teresa is first and foremost interested not in providing medical treatment, but in furthering Catholic doctrine and--quite literally--becoming a saint.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 135 more reviews...
 Hitchens Earns Time in Purgatory with His 'Position' on Mother Teresa. November 16, 2008
"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people"--Mother Teresa.
Whether you agree with Hitchens' argument or not, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice is the work of a brilliant mind. Christopher Hitchens is an Oxford-educated, free-thinking Renaissance Man: author, journalist, literary critic, columnist, polemicist, intellectual, former Trotskyist, and (as of 2007), an American citizen. Although he admires George Orwell, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Joyce, Richard Dawkins, and Barack Obama, he is sharply critical of Mother Teresa, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Jerry Falwell, and Michael Moore. As demonstrated in his best-selling book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Hitchens is an ardent believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism, and reason. "Above all," he writes in God Is Not Great, "we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man, and woman . . . And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone" (p. 283).
Hitchens has been recognized as one of the world's "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" and "a Tom Paine for our troubled times" (The Independent, London). In his scathing critique of Mother Teresa (1910-1997), The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (1995), Hitchens depicts Teresa as a political opportunist in the guise of a humanitarian and a saint, whose primary objective was to raise money in support of an extreme version of Catholicism. Asserting that Teresa was no "friend to the poor," Hitchens condemns Mother Teresa's organization, the Missionaries of Charity, as a cult primarily interested in its own financial agenda. Hitchens uses Teresa's financial associations with Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, his wife Michele Duvalier, John-Roger, Robert Maxwell, and Charles Keating (who donated $1.25 million to the Missionaries of Charity) to further support his thesis. For the record, Hitchens is not alone in his criticism of Mother Teresa, and is joined by others including Michael Parenti, Aroup Chatterjee, and Vishva Hindu Parishad in his criticism. The Sunday Times observed that Hitchen's book is "a dirty job but someone had to do it. By the end of this elegantly written, brilliantly argued piece of polemic, it is not looking good for Mother Teresa." Highly recommended for both Catholic readers and non-Catholic readers alike.
G. Merritt
Brilliant Hitchens October 27, 2008
Mr Hitchens gives, in his inimitable style, an accurate, concise and clear account of a misguided catholic nun whose only aim in life was self aggrandizement and eventual canonization, whilst offering no real help, treatment or comfort to the needy.
She takes her place next to Albert Schweitzer, another dismal failure, and many other Nobel Peace prize laureates, who obtained this meaningless prize not for any achievements, peaceful or humanitarian, but only for sly politics.
 Just another globalist tool September 3, 2008
I really didn't need to read this book to figure out that Mother Teresa was just another globalist tool and a propaganda/fundraising cash cow for the Catholic church but Missionary Position does a good job of driving that point home and giving good solid evidence to that fact. To give a few examples, the millions she took from the mega swindler Keating and never returned, her response to the Dupont chemical spill in India instead of seeking justice and calling to make Dupont acountable was telling people to "just forgive" so as not to cause any problems with the globalist corporats. Then of course there were the notoriously deplorable conditions in her hospitals and shelters, totally filthy, where they not only reused needles but their idea of sterilizing them was washing them with cold water! Also people were not given proper pain medication (Mother Teresa had this idea that the more you suffered the closer you were to Christ!) So you had things like this going on but at the same time it was found out in just the bank account for her shelters in the New York area there was $50 million dollars sitting idly. When the city of San Francisco donated a fully furnished shelter to her for a shelter for homeless men who had AIDS she promptly had all the couchs, beds and televisions thrown out insuring that the dying would live as comfortless as possible. All I can say is thankfully this cash cow for the forces of evil in this world is dead!
 Here's an excerpt from William A. Donohue's 1996 review "Hating Mother Teresa." August 11, 2008
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
Here's [an] example of how Hitchens proceeds. He begins one chapter quoting Mother Teresa on why her congregation has taken a special vow to work for the poor. "This vow," she exclaimed, "means that we cannot work for the rich; neither can we accept money for the work we do. Ours has to be a free service, and to the poor." A few pages later, after citing numerous cash awards that her order has received, Hitchens writes "if she is claiming that the order does not solicit money from the rich and powerful, or accept it from them, this is easily shown to be false."
Hitchens isn't being sloppy here, just dishonest. He knows full well that there is a world of difference between soliciting money from the rich and working for them. Furthermore, he knows full well that Mother Teresa never even implied that she wouldn't accept money from the rich. And precisely whom should she--or anyone else--accept money from, if not the rich? Would it make Hitchens feel better if the middle class were tapped and the rich got off scot free? Would it make any sense to take from the poor and then give it back to them? Who's left?
Hitchens smells politics whenever Mother Teresa supports moral causes he objects to. For example, in 1988, while in London tending to the homeless, Mother Teresa was asked to meet with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She did. She also met a pro-life legislator. So? For Hitchens, this shows the political side of Mother Teresa. Forget for a moment that Mother Teresa is perhaps the most noted pro-life advocate alive, and that abortion is first and foremost a moral issue. And does anyone doubt that had she met with a politician interested in socialized medicine, Hitchens would be citing her humanity, not her politics?
Mother Teresa has tended to the sick and poor all over the world. She doesn't pick and choose which countries to go to on the basis of internal politics, and this explains why she has visited both right-wing repressive nations like Haiti and left-wing repressive nations like Albania. Hitchens can't stomach this and indicts Mother Teresa for servicing dictatorships. Now if his logic is to be followed here, then most Peace Corps workers and Red Cross personnel are guilty of courting despots. This may make sense to those who write for the Nation, but no one else can be expected to believe it.
In exemplary Catholic fashion, Mother Teresa comes to the poor not out of sentimentality, but out of love. No matter how impoverished and debased the poor are, they are still God's children, all of whom possess human dignity. This is not something Hitchens can accept. An unrelenting secularist, he cannot comprehend how Mother Teresa can console the terminally ill by saying, "You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you."
Hitchens is so far gone that he cannot make sense of Christ's admonition that "The poor will always be with you." Not surprisingly, Hitchens says "I remember as a child finding this famous crack rather unsatisfactory. Either one eschews luxury and serves the poor or one does not." But he just doesn't get it: Mother Teresa eschews luxury and serves the poor, yet not for a moment does she believe that she is conquering poverty in the meantime. Only someone hopelessly wedded to a materialist vision of the world would think otherwise.
Hitchens also objects to Mother Teresa's asceticism (if she lived the Life of Riley he would condemn her for that). He charges that her operation in Bengal is "a haphazard and cranky institution which would expose itself to litigation and protest were it run by any branch of the medical profession." Hitchens would prefer that the Bengalis force Mother Teresa to follow regulations established by the Department of Health and Human Services before attending to her work. It does not matter to him that Mother Teresa and her loyal sisters have managed to do what his saintly bureaucrats have never done--namely to comfort the ill and indigent.
It is jealously, not ideology, that propels Hitchens to criticize Mother Teresa for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. He wonders "what she had ever done, or even claimed to do, for the cause of peace." (His accent.) This is a strange comment coming as it does from one of those "If You Want Peace, Work For Justice" types. And it apparently never occurred to Hitchens that it is precisely Mother Teresa's humility that disallows her to grandstand before the world trumpeting her own work. A true crusader for the underclass, Mother Teresa is not in the habit of claiming to do anything. She is too busy practicing what others are content to preach.
If receiving the Nobel Peace Prize angered Hitchens, it is safe to say he suffered from apoplexy when he read Mother Teresa's acceptance speech. In it, she took the occasion to say that "Today, abortion is the worst evil, and the greatest enemy of peace." Hitchens labels her speech a "diatribe" that is riddled with "fallacies and distortions," none of which he identifies, preferring instead to say that there "is not much necessity for identifying" them. Not, it should be added, if your goal is a smear campaign.
It is ironic that after hurling one unsubstantiated charge after another that Hitchens ends his little book by saying, "It is past time she [Mother Teresa] was subjected to the rational critique that she has evaded so arrogantly and for so long." It would be more accurate to say that it is one more source of her greatness that Mother Teresa never evades anything, including irrational tracts written by vindictive authors. The arrogance is all his, because in the end, Hitchens hasn't even laid a glove on her.
100% Accurate July 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The true story of mother Theresa. The chapter on her buddy Charles Keating is particularly enlightening.
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