Mother Teresa

[nige1]

nige1 would rate the answers like this: Yes = 10, other = 9, No = 8.

On the evidence, so far, mgoetze is right. Well... I might mark "No" = 6 or 7 but I don't think "Yes" is clearly demonstrable.

[nige1]

You're mixing separate issues IMO. There is a psychological trauma where victims voluntarily return to their abuser or develop some other emotional connection with them -> mental issue (individual perception), and there's society morals widely considered as "normal" which change over time (collective perception of "good" and "bad"). I wouldn't put these two in the same bag at all.

Diana_Eva may well be right but I regard

Stockholm Syndrome

cases as evidence of the victims' habituation to slavery; and the UK "Tied visa" legislation as an example of society's tolerance and indifference.

 

More extreme examples of "bonded labour" still occur in the Middle-east. Millions of victims suffer in silence. Although it's usually illegal, governments turn a blind eye. And we in the West are delighted to buy cheap products :(

 

It's hard to know what to do. Simply closing down rogue firms might replace slavery with starvation.

 

Similar past problems

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joo90ZWrUkU

 

A future moral dilemma:

How to rent robots

[PassedOut]

Why, to many critics, Mother Teresa is still no saint

 

"It's good to work for a cause with selfless intentions. But Mother Teresa's work had ulterior motive, which was to convert the person who was being served to Christianity," RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said at the opening of an orphanage in Rajasthan state on Monday, the Times of India reports. "In the name of service, religious conversions were made. This was followed by other institutes, too."

I suppose there are some who view those conversions positively, but a bait and switch operation seems to have been in play.

[nige1]

Why, to many critics, Mother Teresa is still no saint

 

I suppose there are some who view those conversions positively, but a bait and switch operation seems to have been in play.

The study cited by PassedOut seems to be a summary of an interpretation of literature about Mother Teresa. Contributors to this topic have exposed us to some of those documents. I don't know whether Mother Teresa is of saintly calibre. I simply think she was a good person, according to what I've read.

 

I suspect that PassedOut's quotation from the Indian Times is true. Nevertheless, some of Mother Teresa's biographers say that she also encouraged patients to practice their own religions.

[Vampyr]

I simply think she was a good person, according to what I've read.

 

Meanwhile she was wicked and twisted according to what I've read.

[barmar]

Hasn't conversion been the primary objective of Christian missionaries for most of history? What makes MT particularly evil in this regard? I guess it's the fact that she's often held up as a paragon, and is on the path to sainthood, while the rest have just pursued their work in total anonymity.

[mike777]

"We think of slavery as a practice of the past, an image from Roman colonies or 18th-century American plantations, but the practice of enslaving human beings as property still exists. There are 29.8 million people living as slaves right now, according to a comprehensive new report issued by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation.

 

This is not some softened, by-modern-standards definition of slavery. These 30 million people are living as forced laborers, forced prostitutes, child soldiers, child brides in forced marriages and, in all ways that matter, as pieces of property, chattel in the servitude of absolute ownership. Walk Free investigated 162 countries and found slaves in every single one. But the practice is far worse in some countries than others."

 

 

This map shows where the world’s 30 million slaves live. There are 60,000 in the U.S.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/17/this-map-shows-where-the-worlds-30-million-slaves-live-there-are-60000-in-the-u-s

[mike777]

Hasn't conversion been the primary objective of Christian missionaries for most of history? What makes MT particularly evil in this regard? I guess it's the fact that she's often held up as a paragon, and is on the path to sainthood, while the rest have just pursued their work in total anonymity.

 

 

Fair question.

 

In reading this thread I guess 2 objections from posters stand out about her:

1) She was a huge liar, she was a deceiver on a grand scale

2) She did not set up a modern medical hospital system

[nige1]

She was a huge liar, she was a deceiver on a grand scale

Please provide some examples, mike.

[mike777]

Please provide some examples, mike.

 

of what?

 

pls quote me in full that may answer your question :)

[nige1]

Fair question.

In reading this thread I guess 2 objections from posters stand out about her:

1) She was a huge liar, she was a deceiver on a grand scale

2) She did not set up a modern medical hospital system

Please provide some examples of her lies, mike.

[mike777]

Please provide some examples of her lies, mike.

 

 

I can find no examples where I claimed she lied, please provide some Nigel.

I find numerous examples from posters in this thread which say she lied or was deceitful in wicked ways.

 

 

I will repeat my belief from this thread's posts that the anger against MT is based on:

 

In reading this thread I guess 2 objections from posters stand out about her:

1) She was a huge liar, she was a deceiver on a grand scale

2) She did not set up a modern medical hospital system

[barmar]

"We think of slavery as a practice of the past, an image from Roman colonies or 18th-century American plantations, but the practice of enslaving human beings as property still exists. There are 29.8 million people living as slaves right now, according to a comprehensive new report issued by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation.

Did you really mean to post this in the MT thread? Maybe you intended it for the history thread?

[nige1]

I can find no examples where I claimed she lied, please provide some Nigel. I find numerous examples from posters in this thread which say she lied or was deceitful in wicked ways.

Good because I haven't yet found examples that would warrant such a claim :)

I will repeat my belief from this thread's posts that the anger against MT is based on:

 

In reading this thread I guess 2 objections from posters stand out about her:)

1. She was a huge liar, she was a deceiver on a grand scale
2. She did not set up a modern medical hospital system

[barmar]

Good because I haven't yet found any examples that would warrant such a claim :)

Aren't there a number of them in the thread? Are you just disagreeing on whether the way people were misled about her activities constitutes a "lie"?

[nige1]

Aren't there a number of them in the thread? Are you just disagreeing on whether the way people were misled about her activities constitutes a "lie"?

It would be amazing if everything Mother Teresa said was true but is there evidence that she told deliberate untruths with intent to deceive for her own gain?

[Winstonm]

The bottom line for MT's activities was not altruism but a method of gaining converts, and that is my quibble.

[y66]

OP, please define "good person" relative to, say, Christopher Hitchens or Catherine the Great both of whom, in my book, were more good than bad relative to the average journalist and enlightened despot. AFAIK, Mother Teresa did not endorse the Iraq War or f**k any horses. Clearly, in these ways, she was not as culpable as others.

[barmar]

AFAIK, Mother Teresa did not endorse the Iraq War or f**k any horses. Clearly, in these ways, she was not as culpable as others.

That's a pretty low bar. Should I be a candidate for sainthood, too?

[mike777]

That's a pretty low bar. Should I be a candidate for sainthood, too?

 

 

perhaps, it is never too late to start....:)

 

I don't think going to MIT stops you from being a saint.

[y66]

That's a pretty low bar. Should I be a candidate for sainthood, too?

 

MT good or bad? / MT for sainthood? / ditto for barmar?

 

Good relative to CH and CTG / who cares / not yet

[MrAce]

MT good or bad? / MT for sainthood? / ditto for barmar?

 

Good relative to CH and CTG / who cares / not yet

 

Translation please?

[helene_t]

Translation please?

Anne Teresa iyi ya da kötü? / Azizlik Anne Teresa? / Barmar için aynen?

 

Henüz / umurunda CH ve Büyük Catherine / İyi akraba

[Vampyr]

It would be amazing if everything Mother Teresa said was true but is there evidence that she told deliberate untruths with intent to deceive for her own gain?

 

Yes, a lot.

 

The bottom line for MT's activities was not altruism but a method of gaining converts, and that is my quibble.

 

I don't really care about that compare to the suffering zoos she set up for herself, and keeping millions that people sent her or humanitarian disasters (thinking that she would know where to send it so it would do the most good).

 

And of course she hoarded the money that people sent her for her own 'ministries', believing that she was helping the sick and the poor and orphans. And then there were her close relationships with eg Baby Doc and his wife (declaring the latter to be pretty much a saint) and I could go on and on, and repeat the links I have posted, but some people seem to have a blind spot.

 

When Christopher Hitchens visited her at an orphanage in Calcutta MT told him that the purpose of the orphanage was as a campaign against abortion and contraception.

 

I do not think, to be honest, that MT ever knowingly did a good thing for another person.

[y66]

Translation please?

 

barmar asserted that refraining from endorsing the Iraq War and from having sex with horses are not sufficient tests of worthiness for sainthood and used himself as an example of someone who has met these criteria but does not think this makes him worthy.

 

I don't disagree with his assessment. I attempted to point out, in a confusing way, that I was responding to OP's poll asking if Mother Teresa was a good person or not, not whether she was worthy of sainthood. I apologize for the confusion.