h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think the problem is that there's a basic misconception about what her 'calling' was - she didn't help people. She helped people to die.

She didn't want anyone to die without recieving gods grace and so set about tending the sick and dying so they might recieve it - the highest service a Catholic can provide. But she did require them to die. And she encouraged it. Not actually bumping people off you understand, but certainly preventing them from being treated for conditions they may have recovered from.

In the sixies she was unique. In the seventies she was a media star. By the eighties she was an anachronism. By the time she died she was an anathema.

That's an interesting oppinion there, flinch. Not sure how much of it's based on fact though. Her missionaries have been set up to help sick people *recover*, not assist their deaths.

Boy, do we have a lot of cynics around here

Jims, I don't think it's a question of cynicism here. Deeply religious, spiritual people, and especially some kinds of monks and nuns, have a very very different take on matters of life and death to ordinary secular Westerners. Even suicide bombers, and the people who recruit them, have a totally different perception of these things. And we in the West have changed our perceptions fundamentally even over the last 100 years (even since Vietnam) - when you think how many young men were glad to sign up for WW1 and go over the top.

So I think it's quite possible that M Teresa had genuine deeply-felt religious views on life and death that might seem quite strange and even bizarre to us but were nevertheless her guiding principles. It is worth bringing out this aspect of the religious life, and this doesn't necessarily have to be in a judgmental way. There are of course some wonderful secular people who look after the sewer-dwellers and slum children and so on, who would probably have different views, but M Teresa was who she was, and whether you call a mark a beauty spot or a wart is a matter of debate and can be aired as such.

I guess all I'm saying is that if her views and the actions she took based on them were controversial, pointing this out doesn't have to be an attack on her sanctity provided the whole thing is set in context.

By the way, I think it says in the entry that it was M Teresa who called Theresa of Lisieux 'little flower', but this is not so. She has always been known as the 'Little Flower', partly to distinguish her from that other Doctor of the Church, Theresa of Avila.

Bels

Cheers for that, Bels, I've amended the bit about Little Flower.

I wasn't really accusing anyone of being a cynic, I was being flippant - should have used the smiley there I think

As I said in the previous posting though, for a woman whose career covered three-quarters of a century, I honestly think this is a fair 'starter-pack' on her life. The controversies are mentioned, as is the fact that some people disagree with the commonly-held view of her. Obviously, the criticism makes for more salacious reading, just as (I suspect) the 35,000 page document currently under review by the Vatican about her miracles might make for sickly reading for anyone who doesn't believe in the preachings of the Catholic faith.

If you care to do a little search for info on her on the Internet, most of the material you'll find will tend to be quite polar - she's either a modern saint who did no wrong (which often goes way overboard in my opinion) or she's the devil incarnate (likewise). I'm not pushing either position. I'm just saying she was a nun who set up some missionaries - arguably the most famous nun ever - and that there've been some interesting reactions to what she chose to do with her life. I let her speak for herself, just as I offer links to her critics, which you can also read if you like. Even after the research I did for this entry, I personally don't have an absolute opinion of the woman.

Yes, much of what's written about her on the Internet is quite polar -- and frankly, I still think this entry is. While I can see that you've attempted to placate us by alluding to some of the more controversial aspects of her life, I don't think you've achieved a well-balanced entry yet. You say that you don't have an opinion about the women, but the entry really does come across as "here is a perfect woman who has done nothing but good in the world, although there are foolish people who dont' support her."

In the *two* sentences in the whole entry in which you allude to the more negative issues, you manage to largely brush them off (and in one case, inaccurately so).

"Over the decades, the Missionary projects continued to grow, and despite her often controversial views on contraception, abortion and the use of modern medicine

Here, all of the medical/health services controversies are brushed off as being shaped by Catholic teachings. While that is correct for her views on abortion and birth control, it is NOT correct concerning her views on medical care for the dying. If anything, these views were shaped more by the culture of the area, but were in many ways in direct conflict with how the Catholic Church acts in the Western world. I think it's worth pointing out that while the care her dying patients received was most likely superior to what they would have received elsewise (which probably gave comfort to their relatives, as well), it was in fact a *very* different kind of care than what we would call "good" in the Western world. Willfully refusing pain medications to dying patients is considered barbaric and unethical in most of the world, yet you've entirely brushed this issue aside in the same hand as her very unrelated views on abortion and birth control.

"Unfortunately, such successes were tainted slightly by controversies over fundraising and a dispute regarding a proposed statue in her honour."

Again, you mention the negatives, but only to brush them aside -- as if they weren't legitimate issues, but only things that interfered with her sainthood. And actually, fundraising was if anything *more* controversial before Mother Theresa died, yet you only mention in it the context of after her death.


Mikey

There was an article on this very subject (making her a saint) in yesterdays Guardian if anyones interested.

I think the criticism should be outlined more - both the nature of the criticism and perhaps some of her detractors. Christopher Hitchens wrote that book about three years ago about her 'white woman among the wogs' attitude. There was a major one in the early ninties by a woman - which questioned the nature of her 'aid' and the way she hampered others trying to help - particularly medics and volunteers. And then there's the two biographies by her official biographer - one completely free of criticism in the early eigthies portraying her as a saint, politics apart - and the second questioning her lack of vision in trying to stem the causes of these problems.

She was a Papist, and with it comes the whole doctrine of 'the poor will be with us always' - so lets not try to end poverty because god for some reason wants it. No contraception - the stuff of the devil. No medical technology - if God's love doesn't cure nothing should. But most fundamentally no education and no political action to question the reasons for poverty and help the poor to help themselves. The poor were there as a tool so people can perform good acts. Without the poor how would we brown-nose to the lord?

>> "Unfortunately, such successes were tainted slightly by controversies over fundraising and a dispute regarding a proposed statue in her honour."

Again, you mention the negatives, but only to brush them aside<<

With an eye to a bigger picture, her supporters still register in the millions; her detractors do not. I don't know whether or not she was everything her critics say. But I don't think 'balanced' needs to mean 'equal'. It should try to be as representative as possible about the views of the subject. In the sentence above, I think it's accurate to say her reputation was tarnished 'slightly' as it didn't stop people from supporting her legacy in the same way that, say, Gary Glitter's reputation was changed after he was imprisoned.

All about scale really.

I don't think I could be more neutral in describing what she did. I'm simply listing events chronologically with a few quotes from the woman without any editorial enthusiasm, so I'm surprised that, from that, you could surmise that I think she's 'perfect'. If you can point me to specific sections where I give that impression I'll gladly revise them. But equally, I'm not submitting this to say she was the devil incarnate, and if there are any sections that suggest that I'd want to revise them too.

Jims

She certainly wasn't a bad woman. She did what she felt was right and did it pretty much selflessly (Though there's a great quote from her where she says "I'm the most selfish person in the world, i only do my work because i want god's reward for myself"). The problem is that her benevolence, or at least her priorities, were twisted by her superstition. Then the nature of her work was misrepresented in the press.

Her work was to be kind to the poor and dying, and to save their souls for God. It was not to save the dying or to alleviate poverty. And the truth of the matter is that she had sound religious grounds for opposing medical intervention and an end to poverty. Fear and desperation are what religion breeds on, the Church would be a non starter if it started helping people in THIS world.

BUT she was kind, and she taught people to be kind, and she inspired kindness. And that's no small deal. As Burt Bacharach said "What the world needs now, is love - sweet love, it's the only thing that there's just too little of."

It's not nearly as black and white as supporters vs. detractors, Jimster, which is what I'm trying to get at. Here in America at least, there are many Roman Catholics who support much of Mother Theresa's work, but still have problems with the way she handled certain things. Personally, I'd fall into that category myself. I think it's a much better tribute to her memory to portray her realistically, rather than brushing over the negative -- in her life, she was a person who believed in dealing with the negative up front. She may not have made the same decisions I would about some things, but she made no effort to hide those decisions.

The fact that some of these more controversial issues have not stopped people from supporting her is no reason to not include the facts of those issues -- if anything, I think it makes it more necessary -- her works and faith were so strong that the world clung to her even though many disagreed with smaller bits and pieces of what she did. I think this is a much stronger (and more accurate) representation than that of a woman the world loved because she did no wrong.

Yes, your entry is all facts, but - like any author - you've picked and chosen which facts to include, leaving out almost all facts which might be construed as negative. That's what bias is, and that's why I think this entry is still unbalanced. I'm not saying that you need to go into all of the negative things anyone has ever said about her, I'm not saying that you need to have an equal number of negative and positive things. I *am* saying that presenting only the 'positive' facts and not the 'negative' facts is unbalanced. Frankly, I think adding in a few sentences would be enough -- something to the effect of:

At the end of the paragraph that starts with "She founded the Kalighat Home...", I would add a sentence or two that says something like:

Caring for the sick and the dying are two of the seven corporal acts of mercy enumerated by the Roman Catholic Church; comforting the afflicted is one of the seven spiritual acts of mercy. These acts were the cnetral principles around which Mother Theresa's institutions were founded. However, while the care the sick and dying received there was undoubtedly superior to what they might have received on the streets of Calcutta, there are those who took issue with the ways in which the medical care differed from medicine in Western countries. That extensive and costly life-extending treatments for terminal illnesses were not used is not necessarily surprising - in this area, the standard of care in many Western countries is simply not sustainable elsewhere. However, more upsetting to some is the fact that patients were not allowed effective pain medications. This stemmed from Mother Theresa's personal beliefs that physical suffering would enhance the spiritual growth so necessary to those who were close to death.

Obviously that's more than a sentence or two, because I tend to babble. But the essence of it goes towards achieving what I would consider a much more balanced entry -- it is not a statement about supporters or detratctors -- it's a realistically accurate an well-balanced statement. I think it also does a better job of explaining which of her beliefs actually stemmed from Catholic faith and which did not -- as I pointed out earlier, you have erred in that in the entry. This has still not been fixed.

Mikey

I completely agree with Mikey. This entry does a good job of explaining why Mother Teresa's memory is so revered, but one footnote and one link doesn't constitute adequate coverage of the misgivings many people, even within her own Church, have about her methods.

In that footnote, you've alluded to her view on contraception without spelling it out. I think it needs to be stated plainly that she sought to stop the use of contraception in a tragically impoverished and overpopulated land - to my mind, an absolutely appalling thing to do.

Although the anti-MT link at the end of the entry leads to a shocking story about the fate of some children at the institution she founded, it is misleading in that it might lead readers to conclude that this was the only blemish on her record. A much better summary of the case against Mother Teresa can be found in this excellent article by the distinguished journalist Christopher Hitchens: http://archive.salon.com/sept97/news/news3.html .

>> I think it needs to be stated plainly that she sought to stop the use of contraception in a tragically impoverished and overpopulated land - to my mind, an absolutely appalling thing to do. <<


But again, this is down to the teachings of the Catholic faith, not Teresa herself. And it's not as if it's just one (now two - thanks for that) links - the link into the BBCi search engine provides plenty of material that's very critical of her, as well as updates on the bid to canonise her.

Hmm. Personally, I'd say that what she did is more significant than why she did it. I'm not convinced that you can excuse someone doing something dreadful and destructive just because they might have believed that their religion justified it.

Thanks for including the link, but I still find this entry too partisan.

I like this entry, it's much better than Crystal 's effort

Congrats, Jimster.

Who owns the copywright to this poem? Do the BBC have the right to publish? If it's not copylefted, perhaps it'd be better just to quote a fair-use portion of it.

I agree with Mr. Hummingbird on this one, too. Just because you were given orders by your superiors doesn't excuse you before the court in Neuremburg or the ICC in Brussels. Just because ravagement and destruction is typical of the culture of the Golden Horde, understanding this doesn't automatically mean forgiveness.

Sorry, Sea Change, but I find equating Mother Teresa with the Nazi attempts at genocide very offensive. Let's get some perspective here, eh?

I'll put this plainly: I am not going to add more negative material to this unless there is more positive stuff also. I haven't gone into specifics about her actions aside from the chronological events of setting up her missionaries, and I'm not going to go into specific details of the negative aspects either - they are sufficiently covered by all the links. This isn't stamping my feet because people have a more cynical view, it's making sure that this entry is not turned into an attack on her, just as it isn't a detailed defence (and if you really want to see what a defence would like, maybe the Vatican would let you flick through the 35,000 word document on her).

Just one element of the whole thing about being a nun seems to be slipping past people - obedience. She waited for years before setting up the missionary, if she had a single attitude towards disobedience she'd have tried to do it anyway (which is shown by the fact that she received no support from outside until the missionary was already a success. If she was so obedient about something that she cared so passionately about, is it likely she'd have gone against her superiors on other matters, such as contraception? Considering how women were treated as third-class citizens by the Catholic Church, how even now they are forbidden from taking certain positions in the Church (and how even as recently as the 1960s, the faith had a stranglehold over communities in our own country, let alone ones that are too weak to fight back), is it any surprise that she didn't challenge the pope when so many *men* fear to do so even today?

If the people of Calcutta had problems with her methods, why did they not go to other places that might have more 'progressive' attitudes towards medicine? Because she was, for many years, the only person out there willing to risk her life by working in those areas. By the time other groups arrived, she and her volunteers had been working there for nearly thirty years. It's a bit rich being three decades late and then criticising the way *she* did things. And it's not exactly balanced using 21st Century perspectives to judge someone whose upbringing and education were largely the same as had been available to her parents in the 19th Century.

I'll ask again: although I cannot see any sections where an editorial voice can be heard praising her (ie, I never once call her 'good'), are there any specific elements of this that anyone feels are too partisan? Has the disinterested authorial voice slipped at any point? Does anyone have any information on why other countries took so long to get involved in the Third World, and why the work was left to one small group of volunteers for so many years? Maybe someone has read something about why other countries begged her to set up missions there because they had been abandoned by the rest of the World. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything on any of that. It's fortunate that Guide Entries don't have to be definitive...

I haven't mentioned any of this in the entry. Perhaps I should...

1) You still haven't fixed the rather significant factual error in the entry I pointed out some time ago. As a Catholic myself, I actually find your misstatement quite offensive, and would appreciate it if you would remedy this.

2) You also haven't responded to my latest post, which I think takes a somewhat more reasonable approach than that of say, comparing her to a Nazi. In fact, I think the material I suggested does a good job of adding positive material along with more negative info, but would still bring a lot more balance to the entry.

3) While there have been some largely favorable comments here, the bulk of posters seem to be in agreement that this entry is still unbalanced. Since you seem to disagree rather strongly, I think it would be worthwhile at this point to hear some feedback from someone on the editorial staff. Otherwise I can see us all continuing to argue in circles, which I don't think is very helpful.

Mikey

Mikey, could you direct me to the specific section you find offensive? I'll gladly look at it.

I reread your suggested paragraph, by the way, and have added it (with a few amendments) where you suggested.



" I think it would be worthwhile at this point to hear some feedback from **someone on the editorial staff.**"

Er... where you you think I work, just out of interest?

Jimster --

"Mikey, could you direct me to the specific section you find offensive? I'll gladly look at it."

I went into a good bit of detail on that on post 25. The bit you added in (which looks great, thanks!) helps fix that some, but footnote 1 (and the sentence it's attached to) still need some editing.

"Er... where you you think I work, just out of interest?"

Exactly why I thought it might be good to have a 2nd opinion... There have been... ummm.... ruffled feathers in PR in the past when people have felt like staff members weren't playing by the same rules in PR as plain old researchers. This thread really isn't at that point, but I thought that maybe having Sam or Ashley pop in and give their 2 cents might help prevent things from moving in that direction.


Mikey

Do you mean the bit where you say:

'you've entirely brushed this issue aside in the same hand as her very unrelated views on abortion and birth control.' ?

See, this is where the problem really lies - I simply disagree with you. Her views on abortion and birth control are 100% related to her views as a Catholic. Even today these issues are not willingly promoted in the Catholic Church, and in fact the Church has only in the last few years conceded that condoms are necessary in the prevention of STDs, yet still have a very ethical stance on them.

Whether or not she *refused* painkillers or whether she simply couldn't afford them (or even whether she prioritised other costs over them), I'm not sure. This isn't brushing the issue aside. It's simply not going into it in any depth that I don't feel happy defending. I don't agree that the issue is as clear-cut as some seem to think, and as with any advice offered in PR, I can choose not to include it just like any other Researcher. I don't think leaving it out will create an inaccuracy with the entry, whereas I suspect putting it in could do.

As for needing other Italics to come in and arbitrate, well we've regularly accepted entries that were one-sided so long as there was an acknowledgement of the opposing view (see the PR thread for the Pendulum Dowsing entry for example). Both Ashley and Sam have pointed out in the past that entries do not have to be definitive, and this entry isn't trying to be; it was a helping hand to get an old Flea Market entry through PR.

If you feel so strongly about it though, feel free to write your own entry on the controversy surrounding Mother Teresa. But as an overview of her life, I still think this suffices. It mentions that there are critics of her; it mentions she set up missionaries; it mentions she worked in Calcutta...

If it mentions something that isn't true, let me know.

I think you're misunderstanding me here. I agree with the fact that her views on abortion and birth control were a by-product of her religious beliefs. Her views on pain medication, however, were not -- that's the bit where you have the big error.

And the issue with pain medications was not an issue of cost -- we're not talking AIDS or cancer meds here, effective pain medications are incredibly cheap, even from a non-Western perspective. I've seen statements from her organizations about the whole "no pain meds leads to spiritual growth" thing, so I'm pretty positive that's the reasoning.

The problem isn't simply that you brushed the issue aside, but that you did so *inaccurately*, claiming that those practices were the result of her Catholic beliefs. As I've said repeatedly now, that is a wholly incorrect statement -- her views on abortion and birth control were derived from Catholicism, her views on end-of-life care were NOT. It's insulting to Catholics everywhere to claim this is a Catholic belief. I've said this quite a few times now, yet the error remains in the entry. It's not that I feel so strongly about there being an entry about the controversies, it's that I feel so strongly that you've insulted Catholcis eerywhere with your inaccurate statement.

Yes, we've accepted one-sided entries before. But they were entries that clearly stated their bias -- whereas you're presenting this entry as a well-balanced overview. Personally, I think it comes much closer to being well-balanced as it currently stands -- there's just that egregious error that still needs fixing.

Mikey