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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mark silvers who wrote (27137)	12/19/1998 7:57:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

<I'm sorry that you dont like the methods she used, but it certainly wasnt for her own gain or comfort, and I am fairly sure that it is far more than either you or I have ever done.> Well, actually I think I am much more humane and good than Mother Teresa. I have never hung out with ruthless dictators, or watched people die in pain while I had millions of dollars at my disposal to provide them painkillers. I would never deprive broken-hearted, desperate orphans of any toys, or only allow good Catholic families to adopt them and give them love. I think everything she did was EXACTLY for her own gain--she wanted to be a saint. I think she actually derived some sort of perverse pleasure from death. In fact, I think she was a ghoul!!! As far as historians go, I don't think many historians have really had the chance--or perhaps it is an inclination--to investigate Mother Teresa. Saying anything critical of her seems to incite total disbelief. It is like falling on the third rail of contemporary religious heroines or something. Certainly the fact that Hitchens says things that are not "widely believed" does not make his book inaccurate. I think most people have a need to believe in people like Mother Teresa. I am sure there are really some people walking the earth who are almost totally unselfish and good. I just do not believe that Mother Teresa is one of them. And I am particularly concerned that almost everyone just believes the mythology surrounding her without finding out any facts whatsoever, and just buying whatever drivel the Catholic Church is pumping out. I do not remember what Ghandi's warts were--perhaps you can remind me. Martin Luther King was certainly not totally faithful to his wife. Unfortunately he died before we could impeach him!! No, on second thought, that really WAS private sexual behavior. Only the FBI knew for sure because they dogged him with wiretaps. Certainly he never committed perjury or obstructed justice about his infidelities. But what Ghandi and King have in common is that their ideology was to raise downtrodden masses up out of their suffering and empower them. That is totally different from Mother Teresa, who mostly just wanted to watch them die and had utterly no interest in social change, whatsoever. I don't think Jesus would think much of her either, come to think of it. We have had this discussion here at the Feelings thread before--I hope a rehash of it isn't boring anyone. I must add, since all of this started when Princess Diana and Mother Teresa died at the same time, that Diana seems to me to have been the much better person. She really seemed to care about the victims of life that she encountered on her journey AS INDIVIDUALS, keeping in touch with their families and following their progress. This spirit is absolutely different from that of Mother Teresa, who believed the poor were just more souls for Jesus! There is no doubt that she was in many ways a self-indulgent woman when she was younger, but at her death she seemed to be growing into a mature person who would have gone on to do real good in the world. Her campaign against land mines, which kill 26,000 people a year, was a worthy start. It is really too bad the United States refuses to sign the land mine treaty, which I would cite as just one more example of Bill Clinton's personal hypocrisy and the essential feeling of most Americans that treaties for the common good are for every nation but ours!!