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The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice
Christopher Hitchens
Language: English
Pages: 128
ISBN: 1455523003
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A Nobel Peace Prize recipient beatified by the Catholic Church in 2003, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was celebrated by heads of state and adored by millions for her work on behalf of the poor. In his measured critique, Hitchens asks only that Mother Teresa's reputation be judged by her actions-not the other way around.
With characteristic élan and rhetorical dexterity, Hitchens eviscerates the fawning cult of Teresa, recasting the Albanian missionary as a spurious, despotic, and megalomaniacal operative of the wealthy who long opposed measures to end poverty, and fraternized, for financial gain, with tyrants and white-collar criminals throughout the world.
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anotherwoman,whoisofferingtll)ltg:lZ('| .illt'tlwith is lt rltrotatirln tltt' ltit'trrr-t' respectancldeference.Next to clt':trly lt't'ls llrlrl ltt'r' sycofrom this other woman, who phanticgesturesarenoten in the world'. In the presenceof his wife, who holds the title of 'Defender of the Faith' againstall the works of Rome and who heads a family which is barred from 62 GOOD WORK S AND HERO I C VI RTUES making a marriage to a Roman Catholic, the royal conThe United Nations Food and sort handed over f,,34,000. Agriculture Organizationwent one better two years later by striking a specialmedal with the goddessCeres brandishing a stalk of wheat at Mother Tbresa and, on the obverse,the inscription a claimed miracle to come not merely from anothersupposedwitnessto saidmiracle but from its actualreal-timeauthor.As such, it deservesto be more widely known than it is. But modern technologyand communicationshave ensured instead that rumour and myth can be transmittedwith ever greater speedand efficiency to the eyes and ears of the credulous. How splendidlywe progress.Ever sinceSomethingBeautr,ful for God,the critic of Mother Tbresa,in small things aswell as in great ones, has had to operate against an enormous weight of received opinion, a weight made no easier to shift by the fact that it is madeup, quite literally,of illusion. Muggeridgegavenumerousother hostagesto fortune during the course of his film and his book. Only his 27 THE MI SSI O NARY PO SI TI O N adoring gaze,for example,inhibited him from seeingthe range of interpretationthat might be placedon the following anecdote: As Simone Weil says, Christianity is a religion for slaves;we have to make ourselves slavesand Confucius,AnalectsBook W, 22 No Philosopher was on hand to tell him that there is no strong sentiment without some terror, oS there is no real religion without a little fetishism. JosephConrad,Victory Star light, star bright ... we look up and we hope the stars look down, we pray ttrat there may be stars for us to follow, stars moving across the heavens and leading up to our destiny but it's only our vanity. We look at the galaxy and fall in love, but the universe cares less about us than we do
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