"India has no reason to be grateful to Mother Teresa," Sanal Edamaruku of the Indian Rationalist Association

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

"India has no reason to be grateful to Mother Teresa"

Sanal Edamaruku

"India, especially Calcutta, is seen as the main beneficiary of
Mother Teresa's legendary 'good work' for the poor that made
her the most famous Catholic of our times, a Nobel Peace Prize
Winner and a living saint. Evaluating what she has actually done
here, I think, India has no reason to be grateful to her", said Sanal
Edamaruku, Secretary General of the Indian Rationalist Association
and President of Rationalist International in a statement on the
occasion of her beatification today. The statement continues:


Mother Teresa has given a bad name to Calcutta, painting the
beautiful, interesting, lively and culturally rich Indian metropolis
in the colors of dirt, misery, hopelessness and death. Styled
into the big gutter, it became the famous backdrop for her very
special charitable work. Her order is only one among more than
200 charitable organizations, which try to help the slum-dwellers
of Calcutta to build a better future. It is locally not very visible or
active.
But tall claims like the absolutely baseless story of her slum school
for 5000 children have brought enormous international publicity
to her institutions. And enormous donations!


Mother Teresa has collected many, many millions (some say: billions)
of Dollars in the name of India's paupers (and many, many more in
the name of paupers in the other "gutters" of the world). Where did
all this money go? It is surely not used to improve the lot of those,
for whom it was meant. The nuns would hand out some bowls of
soup to them and offer shelter and care to some of the sick and
suffering. The richest order in the world is not very generous, as
it wants to teach them the charm of poverty. "The suffering of the
poor is something very beautiful and the world is being very much
helped by the nobility of this example of misery and suffering," said
Mother Teresa. Do we have to be grateful for this lecture of an
eccentric billionaire?


The legend of her Homes for the Dying has moved the world to tears.
Reality, however, is scandalous: In the overcrowded and primitive
little homes, many patients have to share a bed with others.
Though there are many suffering from tuberculosis, AIDS and other
highly infectious illnesses, hygiene is no concern. The patients are
treated with good words and insufficient (sometimes outdated)
medicines, applied with old needles, washed in lukewarm water.
One can hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered
from their open wounds without pain relief. On principle, strong
painkillers are even in hard cases not given. According to Mother
Teresa's bizarre philosophy, it is "the most beautiful gift for a person
that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ". Once she tried to
comfort a screaming sufferer: "You are suffering, that means
Jesus is kissing you!" The man got furious and screamed
back: "Then tell your Jesus "Then tell your Jesus to stop kissing me."


When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Price, she used the
opportunity of her worldwide telecast speech in Oslo to declare
abortion the greatest evil in the world and to launch a fiery call
against population control. Her charitable work, she admitted,
was only part of her big fight against abortion and population control.
This fundamentalist position is a slap in the face of India and other
Third World Countries, where population control is one of the main
keys for development and progress and social transformation.
Do we have to be grateful to Mother Teresa for leading this worldwide
propagandist fight against us with the money she collected in our name?

Mother Teresa did not serve the poor in Calcutta, she served the
rich in the West. She helped them to overcome their bad conscience
by taking billions of Dollars from them. Some of her donors were
dictators and criminals, who tried to white wash their dirty vests.
Mother Teresa revered them for a price. Most of her supporters,
however, were honest people with good intentions and a warm heart,
who fall for the illusion that the "Saint of the Gutter" was there to
wipe
away all tears and end all misery and undo all injustice in the world.
Those in love with an illusion often refuse to see reality.




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