The Missionary Position

I read a pretty interesting book, The Missionary Position, Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice, by Christopher Hitchens, this weekend.

I've always kind of gotten a kick out of the author's magazine articles as well as his television interviews and debates, but had never read any of his books.

It's about Mother Theresa and takes a stand that I've never taken notice of anyone else defending...that this saint-to-be may not be so saintly after all. He equates MT with a slick televangelist who dupes the willing and the unwitting into supporting (both financially and through actions) their fanatical, often-destructive beliefs.

He cites compelling evidence that she was not the simple little Albanian farm girl the Church's PR folks would have you believe in. MT was as slick as they come when you talk about getting world leaders in line.

While I won't recount the whole book to you, a striking example of her method was the letter she wrote to the judge presiding over the (Charles) Keating Five trial in California.

Keating, a devout Catholic, had donated many of his ill-gotten monies to the Missionaries of Charity and, as the trial neared its close, got a letter on his behalf from MT requesting leniency. In it, MT feigned the bumpkin who does not understand "the matters you are dealing with," and only asked for the judge to do what Jesus would do.

When you contrast this letter with the comparatively sophisticated arguments she laid out when speaking to political or church bodies, one can be quickly disgusted by the faux naivte in the letter to Judge Ito.

Paul Turley, one of the prosecutors, later wrote MT back, informing her that the monies she recieved from the convicted Keating were stolen and asked her what Jesus would do if he found himself in posession of the fruits of a crime. He offered to put her in touch with the fleeced Americans, but never heard back from her.

He also takes considerable issue with her crazed opposition to contraception, finishing one chapter with the following:

(Her) call to go forth and multiply , and to take no thought for the morrow, sounds grotesque when uttered by an elderly virgin whose chief claim to reverence is that she ministers to the inevitble losers of this very lottery.

As with anything of this sort, particularly something written by an author with an axe to grind, I don't take it as the final world on her life or role on earth, but it was a strangely refreshing book for me.