Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity: has the work of Mother Teresa and her followers been of significant benefit to those they sought to help?

Issue outline by J M McInerney

What they said ...

(Mother Teresa) did not make the world a better place in any lasting sense
Pamela Bone, commentator for the Age

(Mother Teresa) confronted the one thing the world has frequently been unable to face - death - and through love redeemed the ultimate obscenity that we can only seek to hide or ignore
Herald Sun staff reporter

On September 6, 1997, Mother Teresa, the founder of the Missionaries of Charity, died of a heart attack. Her death was immediately met with international expressions of grief and of praise for her work, especially among the poor and dying of Calcutta. However, some of the comments published in the week or so after her death revived a debate about the value of her work which had begun over the last decade.

Background
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910. She was born in Skopje, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now the capital of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Her family were Albanian Catholics. Her father, who was a successful merchant, died when she was eight. One of the lasting influences on her life appears to have been the generosity of her mother toward the poor in their area.
At 12 she decided she wanted to be a missionary and at 17 she joined the Sisters of Loreto, taking the name Teresa. The order sent her to Dublin for training and then to its mission in Darjeeling, India.
For 19 years Teresa taught at St Mary's, a school for wealthy girls in Calcutta. She became its principal immediately on taking her final vows in May, 1937.
While travelling on a train from Darjeeling in 1946, she heard what she later described as a call from God telling her to serve the poorest of the poor. As she was already a nun, she referred to the experience as `a call within a call'.
Mother Teresa began her work at a time of enormous social distress in Calcutta. The Bengal famine had occurred in 1943; there had been widespread sectarian violence in 1946 and millions of displaced refugees arrived in the city after the 1947 Partition of India.
She sought permission to establish a new order. Early in 1948 the general superior of the Loreto Order in Ireland approved the establishment of a new order, provided the venture were authorised by the Pope. In April, 1948, Pope Pious XII gave his blessing. By 1950 there were seven nuns and that year the new order was officially recognised by Rome as the Society of the Missionaries of Charity.
They followed the three vows common to all religious orders - poverty, chastity and obedience - however, they followed a stricter vow of poverty than most orders. Mother Teresa maintained, `to be able to love the poor and know the poor we must be poor ourselves.' Mother Teresa insisted that overheads at all homes instituted under her rule should not exceed two per cent of total expenditure. Each sister had only two sets of clothes, wearing one while she washed the other.
The Missionaries of Charity were also required to take a fourth vow - `to put oneself entirely and wholeheartedly at the free service of the poor'.
Mother Teresa established her order's Kalighat Home for the Dying in 1952. The Calcutta City Council made available to the order a building, "dormashalah", which had previously served as a place of rest for Hindu pilgrims visiting the nearby temple of Kali. Mother Teresa saw this as an ideal place to establish her hospice, as it was around this area that most of the city's destitute gathered to die, hoping to be cremated on the funeral pyres of the temple.
In 1953 the community moved into the house that is still its headquarters: 54a Lower Circular Road. In the same year the order opened a new institution, Sishu Bhavan, The Children's' House. This is an orphanage for deserted and unwanted babies and children. In 1957 the order began to provide special treatment for lepers. Donations ultimately enabled the order to establish a whole city reserved for lepers, Shanti Nagar, The City of Peace.
By 1960 the order had begun to establish homes outside Calcutta and by the mid 1960s it was established in 23 cities. In 1985 the order opened a hospice for AIDS victims in New York.
At the time of Mother Teresa's death more than 450 centres in over 100 countries were run by the Missionaries of Charity. They feed 500,000 families a year and their schools teach 20,000 slum children. Their clinics treat 90,000 lepers. The estimates of the number of people who have died in the care of the order vary widely. One of the more conservative estimates is that some 27,000 people who might have died on the streets of Calcutta have instead died in more dignified and compassionate circumstances in the care of the Missionaries of Charity.
The work of Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity first attracted significant international attention in 1969 when Malcolm Muggeridge produced a television documentary Something beautiful for God. In 1972 Mother Teresa received the Nehru Award for International Understanding. In 1975 she was awarded the first Albert Schweitzer International prize while in 1979 Mother Teresa received the Noble Peace Prize. In 1983 she was awarded an honorary Order of Merit by the Queen.
However, especially over the last decade, the work of Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity has attracted some criticism.
In 1994 journalist and commentator, Christopher Hitchens, working with Tariq Ali, produced a documentary on Mother Teresa and her followers entitled Hell's Angel. The program was highly critical of their work maintaining , among other things, that the medical assistance offered was of a poor standard and that Mother Teresa should open the finances of the order to public audit. Hitchens later extended his criticisms in a book, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.
Mother Teresa has also attracted criticism from many prominent feminists because of her opposition to abortion and contraception. Included among her feminist critics is Germaine Greer.
At least two reviews of Christopher Hitchens' The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice can be found on the Internet. One is by Norman Taylor and can be found on the Atheist Australia site. Another is by Eric J. Brock and is reproduced from The Shreveport Humanist Bulletin.
There are also numerous sites championing the work of Mother Teresa. One particularly useful site is the Ascension Research Centre site which provides a great deal of information on Mother Teresa and also has extensive click-throughs to other relevant sites.

Arguments suggesting that the work of Mother Teresa and her followers has not been of significant benefit to those they sought to help
It has been claimed that Mother Teresa did not address the causes of the suffering of those she worked with and so had no lasting effect on the living conditions of the poor.
Pamela Bone, in an article published in The Age on September 18, 1997, wrote, `Mother Teresa never asked why the poor were poor. She never protested about the huge extremes of wealth and poverty in the country where she worked.'
Ms Bone has claimed that because, in her view, Mother Teresa did not seek to alter the social, political and economic structures which lie behind much poverty, she `did not make the world a better place in any lasting sense.'
Ms Bone compares Mother Teresa unfavourably with Jaya Arunachalam, an Indian woman from Madras, who started the Working Women's Forum. This organisation gives poor women loans to start their own businesses, teaches them money-handling skills and helps them organise into unions to demand decent wages. The organisation also gives women information on fertility control.
Ms Bone maintains that people, such as Jaya Arunachalam, who help others alter their living circumstances for the better offer more to the disadvantaged than those who promote endurance and acceptance.
Other critics claim that far from protesting against some of the causes of poverty and inequality, Mother Teresa helped to legitimise the actions of some political dictators and criminals by accepting their financial support and being photographed in their company.
Christopher Hitchens, in an article published in The Age on September 13, 1997, claimed that Mother Teresa had a close association with `dictators such as the Duvalier family in Haiti and crooks such as Charles Keating - convicted and imprisoned for defrauding investors in the Californian Lincoln Savings and Loan', receiving large donations from each and thus giving them favourable publicity.
It has also been claimed that as Mother Teresa was opposed to and campaigned against abortion and contraception her message may have damaged those she worked with.
Ms Bone has noted `Mother Teresa's belief that using contraception is a mortal sin and abortion is the same as murder.' Commenting on Mother Teresa's opposition to contraception and abortion, Ms Bone has claimed, `With 960 million people and adding another 18 million ... each year, India is set to outstrip China in the next few decades to become the most populous country. Overpopulation is the most serious problem for the country as a whole, and the greatest cause of misery and ill-health for individual Indian women.'
According to this line of argument, Mother Teresa would have better served the interests of the poor if she had not actively opposed abortion and contraception.
It has also been claimed that the hospices and other facilities run by Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity provided inadequate medical care.
Christopher Hitchens claimed that in facilities run by the Missionaries of Charity needles were washed in cold water and there was a policy of no painkillers.
Critics of Mother Teresa claim that those such as Fred Hollows (who offered practical medical assistance to restore people's sight) are assisting the poor and underprivileged in a more useful manner.
This position has been put by Rosslyn Ives, president of the Humanist Society of Victoria. Ms Ives praises those, such as Fred Hollows, `who, in very practical ways, challenge the status quo and set in place schemes for giving disadvantaged people the means to dignity and autonomy for living in this world.'
It has also been suggested that the money Mother Teresa received as donations, estimated by some to be as much as $30 million a year, was not always used to the best advantage of the poor of India or the disadvantaged in other countries in which the Missionaries of Charity work.
It has been claimed that Mother Teresa built no clinics or hospitals, but instead opened a large number of convents. Christopher Hitchens has claimed, `... it seems safe to speculate that the donations went to finance a very strict sort of proselytisation.'
According to this line of argument, Mother Teresa may have been more concerned to advance the spread of Catholicism than she was to tend to the physical needs of the poor and the dying.
Finally it has been suggested that to the extent that the work of Mother Teresa and her followers create the impression internationally that India is not prepared to look after its own citizens, it has damaged the Indian people.
This view was put by Germaine Greer, in an article published in The Bulletin on September 23, 1997. According to this line of argument, there is an enormous amount of private generosity in India that existed before Mother Teresa and will continue to exist after her. Ms Greer notes, `Begging can only be a huge industry in India because people give.'
Ms Greer also claims that Mother Teresa's focus on the dying created a distorted view of living conditions in India overall and seemed to deny the efforts of those who live in India and help others to do so.
Summing up her position, Ms Greer claims, `If the cult of Christian Mother Teresa is fed by contempt for Hindu India, it must do more evil than good. However many people are helped by Mother Teresa and her nuns, there are close to a billion others who will continue to be unfairly judged as unwilling or unable to take care of their own.'
Similar criticisms to Ms Greer's have apparently been made by prominent Hindus since Mother Teresa's death. Christopher Thomas and Richard Owen in an article published in The Australian on September 9, 1997, note that `some Hindu leaders are already questioning whether this foreign-born Roman Catholic should have been allowed to rise to fame by portraying Calcutta, if not all of India, as foul and lacking in compassion.'
Underlying most of these criticisms is a complaint that Mother Teresa and her followers have promoted a sort of pious fatalism, that is, a concern for spiritual salvation rather than a reduction of poverty.
According to this line of argument, Mother Teresa has encouraged the poor of India to accept their conditions rather than attempt to change them.
Mother Teresa has been unfavourably quoted as saying, `I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ ... I think the world is being helped by the suffering of poor people.'
Similarly, her critics claim, Mother Teresa and her followers offered personal support and rudimentary medical assistance to the dying rather than offering them more advanced medical assistance or seeking to address the larger causes of their problems.

Arguments suggesting that the work of Mother Teresa and her followers has been of significant benefit to those they sought to help
Those who defend the work of Mother Teresa and her followers claim that they should be praised for the benefits they have brought to the poor and the dying, rather than be condemned for not having achieved things which were never part of their intention.
With regard to claims that the medical treatment given at Mother Teresa's facilities was not of a high quality, supporters of the work of the Missionaries of Charity note that one of Mother Teresa's primary aims was to relieve the suffering of those dying on the streets of Calcutta. What she first established was a hospice, that is, a place to die, not a hospital.
A volunteer at the original Home for the Dying in Calcutta described the work in this way, `Often tears come to my eyes but you have to push them back and just keep going ... One day you've feed them, you've cleaned them and the next day you've wrapped them in a white sheet and taken them to a temple to be cremated.'
A staff reporter, writing for the Herald Sun in a piece published on September 9, 1997, claimed, `She (Mother Teresa) confronted the one thing the world has frequently been unable to face - death - and through love redeemed the ultimate obscenity that we can only seek to hide or ignore.'
Judged in these terms, it is argued, Mother Teresa and her followers have been effective.
It has been estimated that at least 27,000 people in Calcutta alone have had their deaths eased by the care of Mother Teresa and her followers. Not long before her own death, Mother Teresa estimated that the number of people whose deaths her followers had supported was as high as 50,000.
It has also been claimed that many of those with leprosy to whom Mother Teresa and her followers have provided assistance were also beyond the hope of cure. The religious affairs writer for The Australian, James Murray, has noted, `... lepers gathered around her with enthusiasm and were comforted ... both she and they knew that the treatments that could have saved them earlier were no longer an option, either medically or financially.'
Further, in response to criticisms that Mother Teresa did not address the causes of poverty and disease, her supporters note this also was not her intention.
It has been claimed that the aim of Mother Teresa and her followers was to reduce the immediate suffering of individuals, especially the dying, not to become involved in political agitation or social reform.
Mr Ken Hackett, the executive director of Catholic Relief Services in Baltimore, has claimed of Mother Teresa, `She filled a big, big vacuum. We bureaucrats are trying to affect the root causes of poverty and deal with governments, and she's dealing with individuals who are dying in the gutter.'
In a general defence of her position, Mother Teresa once noted, `We are not nurses. We are not social workers. We are religious. What I do is all for Jesus. I seeing Jesus suffering in the poor.'
Mother Teresa appears to have argued that she was offering care and support for the dying, the destitute and the abandoned and that this care and support were motivated by her love of God and of each member of his creation.
In response to the accusation that Mother Teresa and her followers have preached acceptance of poverty, her supporters note that this grew out of her general conviction that God would provide and further that acceptance may be the most realistic immediate response to promote among many of those with whom the Missionaries of Charity work. Further, it has been noted, Mother Teresa and all her followers embraced poverty themselves rather then simply encouraging others to endure it with patience.
With regard to the manner in which Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity have spent the monies that have been donated to them, some of their defenders note that critics underestimate the scope of the work of the order and thus what the costs are.
John V. Arackal, in a letter published in The Age on September 19, 1997, challenged the criticisms of Christopher Hitchens. `Does he know that the 4000 or so Sisters of Charity run more than 500 orphanages, shelters for lepers, the homeless, the dying and AIDS patients in more than 100 countries? Surely the running of these institutions requires vast sums of money, given the fact that their inmates are non-fee paying destitutes.'
On the question of Mother Teresa's opposition to abortion and contraception two defences have been offered.
The first is that from a Catholic perspective it is fully consistent that anyone who reveres all life as God's creation would be opposed to abortion and contraception.
The second defence offered is that in establishing orphanages, Mother Teresa and her followers were trying to assist otherwise unwanted children. It has been noted that soon after the establishment of their first orphanage, the Missionaries of Charity were receiving visits from pregnant women arranging to have their children cared for by the order.
It has also been noted that Mother Teresa was not opposed to all means of limiting family size. The traditional objection of the Catholic Church is to any means of contraception which interferes with the development of an already fertilised egg. From a Catholic point of view this is unacceptable because it involves the destruction of what is regarded as an existing life.
One method of birth control sanctioned by the Catholic Church is the Billings Method, which involves avoiding intercourse during those times in a woman's menstrual cycle when she is most likely to conceive.
The developer of this method, Dr John Billings, has claimed in a letter published in The Age on September 23, 1997, that Mother Teresa and her followers promoted this method.
Dr Billings wrote, `My wife Evelyn and I have worked with Mother Teresa in this field, having visited Calcutta on a number of occasions at Mother Teresa's request, to train her sisters in the Billings Method, which they are all instructed to teach wherever in the world they are sharing the life of the poor.'
On the question of whether Mother Teresa's main concern was to promote Catholicism, her supporters note that she offered assistance to all comers, irrespective of their religious persuasion, and that to the extent that she promoted Catholicism, this was an inevitable, but incidental, consequence of the fact that hers is a Catholic order working out of their conception of what God requires of them.
John V. Arackal wrote, `As for proselytisation, it is simply a natural and logical by-product of the charity work done by the sisters.'

Further implications
A number of consequences have been suggested as a result of Mother Teresa's death.
The general and immediate response to the death of Mother Teresa was a mixture of regret at her passing and praise and gratitude for her life's work. The Indian government immediately pledged to conduct a state funeral and Mother Teresa's body was borne through the streets of Calcutta on the same gun carriage as had carried the body of national `saint' Ghandi and India's first prime minister, Nehru. Hundreds of thousands of Indians filed past her body to pray and express their grief. Political leaders and other prominent people around the world issued statements indicating admiration for her work and sorrow at her death.
However, shortly after her death a number of prominent Hindus were reported as making highly critical comments about Mother Teresa and the manner in which she had achieved fame and sanctity working with the destitute of Calcutta.
Those making these comments may, in part, have been speaking out of wounded national pride as the world heaped praise on a European Catholic nun who had attained an international standing through working with India's poor and dying. It will be interesting to note whether such negativity increases.
There are a number of commentators who have expressed concern that support for the Missionaries of Charity may dwindle as a result of Mother Teresa's death. Those who hold this view stress the importance of her strength of character, her charisma, her worldwide reputation and the publicity she attracted.
It has been suggested that the order may cease to attract the large number of postulants (women training to be nuns) that it has traditionally appealed to and further that the order may cease to attract the level of financial support that it currently enjoys.
It is difficult to know whether such developments will occur. Before the end of Mother Teresa's life publicity appeared to have become very much of a two-edged sword, capable of doing the order either good or harm. Mother Teresa herself had become so wary of publicity that she had refused permission for Dominique Lapierre (a supporter of Mother Teresa and her work who had written a number of books praising the Missionaries of Charity and their leader) to proceed with a documentary film he was making about the order.
There are those who have maintained that the order and the work it performs are now of larger significance than the reputation of its founder. There are also those who have suggested that if the international spotlight is turned off the Missionaries of Charity then some of the more controversial aspects of their work may cease to attract criticism.
A number of supporters of the order have claimed that the Missionaries of Charity are likely to go through a period of self-examination and consolidation after Mother Teresa's death. However, they maintain that the reputation of the order is so high and the necessity for their work still so great that the Missionaries of Charity are in no danger of withering away.
It also remains to be seen whether Mother Teresa will rapidly attain the formal title of saint. In the Catholic Church there are a number of established procedures which must be followed if a person is to become a saint.
That person's life is rigorously examined for evidence of piety and to see if their reputation for holiness spreads after their death This period of examination is normally required to take five years. At the same time at least one miracle needs to have occurred that is attributed to the direct intercession of the person who is being considered for sainthood.
If this examination is passed and if a miracle can be attributed to the person being considered then after five years s/he can be beatified. When this occurs the person is thereafter referred to as blessed.
After a further five years and normally after a second miracle has been attributed to the intercession of this person, then he or she can be canonised and is then referred to as a saint.
Some supporters of Mother Teresa have argued that her sanctity and the scope of her good works were such that it should be possible to have her declared a saint without having to wait the ten years that is usually the minimum period required. Those who would like Mother Teresa's progress toward sainthood hastened have also been encouraged by the fact that the current pope is known to have held her in very high regard.
Such fast tracking may well, however, prove controversial.
The last time a pope tried to canonise a woman immediately after her death was when Pope Innocent IV attempted to have Clare of Assisi named a saint in 1253. Officials of the papal court dissuaded him.
Nor is there any current precedent. Previous attempts to have Pope Pious XII and Pope John XXIII canonised soon after their deaths were unsuccessful.
Were Mother Teresa to be declared a saint in a relatively short time this is likely to be to the advantage of the Missionaries of Charity. Should any such attempt merely foster the controversy which developed around some aspects of her work then this may well harm the standing of the order she founded.

Sources
The Age
7/9/97 page 9 news item, `International symbol of selfless commitment'
7/9/97 page 9 news item by Rahul Bedi, `The struggle is over'
7/9/97 page 10 news item by Nelson Graves, `British documentary shows a darker view of this religious icon'
7/9/97 page 10 news item, `The tiny nun whose faith moved mountains'
7/9/97 page 10 analysis by Caroline Davies, `Myth and publicity snowballed throughout the years'
7/9/97 page 10 news item, `World's leaders pay tribute to an "angel of mercy"' 8/9/97 page 12 news item by Malcolm Brown, `From Calcutta to the back of Bourke'
8/9/97 page 13 news item by Deborah Caldwell, `Nun's death leaves void, say mourners'
8/9/97 page 16 editorial, `Farewell to the saint in a sari'
10/9/97 page 8 news item by Michael Lev, `Church uneasy with state funeral for Mother Teresa'
13/9/97 page 21 comment by Dominique Lapierre, `In the palm of God'
13/9/97 page 21 comment by Christopher Hitchens, `Ministering to the rich and famous'
18/9/97 page 19 comment by Pamela Bone, `Prayers that failed to answer the pain'
19/9/97 page 18 letter from John Arackal, `Mother Teresa misunderstood'
20/9/97 page 26 letter from Sarah Gilchrist, `Why Mother Teresa failed'
20/9/97 page 26 letters from Father Mark Coleridge & Ashley Bear defending Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity
23/9/97 page 14 letter from Dr John Billings, `Mother Teresa and the Billings Method'
23/9/97 page 14 letters from Gavan O'Farrell, Ravanel Weinman & Richard Lee defending Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity
24/9/97 page 14 letter from Malcolm E Drake, `A warm hand and cold hearts'
24/9/97 page 14 letter from Rosslyn Ives, `Meaningful change rather than dogma'

The Australian
8/9/97 page 14 news report by John Zubrzycki, `Where helpers of the dying dispense solace'
8/9/97 page 14 & 15 analysis by James Murray, `That astonishing, inspirational sense of charity began at home'
8/9/97 page 15 analysis by Sian Powell, `Deluge of donations drew critics' attention'
8/9/97 page 16 editorial, `Simple nun inspired the world'
9/9/97 page 10 news item by Christopher Thomas and Richard Owen, `India begins dismantling of legend'
11/9/97 page 13 comment by Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, `Saviour of the needy driven by self-interest'
11/9/97 page 13 comment by James Murray, `Saint condemned for unbending goodness'
15/9/97 page 6 news item by John Zubrzycki, `Teresa's sisters pray for survival of charity'
15/9/97 page 6 news item by Patrice O'Shaughnessy, `Mission carries on, one act of love at a time'
15/9/97 page 12 analysis by John Zubrzycki, `A mission without end'
16/9/97 page 9 news item, `Bishops back Teresa sainthood'

The Bulletin
23/9/97 page 57 analysis by Kenneth Woodward, `Requiem for a Saint'
23/9/97 page 60 comment by Germaine Greer, 'Unmasking the Mother'

The Herald Sun
7/9/97 page 42 & 43 analysis by Deidre Stark, `Teresa: A life-long mission of mercy'
8/9/97 page 12 & 13 obituary by Andrew Bolt, `Bonds between people in a lifetime of charity'
8/9/97 page 19 comment by Paul Gray, `Love is all you need'
9/9/97 page 18 editorial, `Vale, the Saint of the Slums'
9/9/97 page 23 comment, `She confronted our biggest fear'
14/9/97 page 17 news item, `World mourns gentle Teresa'

Internet
At least two reviews of Christopher Hitchens' The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice can be found on the Internet. Both reviews praise the book and support its criticisms of Mother Theresa and her work.
One is by Norman Taylor and can be found on the Atheist Australia site. This can be found at http://www.users.bigpond.com/Atheist_Australia/teresa.htm Another is by Eric J. Brock and is reproduced from The Shreveport Humanist Bulletin. This can be found at http://www.softdisk.com/comp/shume/religion/missiony.html
There are also numerous sites championing the work of Mother Teresa. One particularly useful site is the Ascension Research Centre site which provides a great deal of information on Mother Teresa and also has extensive click-throughs to other relevant sites. This can be found at http://www.ascension-research.org/teresa.html