I don’t know a lot about how the donation system works, but I think it’s a bit of a red herring to accuse her system of not treating as many people as possible as efficiently as possible, since, as I understand it, that wasn’t her objective.
From what I know about her (a little, mostly from Muggeridge’s book) what she wanted to do was to treat people as individuals, one by one, and with love. I think she went to the poorest of the poor in India because of the Christian directive found in Mat. 25 31-46, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and comfort the lonely, because to do it for anyone is to do it for Christ.
It seems to me that she would consider her life well spent if she managed that for even one person. I suppose the argument would then be- is it ever justifiable to use a person-by-person, inefficient method, when one has the resources to set up huge poverty-eradication systems.
—I suppose the argument would then be- is it ever justifiable to use a person-by-person, inefficient method, when one has the resources to set up huge poverty-eradication systems.—
In terms of the treatment of poverty, the problem is not that her system was inefficient or even bad: it’s that there was an incredible amount of money, solicited very heavily (and some of it the proceeds of theft, in the case of Keating, never to be returned), that no one has accounted for. The bulk of this money certainly never hit Calcutta or went towards improving the situation of poverty or poor medical care. And yes, I do think there’s something creepy about glorying in the suffering of the poor as a great asset without really doing anything to change the underlying situation.
Thank you. This is what I came in to say, albeit hesitantly. She’s considered such a great woman, but I come close to despising her for this alone. India hesitantly has been trying to urge birth control on a lot of poor women, teaching them about not having too many kids, only enough that htey can feed, and along comes Mother Teresa and puts paid to all of that.
This is not the Pit, so I can’t even come close to my true feelings about a meddling Christian missionary woman who thought she was better and more blessed than all others coming into a poor country and teaching the backwards heathens her ways. And think, if that’s my toned-down version, you can get the idea of how I truly feel.
I am not the only one, either. Anyway, missionary work to me seems wrong and immoral from the start - I started a thread around here a long time ago about prosetlyizing and no one ever cnvinced me there was any good reason for it. And I listened, I really did.
Well the big deal about birth control is that people don’t really know what it is they’re doing. We think we have this world figured out and can go around having rampant sex and abortions like it’s cool, but we have no idea what it is we’re doing to ourselves and to unborn souls.
When a sperm and an egg unite, a wandering soul binds itself to this and grows into it like a seed in fertile soul. When we abort it, this poor soul is destroyed. This is why saints and holy people have asked God to forgive us because we don’t know what it is we’re doing. They can’t explain it to us though, because there are evil people in this world who must not be allowed to know the nature of all things. If we “figure it all out” then, with our little feet that are quick to run to mischief, we’ll most likely commit even more evil atrocities with this newfound understanding of all things.
Birth control and abortion are two very different subjects.
Abortion destroys the soul of the fetus? That’s a hell of an idea. Does death always result in the destruction of a soul, or does that only happen with abortions? What’s the cut-off point between die-and-go-to-heaven and die-and-soul-gets-destroyed? Second trimester? First birthday? Middle age? Why one age and not another?
If some one wants to open a new thread on the topic where we will not be attacking positions of posters no longer here to defend themselves, feel free.
If someone wants to open a new thread to discuss either the physical distinctions between abortion and contraception or the theological ramifications of such acts, feel free.