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Saturday, August 27, 2005

 

Handmaiden of the Left?

Photo of Mother Teresa (with Cindy Sheehan's face superimposed on Mother T's body) and Princess DianaI've written before about The Weasel's new Department of Doctrine and its first Secretary, Alfredo de Darque. (For the complete history to date, see here.) He's kind of an interesting guy, with a wide and varied background mostly as an official spokesperson for one institution or another, both public and private.

In the course of researching de Darque's past, I managed to turn up a paper which he wrote for a college course. My source requested only that I not mention the college name or other specifics, in return for which he has given me gracious permission to reprint excerpts here on WLIR. I thought you'd be interested in seeing how the man was formed, so to speak, and I don't mean by being fashioned from clay.

Below, I have not edited the excerpts from the original typewritten manuscript, except to insert in braces words and phrases which appear to be omitted, [like this], and to omit passages which are largely repetitive. I have also not included the anonymous professor's comments, although I can tell you that de Darque received a C- for it.

Without further ado, then...
Mother Teresa: Handmaiden of Lepers -- or the Left?
Alfredo de Darque
Polemics 201 / Professor [name withheld]
April 14, [year withheld]

It is difficult to read any newsmagazine or newspaper these days without encountering some mention of the woman known to the world as Mother Teresa. This has been especially true since her receipt of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979. Her supporters of whom there are many claim for her near perfection [as?] a human being, a humanitarian, a religious icon, and so on. Cetrainly she has done many things well and many other things good, if not well.

In this paper I intend to examine Mother Teresa's work in some detail and will demonstrate that she is not the saint, or near-saint, that many of her supporters of whom there are many, both Catholic and non-Catholic, claim her to be.

First, let us examine her public statements especially that of her Nobel Prize acceptance. From the very beginning she says and I quote:
As we have gathered here together to thank God for the Nobel Peace Prize I think it will be beautiful that we pray the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi which always surprises me very much - we pray this prayer every day after Holy Communion, because it is very fitting for each one of us, and I always wonder that 4-500 years ago as St. Francis of Assisi composed this prayer that they had the same difficulties that we have today, as we compose this prayer that fits very nicely for us also.
I could not help but not notice the use of the first person plural, that is, "we." This usage has been a tactic and a strategy of imperialists and dictators since time immorial. Also, Mother Teresa invokes right here at the beginning the name of a saint, Francis [of] Assissi, who composed a prayer which she, or "we" as she says, prays every day. And who is Francis [of] Assissi? Notoriously, he advocated "love of animals" which even in his own day could have been widely understood to be coded language for bestiality. As Mother Teresa says in her own words, my emphasis added, "this prayer that fits very nicely for us also." Is she perhaps unconsciously telling us something about herself here?

Later in the same speech, Mother Tersa said:
...it was not enough to become a man - he died on the cross to show that greater love, and he died for you and for me and for that leper and for that man dying of hunger and that naked person lying in the street not only of Calcutta, but of Africa, and New York, and London, and Oslo.
The barely disguised and almost pornographic certainly blasphemous (note, Mother Teresa did not even capitalize the H in "he") imagery used in this passage should turn the stomach of nearly every thinking sensitive, thinking person, including Mother Teresa's support[er]s of whom there are unedniably many. It is also worth noting that the "saint of the poor and downtrodden" as I once heard or read her described, even if not in so many words, in her list of those who are worthy of divine support there is not a single middle American city or state. With these words it is not saying too much to say that Mother Teresa damns herself by revealing herself to be discriminatory against the Anglo-Saxon majority, some of whom share her very same faith.

Moving on. She then asserts, quote:
St. John says you are a liar if you say you love God and you don't love your neighbour. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbour whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live. And so this is very important for us to realise that love, to be true, has to hurt.
Again she brings up the name of a beloved saint, althought this time one who had no recorded intimacy with the breasts of the fields and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea as far as we know today. But she brings up St. John only in order to say that he says that "you", by which she means "us not counting me" 0therwise she would have fallen back on "we" again, are a liar simply for saying one thing about God and another thing about our neighbor. I can say many things about God that I cannot say about my neighbor but that doesn't make me a liar does it? Even Mother Teresa must admit that if she cannot be consistent and logical and non-inflammatory in her public statements then she cannot expect to win many hearts, let alone minds, to her cause.

Furthermore and moreover, we can see again that Mother Tersa is once again not a saint at all, in advocating that we not only touch our neighbors which is bad enoug, but also should live with them. Indeed she suggests that we already live with them. Perhaps Mother Teresa did not live next door to a homosexual couple who probably met in a lavatory stall based on the way they keep their house and lawn, but not all of us are so lucky. And her supporters, and there are many of them, call her a Christian let alone a saint!

[...]

Finally, in her concluding paragraph, she says, quote:
I will be going to Heaven for all the publicity because it has purified me and sacrificed me and made me really ready to go to Heaven. I think that this is something, that we must live life beautifully, we have Jesus with us and He loves us. If we could only remember that God loves me, and I have an opportunity to love others as he loves me, not in big things, but in small things with great love, then Norway becomes a nest of love. And how beautiful it will be that from here a centre for peace has been given.
There are almost too many typical left-wing issues in this brief passage to mention but I will mention just a few of them myself:

(1) Publicity: Mother Teresa associates getting into Heaven with Hollywood-like celebrity. Perhaps she fears that her so-called "opinions" are not good enough, that she must also be "famous" for them?

(2) "Norway becomes a nest of love": First, the assumed saint can't even keep her facts straight. This wasn't Norway this was Sweden! Second, by her reference to a "nest of love" we can only guess, but it seems likely that she is an advocate of unwholesome sexual, I will not demean myself to call them marital, practices. As is well know, any Scandinavian country is already a hotbed (no pun intended) of such practices and does not need the "blessing" of Mother Teresa or anyone else to sink any further.

(3) Love, love, love, peace. Need I say moore? I think not.

[...]

Once, the Pope -- out of the goodness of his holy soul, presented Mother Teresa with a gorgeous white Lincoln Cadillac. But did Mother Teresa use this vehicle to get around her "beloved" India perhaps to throw food and candies from the moon roof or to give enjoyable rides in air-conditioned comfort to all those lepers she so famously "loves"? No she did [not]. She simply got rid of it, sold it I think, without even ever riding [in] let alone driving it herself. If she had, perhaps she would be aging less rapidly and thereby be able to continue her "holy duties" much longer. Mother Teresa clearly sneers at the many altruistic advantages of the capitalistic lifestyle, to say nothing of American industrial prowess, at least when it comes to automobiles.

[...]

Finally, I wish to call the reader's attention to some of the supporters, of who there are many, who have flocked to the side of Mother Teresa, calling her one of their own.

(1) Malcolm Muggeridge, who [among] other things once wrote a book making fun of people who didn't like Stalin. His own autobigraphy had the title "Chronicles of Wasted Time," which I think says more than Mr. Muggeridge intended.

(2) The singer Elton John, who not only practices rock music but also lives a lifestyle one can only characterize as "homosexual."

(3) Princess Diana of Wales and England, a known golddigger and friend of many other celebrities many of whom live and/or work in Hollywood and New York City and France and other so-called "jet set" localities. Yes, this is the same Princess Diana who has made headlines the world over for advocating that we send in Western troops to remove land mines from foreign countries, although she has not yet said anything about the UN (perhaps she recognizes that sorry institution's uselessness).

A perceptive [observer?] will notice in this list that there are no supporters from middle America. Also that there are no other nuns, which makes one wonder.

For all of these reasons, I think it is more than fair to say, Mother Teresa does not speak for the common man, she does not speak for fellow practititioners of religion, she does not speak for those who have spent their lives and the sweat of their brows earning the rewards of comfort. And she surely does not speak for me and I am a Roman Catholic myself. Perhaps she should give up her so-called crusade and just move to Hollywood or New York and stop bothering those of us who have real jobs and often work on them even when we're on vacation.


Comments:
Really a great blog -- thanks for stopping over at mine.

Joe Trippi
 
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