Mother Teresa: a biography

THE MISSIONARY POSITION
After
Hell’s Angel 
Hitchens published a small book that picked up
where the film left off. In 
The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory
and Practice,
Hitchens hoped to elaborate on Mother Teresa and her work,
by “judging Mother Teresa’s reputation by her actions and words rather
than the actions and words by her reputation.”
5
According to Hitchens,
Mother Teresa’s shining reputation was put upon her by the millions of
people who needed to feel that someone, somewhere, is doing the things
that they are not to help the poor. Further, Hitchens charged, Mother
Teresa fed on this adoration, and, contrary to what she says, has not only
come to accept it, but expects and even demands it.
Hitchens’s book posed some troubling questions. Among other things,
Hitchens questioned how Mother Teresa spent the money she had raised.
Hitchens could find no satisfactory answer, and Mother Teresa consis-
tently refused to discuss her financial affairs. As Hitchens stated, “The de-
cision not to [fund a proper hospital], and to run instead a haphazard and
cranky institution which would expose itself to litigation and protest were
it run by any branch of the medical profession, is a deliberate one. The
point is not the honest relief of suffering but the promulgation of a cult
based on death and suffering and subjection.”
6
Mother Teresa’s apologists have often portrayed her as an innocent
who professes to know little of business and politics, and who is concerned
only with God and God’s will. In reality, as Hitchens points out, Mother
Teresa kept some questionable company over the years. She has received
hospitality, awards, publicity, and money from numerous persons with
overt political motives or dubious business histories such as Robert
Maxwell; the Duvaliers; President Ronald Reagan; Prime Minister Mar-
garet Thatcher; President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton; and
Charles Keating, one of the key figures in the savings and loan scandal of
the 1990s. The relationship with Keating was particularly galling. Keating
made a generous donation to Mother Teresa as well as making his private
jet available for her use. When Keating was imprisoned for fraud and em-
bezzlement, Mother Teresa petitioned the trial judge to look kindly on
him. When she received a reply from one of the prosecutors, explaining
that the $10,000 she had received from Keating was stolen from innocent
and not especially wealthy investors, Mother Teresa never answered the
letter.
Hitchens maintained that such blatant and deliberate disregard for the
truth on Mother Teresa’s part was not a sign of naiveté or even stupidity,
but rather arrogance. Claiming to be above politics, Mother Teresa also
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M O T H E R T E R E S A

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had the benefit of an almost unprecedented public forum. But while
speaking out against abortion in Great Britain, Ireland, and the United
States, she remained noticeably silent on the topics of unlawful deaths,
murders, and oppression in such political hotspots as Ethiopia, Haiti, and
Albania, where she kissed the hands of ruling dictators and willingly took
their money and their awards.
Her refusal to acknowledge the deep problems of poverty emerged in
Hitchens’s description of a 1981 visit that Mother Teresa made to Ana-
costia, an African American ghetto in Washington, D.C. At that time,
the Missionaries of Charity intended to establish some sort of operation
there, though many of the area’s residents did not want to give the im-
pression that their neighborhood was helpless and poor like many of the
Third World areas in which Mother Teresa worked. Just before a press
conference, a group of African American men visited Mother Teresa:
They were very upset. . . . They told Mother that Anacostia
needed decent jobs, housing and services—not charity.
Mother didn’t argue with them; she just listened. Finally one of
them asked her what she was going to do here. Mother said:
“First we must learn to love one another.” They didn’t know
what to say to that.
7
Hitchens’s book, like the film, had its detractors and admirers. George
Sim Johnston, writing for the American conservative publication 
The
National Review,
called Hitchens’s work “unresisting imbecility,” and
added that “the only good that will come from this book is the prayers the
nuns of Mother Teresa’s order are no doubt saying for its author.”
8
The
New York Times Book Review
found that Hitchens’s book is, “zealously
overwritten, and rails wildly in defense of an almost nonsensical proposi-
tion: that Mother Teresa of Calcutta is actually not a saint but an evil and
selfish old woman.” Yet the reviewer concluded that Hitchens had a
point: “Ultimately, he argues, Mother Teresa is less interested in helping
the poor than in using them as an indefatigable source of wretchedness on
which to fuel the expansion of her fundamentalist Roman Catholic be-
liefs.”
9
The
Sunday Times
was even more succinct: “Veteran lefty kicks old
nun; old nun forgives; lefty doesn’t want to be forgiven.”
10
Mary Poplin, a journalist writing for 
Commonweal
magazine, visited
Calcutta in 1996. She was there to write about Mother Teresa and her
work; she also took the opportunity to ask Mother Teresa about the
Hitchens’s book. According to Poplin’s account, when questioned about
the charge that Mother Teresa was one of the wealthiest women in the
“ T H E M O S T O B E D I E N T W O M A N I N T H E C H U R C H ” 1 2 9

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world, and that she certainly did not need any more money, Mother
Teresa, after a puzzled look, replied, “Oh yes, the book. I haven’t read it
but some of the sisters have. It matters not, he [Hitchens] is forgiven.”
Poplin laughed and then said, “Yes, Mother, in the end of the book, he
says he knew you said you forgave him and he’s irate because he says he
didn’t ask you to forgive him and he didn’t need it.” She looked at me as
though I hadn’t understood, then gently and confidently instructed me,
“Oh, it is not I who forgives, it is God, it is God. God forgives.”
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