Mother
Therasa: she might have saved many but she was also stubborn
Mother
Teresa, said an obituarist, was not controversial like the late Princess. This
commentator didn’t know what he was talking about. While selflessly caring
for millions in Calcutta and initiating the establishment of charities in other
locations around the world, Mother Teresa was also an ardent anti- abortionist
and a campaigner against artificial birth control.
Now, what is meant by a “campaign against artificial birth control”? It means that Mother Theresa frowned upon the use of condoms and birth control pills. For her, “Preethi” and “Mithuri” were objects of sin that needed to be banned.
Mother Teresa also gave the rich beans. She is remembered to have said that the rich “should give until it hurts.” She didn’t believe in the Lions and Rotary kind of charity, or charity as an excuse where the rich gave “a little something’’ to lighten their conscience. She wanted the rich to give until they felt the pain, and she could afford to talk about it because she had given up everything....
So, there was no doubt that she was an extraordinary person. She saved lives without philosophising about it — and that cannot be said of you or me. ( Unless you have taken care of thousands of poor and the dying while sacrificing mundane creature comforts.)
But, Mother Teresa did philosophise about other things, and one was artificial birth control. She was a person who had seen the effect of population explosion first hand. Though she didn’t issue statements from the Vatican claiming divine authority, she made her point forcefully, almost like the Pope.
Now, more than anybody else, she would have known that Calcutta’s suffering millions could have been diminished by the practice of some birth control . There is no violence in the use of prophylactics. If that’s the case, and if the slogan of the moment should have been “make love not war” (or “make love not babies”?) why did Mother Teresa speak out against birth control?
Did she believe that the teeming suffering millions in Calcutta were an inevitability? Or did her faith convince her that artificial birth control was bad? I’m not saying a Catholic nun should be a pro-abortionist. There is violence in abortion, and it’s difficult to be a pro-abortionist with a conscience.
But, when it comes to artificial birth control here is a where (methinks) a philosopher, a plain old non-practising preacher could do good too, though not in the way that Mother Teresa did. Mother Teresa sanctioned the creation of excess babies, and then she cared for them, the dying and the destitute. (Princess Diana is said to have referred to the downtrodden, in an interview, as “the battered this, and the battered that.” ! Mother Teresa did a remarkable lot for the “battered this and the battered that’’. But what if the “battered this” and the “battered that” didn’t exist? What if their parents were encouraged to practise birth control, the same practice that Mother Teresa discouraged and spoke against?
For one, Mother Teresa would have had a lot less work. For another, there would have been a lot less people, children ( especially children) who suffered. By the way, this is not something “we” in confortable urban cocoons are asking “them” the poor in Calcutta to do. My people practise birth control too, so we are not hypocrites.
If anybody is saying “who the hell is he to criticize a saint?” then let it be reiterated that this is not to say that Mother Teresa was NOT a great saintly being. She was. But, it will be a unworthy cop-out, a hypocritical platitudinal exercise if we were to asses her life and the lessons of her life totally uncritically in order to eulogise her in death.
A more pugnacious friend of mine said “ it must have been a Prize Idiot who gave the Nobel Prize to mother Teresa.” I’m not saying that. I’m not throwing the nun with the bathwater. Like my freind, I felt that Mother Teresa’s recalcitrant stand on birth control sanctioned the creation of an excess population — a very negative result. But yet, Mother Teresa deserved the Nobel Prize probably a hundred times more than Yasser Arafat or Iitzak Rabin did, because she cared for teeming millions of poor and didn’t at any time wage a war against anybody.
Also, we can’t contradict that perhaps mother Teresa’s doctrinal stand against birth control was underpinned by her unrelenting faith. (She is said to have claimed: I was never a social worker. I served Jesus.)
But that doesn’t mean that the rest of the world should cop out as well, and not attempt to view Mother Teresa’s contribution as objectively as possible. The rest of the world is not all Christian, let alone Catholic.
Mother Teresa was not a candle in the wind. She was a very influential person, particularly among the poor, who revered her because she cared for them. So, when she spoke out against birth control, the poor were bound to practise. They begot more, and suffered more, and mother Teresa cared for all those who suffered?
On the other hand, there may have been very non-influential and well meaning people who spoke for birth control and handed out condoms. There was a man in Thailand who did. He did a lot of good too, and alleviated more suffering probably even more than Mother Teresa. But at his funeral a lot of pious people might call him a cad.
This is not the first time Mother Teresa has been criticised for her stubborn doctrinal stand, so I’m not alone.
My view is: Mother Teresa was a saint. But, that doesn’t prevent us from saying that maybe, the good people of this earth do their share to perpetuate suffering as well, while being saints. Since I’m not Catholic, I think I’m entitled to say “that’s too bad”.
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