Missionary
The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens’s polemic against Mother Teresa, is a worthwhile one-sitting read. An excerpt that typifies the feel of the book:
The point is not the honest relief of suffering but the promulgation of a cult based on death and suffering and subjection. [Mother Teresa] described a person who was in the last agonies of cancer and suffering unbearable pain. With a smile, Mother Teresa told the camera what she told this terminal patient: ‘You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you.’ Unconscious of the account to which this irony might be charged, she then told of the sufferer’s reply: ‘Then please tell him to stop kissing me.’
Hitchens reserves a fair amount of his criticism for the public’s devotional attitude toward Mother Teresa and the media’s uncritical treatment of her activities. You’ll find it easy to agree with him here, even if you still have sympathy for Teresa by the time Hitchens finishes his attack.
Of course, this being Chris Hitchens, Latin phrases and unusual adjective/noun pairings (e.g., “grisly triptych”) abound.
When I read that book, I had to keep it face-down on my desk at work, just to avoid any conversations about it.
I read the Hitchens book… I found it farely balance.
Carmelo Lisciotto