Review: Superficial pleasantries
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 06 6, 2013
Mother Teresa had a large impact on the world of the poor and sick.  Unfortunately, this book is strictly along the propaganda lines that it was all good work.  It mentions some of the criticisms without addressing any of them, simply gliding on with the myth of the loving Mother.Unfortunately for her victims -- I mean, patients -- The Loving Mother valued suffering as a way to Christ.  This meant that valuable treatments for suffering patients were refused.  People lay screaming in pain rather than receiving pain medications.  People did not receive adequate medical treatment from trained medical personnel, they received inadequate care from medically untrained sisters and volunteers.  This meant that ones who might have been treated successfully were not.  The book describes her as wanting people to have "death with dignity", but her centers did no such thing.Of course, she herself went to hospital and had modern treatments for various illnesses.I'm in no way saying that nobody benefited from her work.  Many did.  But the myth of the saintly, blessed woman needs to also honestly face that her saintliness was based on a theology of suffering and blood which gave the ill and dying not much more than a bed to do it on.