Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa

in this book and there is a a relationship the missionary position Charles Keating is also referred to in the book by Christopher Hitchens it's called the missionary position and you write about how Mother Teresa accepted a large donation of stolen Savings and Loan money from Charles Keating giving him a crucifix in return and describing this Pious fleecer of the small saver as a friend of the poor yes and taking rides on his private jet and interceding with the court when he was on Toronto in Los Angeles saying he was a great friend of the poor the court wrote to her and said that's all very well but he's given you lots of money that doesn't belong to him belongs to the to the poor and the small savior can we have the money back she broke off the correspondence at that point which is very typical of her why did you write the book well because I couldn't believe that um anyone else had start again I couldn't believe that nobody else um had taken a second I can't get this right I could it was impossible for me to let such a fat Target go by I mean he was here was someone at whom no one had taken a second look whose publicity was always favorable not to say adoring yet it was all the time in the company of dictators and Crooks and frauds and Bullies of all kinds and was preaching a very very very reactionary kind of religious fundamentalism while being university called a saint I thought the gap between these two things was so great that it murdered a short book and so it's got in there all the things that you don't know but Mother Teresa but should this is the second printing of the book it's just come out of paperback yes available at fine bookstores I believe everywhere now you write that uh contraception and abortion are morally equivalent that's the view of Mother Teresa and you also write about what you describe as her crimes against humanity what are they well she went to um photo France capital of Haiti During the devalier period and made a long and groveling speech saying how how nice the divario family were to the poor of Haiti accepting in return a decoration a medal from them and justifying their regime she's done the same for quite a lot of other dictatorships around the world for Mrs Gandhi in India for enviraja in Albania she's uh she's preached that um in Ireland that there should be no divorce um and no contraception uh which of course only deepens the religious split in Ireland absolutely the last thing the Irish people need as well as denying the right of Family Planning and divorce to Irish people um though she has praised Princess Diana for getting out of her own marriage because she's become a friend of Princess Diana so that's all right because as is not untypical to people like her she's a seller of indulgences to the very rich while a preacher of resignation and submission to the poor who she's helped to fleece it's a pretty long bill of indictment um I noticed that the Congress is about to strike a gold medal in her honor and I absolutely can't believe that no one will get up and say that what are we doing here in March of this past year uh you wrote this editorial yeah because I'm going to use this as a Segway you wrote that now in her ninth decade after having spread her uh benevolent Legacy around the world Mother Teresa awaits her reward the ongoing challenge to the rest of us is not merely to be inspired by her exemplary works but to institutionalize them I did write that I did write that and this was on the occasion of her stepping down as the Mother Superior of her group to uh uh to this woman and the example the argument I make and I this I actually read this book and it is funny and you Christopher you've got about 10 more of these and you can have your own version of eminent victorians uh which will keep you alive in the 22nd century memory wise but I mean I also think that long after I'm forgotten and uh Mother Teresa will be a saint and and the fact that all that she did in Calcutta I mean doing the things that very few people want to do which is should be Limitless population well look I think the the church has got it as a political entity has not been as effective and constructive as a moral religious entity and I mean the pope who I'm a big fan of is sort of a Social Democrat at heart and I'm not I'm more of a free market here so with but just there's there's such a thing Beyond transcending politics uh just moral example but may I ask you this believe me the question is neutral how do you know that she's done anything any good in Calcutta I mean everyone thinks they know that she's devoted her life to the poor of Calcutta what can they actually say they know about this she set up on uh she moved at the age of 17 she left uh uh Albania to go to Ireland with the sisters of lauretto and then went to India and she's being a missionary all right people believe that she is feeding the hungry in Bengal didn't they they believe she's clothing the naked now I ask in my book we know she's been given a very great deal of money we know that the standard of a clinic Center hospice for the dying in Calcutta is very near gutter level there's no there's no treatment there there's no medicine people go there to die so the money isn't being spent on that she has claimed her to have opened several hundred convents and various different parts of the world I suspect since she won't allow an audit and she went she wouldn't give back the stolen money that Charles Keating gave to her or answer questions about it that all the money that good people like yourself who believe in her centered Center has simply been spent in building a monument to Catholic fundamentalism well I guess we'd have a different perception of what the value of of her her work has been I mean I I mean certainly people like Jerry Brown for example who went over and spent some period of time uh helping out and many others have come away uh terribly moved and impressed like anything as I was saying about the Marshall Plan there's more than one way to in in in interpret interpret this I I do think that it is ironic that at a time when feminism for example is is searching for role models and finding ways to to stick it to the Patriarchs that the most remarkable ongoing uh successful model of feminist empowerment feminine empowerment has been uh Catholic nuns over the over the Millennia and it's it's quite something and Mother Teresa is only the latest in a long line well she does say that um when she got the real Bill prize she said abortion was the greatest threat to world peace I'm very squeamish about abortion myself but it's it's hysterically wrong to say that it's the greatest threat to World Peace and it's I think it's absolutely Wicked to say that it's morally equivalent to contraception or artificial contraception as a Catholic Church calls it as if there was any other kind um I think it's wicked first campaign uh against the right of women women in Ireland who've been married to wife beaters and drunks and child abusers to want to divorce them and say if you try to get remarried we will never forgive you we will never forgive you but forgiveness by all means for Charles Keating forgiveness for the duvalier family forgiveness for Union Carbide at Bhopal after they poisoned the people of India there forgive forgive forgive every time when it's the rich sale of indulgences and strict Stern discipline clerical control over sex to the poor and to the gender which you say she's empowering I've never heard such concentrated nonsense to get a call from Essex County New Jersey good morning good morning uh I'm appalled at Mr hitchman's positions on just about everything one of the most devastating ones is that Mr Nixon the President Nixon was incapable of writing a book he's the one who brought down a Soviet I think he referred to President Reagan not President Nixon I meant Reagan of course of course I'm so excited and upset I'm sorry uh yes of course President Reagan he negotiated without somebody whispering in his ear with the world leaders and had their respect a large and larger amount of respect and this president has ever received received justifiedly so you may be clever Mr Clinton but I think President Reagan was a man of vision who understood the world or understood and had principles and with those principles brought America in the Forefront after the disaster of the Carter regime uh and in his Mother Teresa position those are religious stance that are not none of your business you're obviously in atheist and all your positions are on the left so whatever you're saying is tinted and tainted okay we'll get a response which is right on the second Point obviously I mean I I don't believe that I'm here as the handiwork of God all that my actions are supervised by our Supernatural intelligence of any kind and I think it's extreme arrogance in on the part of anyone who does believe that there are oddly enough people who go around saying that they do God's work on the other Gods creatures for this piece of conceit are always called extremely modest and humble I don't know why um on the first point we won't have time to go over our differences about President Reagan now you probably guessed I don't agree with your account of him but even if your account was correct ma'am the fact remains that he did not write his own Memoirs and my judgment could not have read them either do you believe in any other greater force in this universe no Jim Pinkerton how about you oh you know I think that's a tough question it's a tough question for Sunday morning I'll have to what what why why today of all days to get into well look you can say you believe in the power of love which is something that can't be Quantified for example it was obviously not immeasurable Force you can say you believe in it and you can see that it has so to speak worked but that is a product of human emotion and intellect and energy and character and um um it's not you one doesn't need a supernatural explanation for it and I might notice one any longer need one for the origins of the cosmos um and we no longer can consult ourselves that we are the center even of a of a galaxy let alone a universe so I'm afraid that probably probably the the supposedly modest but actually arrogant belief that we're children of God is is as discredited as the idea that the Universe was created for our convenience I think that in the Stanley Colonel interview for book notes he talked about how he got to do this book on Vietnam by laying on the beach in Nantucket with his friend Larry Grossman who said let's do a series on PBS on Vietnam I bring that up because I want to ask you all about Connections and whether or not in the book business that you're in could you do what you're doing without connections I was laying on the beach in Nantucket as the first night of a limerick isn't it [Laughter] um nothing nothing occurs to me when you ask about Connections Brian because I'm published mainly by Versa which is a small house it's the publishing Isle of new left review which is a very good magazine um indeed but with a permissible circulation and not much what you might call Cloud ancient loyalties are involved here um they will print stuff of mine that other Publishers weren't um I was going to tell you an interview story though if we weren't out of time on that we're not well what I've found is amazing if you if there's something you want someone to say and you think you can steer them into saying it you think by your Artful questioning you'll get it out of them the thing that they you're wanting to elicit say very often they'll volunteer it maybe it's something desperate in your manner I don't know but um um to borrow another line um this one is the first line of the First Column that Hillary Clinton ever wrote for her column series first line of the First Column was the first time I met Mother Teresa I knew then what kind of column we were in for from the first lady but the first time I met Mother Teresa I walked around Calcutta with her and you know followed her with the dog-like direction feigning an interest in her work because I was what I was pretty sure of was that we were up against here a fundamentalist uh campaigner um who was cloaking her fundamentalist agenda in apparent humanitarianism I thought that was probably the story but I wasn't sure and it was difficult to sort of frame a question that would disclose it but I thought well we'll see she took me around we went to some tiny orphanage I think it was that she had going there and when she'd finished showing me around she said with a huge gesture of her arm taking in the whole scene you see this is how we fight abortion and contraception in Bengal this is what we do and this is that's what we do and this is how we do it so I thought now that's really interesting that's what that's what I suspected she was doing but it's very good a photo volunteered it and I've had that happen in a number of other cases too um the the very thing that you you feel that people are least likely to want to disclose is actually the thing that's nearest the front of their mind David

Channel: David Hepburn

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Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 05 2022