Talk:Mother Teresa

Template:Controversial2

For previous discussion, see:

• Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive1
• Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive2
• Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive3
• Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive4
• Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive5
• Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive6
• Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive7

You may want to read the Talk:Mother Teresa/FAQ and related discussion before commenting. Also see Talk:Mother Teresa/Groundrules.

Contents

1 Cooled down 2 Pascal's wager 3 Minor edit Baptism 4 Additions by anon and some changes 5 Gandhi. 6 Support for forced sterilisation? 6.1 Supporting documentation 7 Muggeridge miracle 8 I Find it Unbelieveable that Mother Teresa is a Controversial Topic! 9 Farming out criticisms 10 I'm glad this article has a criticism section, but... 11 Photo

Cooled down

This page has sure cooled down. Has everyone just given up, or have you guys just been busy during the holidays? All of a sudden, everyone stopped editing the talk page, and I am just wondering why this happened. Greenmountainboy 17:43, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I'm back. I've tried to restore some sanity to the article, let me know if I've succeeded.—Eloquence 03:48, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

It's hard to say. If I try to check the diff, I have many red block and don't know if you only add/removed a blank line somewhere or if you edited the text. I may not used diff tool in the proper way. Anyway, if it's you that have removed the subtitles under the pictures, I think it's a good thing. gbog 04:53, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I removed some attributions where the facts are uncontroversial (e.g. it is not just alleged that MT spoke against abortion both publicly and in meetings with public officials, it's a documented fact), I also reorganized the criticism section, got rid of a few POV terms like "complain" and restored some deleted information. Yes, I also shortened the captions, because with the new automatic thumbnails, long captions are better placed on the image page itself and not in the article.—Eloquence 04:59, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know what are the customs but, from my POV, it would have been easyer to check if you had made 3-4 different edits (one for blocks, one for captions, one for re-adding stuff,...) gbog

Pascal's wager

One point I do not believe is the following paragraph:

Mother Teresa's defenders have responded that baptisms are either soul-saving or harmless, so the criticisms are without merit (a variant of Pascal's Wager).

Symon Leys' opinion is a really bad and clearly wrong way of expressing why someone would approve those baptisms. Lots of people (and I mean defendants of MT) would not agree with that explanation. That's why I am changing the phrasing. Actually, I have doubts that those baptisms as stated here are properly performed. But this is just my my my opinion. In any case, assuming that all defenders are pro-Leys is wrong. Pfortuny 13:27, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC) (Apologies: I have touched the "criticism" section although I said I would not, but I feel this change can be thought as not strictly touching that section). If I hurt anyone, I apologize. Pfortuny 13:32, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I do not understand why Mr. Eloquence changed some headlines. The words he used are extremely loaded. I think that very unprofessional in what is supposed to be a neutral encyclopedia. We should be clinically neutral, not reading like propaganda. I presume Mr. Eloquence simply made a mistake and does not write as badly normally. 213.190.149.122

Would you mind logging in (and creating a user account)? That would make our communication more "human". Of course, feel free. Pfortuny 17:06, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What are you talking about? I did not change the headlines, Silsor did.—Eloquence

I unreservedly apologise if I accused the wrong person. Please accept my apologies, Mr. Eloquence. I may have accused the wrong gentleman, (I must have misread the article history) but I think the point was correct. The language was not clinically neutral, which it should be.

As to Mr Pfortuny, I am a free spirit who does not like the concept of creating 'accounts', which sounds like banking. But I appreciate the generousity of your advice. 62.77.180.65

Oh, no problem. As a free spirit, I like to be called by a name and not a number (actually four numbers), which is possible only by banking. But this is just a joke. :) Pfortuny 18:54, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Minor edit Baptism

I would like to make a minor edit in the section titled Baptisms of the Dying. I would like to edit this section:

Critics have argued that Mother Tersea's order provided insufficient information to its patients to make an informed decision about whether they wanted to convert to Catholicism, and that a "blessing" is much different from a baptism.

Baptism is not a conversion to Catholicism or even to Christianity. It is "the sacrament of regeneration by water in the word (per aquam in verbo)." (Roman Cathecism.) According to Catholic teachings Baptism washes away a person's sins and makes it possible for the person to enter the kingdom of Heaven. This would make Mother Teresa's statement that it is a 'ticket to heaven' accurate.

I would like to rewrite the paragraph to read:

Critics have argued that patients were not provided sufficient information to make an informed decision about whether they wanted to be baptized and the theological significance of a Christian baptism.

I believe this maintains the substance of the criticism, but does not equate Baptism with conversion.

--Pcaylor 20:13, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. This page has been quiet for a while now, I think you can probably make changes like this without worrying so much about reigniting flames. :) Bryan 00:42, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Your expression is probably better than the present one. Pfortuny 07:32, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Additions by anon and some changes

Recent additions by an anonymous editor undoubtly needed npoving, but this (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Mother_Teresa&diff=0&oldid=3781063) "npoving" by Eloquence could be a little bit too much and ressembles a revert... gbog 12:57, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Hardly. We've already discussed the collection of quotes, and adding "allegedly" to a proven fact or hiding rambling accusations in "Some critics would argue" is itself POV.--Eloquence* 18:09, May 30, 2004 (UTC)

Maybe. I don't know. What I know is that a cat should be called a cat, and a "3/4 revertion on a possible new user's edit" called a "3/4 revertion on a possible new user's edit". If the guy who added this (probably full of good will) comes back and sees what happend to his (possibly first) contribution, what will he think about wikipedia project and wikipedians ? gbog 03:47, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I carefully reintegrated every useful statement he added to the article, improved his language and added a citation. If you want to call that a 3/4 revert, call it a 3/4 revert. But a revert costs me about 5 seconds while this edit cost me about 5 minutes. Certainly we will not allow a collection of rambling POV statements to be added to an article just to make a newbie happy. Would you make the same argument if someone had edited, say, Donald Rumsfeld in the same manner ("Many would argue that Rumsfeld knows nothing about warfare, that he never was in a war, and that he certainly should not be allowed to command thousands of soldiers who are willing to give their life for the questionable goals dictated by US imperialist foreign policy.")?--Eloquence*

I don't know anyone called Ronald Rumsteak or Donald Rhumfield that could have something to do with our Holly Mother Theresa :), subjet of this article; do you ? I just pointed that being a little bit softer in your 3/4 reverts (by explaining them on talk page, for example) could be nice and would give the good example (as MT did !) to new users. gbog 07:07, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I do not know Donald Rumsfeld either -or what he has to do with this article. However, in some sense the quotations stuff was already discussed and they were removed. However again, this does not mean those quotations or something similar cannot be added. The problem is we want an article not a collection of pro/anti statements. That's what makes quotations complicated. However again, I also agree that any large edit had rather be discussed -or at least- explained in the talk page. However, I only say "had rather" not needs and even less must. Pfortuny 07:58, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

For quotations, there is Wikiquote. Regarding Rumsfeld, you may read our article analogy.--Eloquence*

Gandhi.

It is alleged in the wiki article for Indira Gandhi that Mother Teresa supported Gandhi during her repressive 1975-77 "emergency powers" period. I have never read of anything like this before, and I hate to accuse a good woman without good proof.

Can anybody tell me if this is true? I seriously hope not, but if it IS true it belongs somewhere in the wiki article.

Support for forced sterilisation?

Another point: The article includes the following statement: After Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's suspension of civil liberties in 1975, and her son's campaign of forced sterilisation, she said: "People are happier. There are more jobs. There are no strikes." If she made this statement, I think it is necessary to make the following clear: 1. Did she support the suspension of civil liberties? 2. Did she support the campaign of forced sterilisation? 3. Did she support both? She might have supported the state of emergency, but I think that it is quite unlikely that she supported forced sterilisation (since that would have contradicted her (and the Vatican's) stance on similar topics (e.g. abortion, contraception etc.). It'd like to have the question of her support of forced sterilisation be backed up by sources. Gugganij 19:10, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

So do I. I doubt its truth very much. Pfortuny 12:16, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If the statement mentioned above is not backed up by a reliable source. I am going to delete at least the part and her son's campaign of forced sterilisation in one week. Gugganij 14:35, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Supporting documentation

I believe the source for the claim is Aroup Chatterjee's The Final Verict: from chapter 14 (http://www.meteorbooks.com/chap14.html):

Q.101. What were the relationships of Mother Teresa and of Missionaries of Charity with various religious and civil authorities with which they came in contact with?

A. She was expedient and practical about keeping good relations for survival in a generally hostile country like India. The ruling party of West Bengal, the Marxists had close ties with the (erstwhile) Albanian Communist Party which had persistently refused her permission to see her mother and sister. But she appeased the West Bengal government and would collaborate with any politician (of whatever persuasion) who would further her cause. She maintained friendly relations with all religious groups because it was necessary for her to do so. During the 1974 - 77 Emergency in India, thousands of men (many of them unmarried and childless) were forcibly vasectomised, but she praised the state of emergency as she had friendly relations with Mrs Gandhi who she saw as the best protector of Indian Christians amongst the Indian political establishment. </blockquote> Chatterjee's response is clearly juxtaposing the fact of the mass sterilisation with MT's support for the state of emergency and provides a motive (expediency, ie. currying favour), but does not directly assert that MT specifically supported the sterilisation. ---- Charles Stewart 01:26, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Muggeridge miracle

I'm surprised the supposed miracle of good camera work in the Muggeridge documentary isn't mentioned. Maybe it is covered and dismissed in the endless talk articles. I would add it myself but I might loose an arm, perhaps a braver soul then I will see fit to include what I think is a significant point. MeltBanana 01:04, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well, I have not seen it here ever and I do know the talk pages rather well... Feel free to add true content (dunno what that is about). Pfortuny 17:30, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I Find it Unbelieveable that Mother Teresa is a Controversial Topic!

Why should Mother Teresa be a "controversial topic" I wonder? So many intolerant and hateful people are in the world as it is, do we need so many at Wikipedia? Pitchka 20:36, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

Are you suggesting we remove the Mother Teresa article from Wikipedia because it's about an intolerant and hateful person? :) Bryan 21:49, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Apologies, the "controversial" notice was tagged incorrectly, it is supposed to be issues that comes with the topic. At first I thought I had to use {{controversial}} because I thought {{controversial2}} was supposed to put on the article itself. - Mailer Diablo 11:58, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Could someone review this edit? [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mother_Teresa&diff=next&oldid=9285363) silsor 17:42, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

Farming out criticisms

This edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mother_Teresa&diff=9309709&oldid=9297672) by Digby moved the whole of the criticisms section onto a subordinate page. Was this a good thing? Possibly not all of the criticisms deserve to be on the main page, but the edit seems to me to have imbalanced the article. ---- Charles Stewart 00:32, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think so, it was getting very big. Somebody needs to go and summarize the criticisms to put on the main page, then it should look better. -Frazzydee|✍ 00:38, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No, it's not a good thing. This has been tried before, see Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive1#Separate article for criticisms.3F, Talk:Mother Teresa/Archive4#Split article .3F. I am thoroughly opposed to it; if an article is too long it should be split up into sub-articles based on topic, not based on POV. Splitting an article up based on POV takes one article that could potentially have been NPOV and turning into two articles which are by design both POV. Not good. Bryan 02:03, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Okay, didn't know it had been discussed before. For the record, I didn't move the section, I just renamed it. And left a short summary on Mother Teresa. -Frazzydee|✍ 02:12, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No problem. Looks like Digby did it, and he has very few edits so he probably wasn't aware of the previous discussion either. He didn't even give an edit summary or I probably would have noticed this split a lot earlier, I have things on my watchlist for reasons I've long forgotten and don't pay a lot of attention to any more. :) Bryan 06:14, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad this article has a criticism section, but...

Some of the criticism offered are really inane.

Chatterjee added that the public image of Mother Teresa as a "helper of the poor" was misleading, and that only a few hundred people are served by even the largest of the homes.

Suppose this is true. How is only helping hundreds of people a grounds for criticism?

She's critized for opposing abortion. Where's the controversy in that? There's probablly over a billion people on this planet that oppose abortion. I think criticism sections she deal with criticism of genuine flaws not merely political opininions that some people happed to disagree with.

She is criticized for spending too much money on missionary work. While the article should accurately describe how much of her resources were spent on missionary work and how much on helping people, this should not be a criticism. It should be delt with outside of the criticism section, and readers can form their own opinions as to the appropriateness of her spending.

After Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's suspension of civil liberties in 1975, Mother Teresa said: "People are happier. There are more jobs. There are no strikes."

Without the context it is imposible to tell if the above quote was meant to be approving of the governments policy or if it was simply Teresa's opinion of the factual result of the policy. --Heathcliff 02:39, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Photo

That picture is very odd. Apparently it is a photo of a tapestry, but it looks like it was taken from an angle. Even an old black and white picture would be better. -Willmcw 03:42, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)