If you are interested in learning more about the real Mother Teresa, I have written a book, Mother Teresa: The Case for The Cause. My book is an intensively researched book exploring the faith and morals of Mother Teresa as compared to Catholic and Christian standards. My book is unique in that there is no book currently in print that explores the faith Mother Teresa practiced in light of the faith she professed. My book fills in the gaps of facts and issues Mr. Hitchens only alludes to in his book.

I’m sure anybody can be connected somehow with some morally dubious person and everybody has made the wrong decision in a weak moment, but Mother Theresa repeatedly displayed a close affinity to dictators. Or maybe these were just more examples of her extreme positions, next to extreme “compassion” we have an extreme appeasement policy. Let’s kiss some dictator’s ass and thus we will be able to protect and help the suffering population. Or maybe it was extreme hubris, maybe she believed with her visits she could induce some kind of moral change in her hosts.

Of course she did. Such is the basis for a long-standing posture on the sanctity of tragedy fomented in Christianity and other religions—that this is “our lot” and is therefore the focus of pity, of pleading, of a kind of grace through misery that is subtext to much theological sophistry. People who act to circumvent the causes, if successful, would somehow make it possible for people to feel some control over their own lives rather than always relying on the church.

The Catholic Church has long held that an excess birth-rate is a problem, but it is the natural consequence of Original Sin—sex. People should stop fucking. That is the only solution. Yielding to temptation brings misery, a connection they are loathe to abandon by suggesting that science can offer solutions.

Ironically, in conversation once with a devout Catholic over exactly this issue, the response I got was that it is the responsibility of scientists to come up with ways to feed and clothe all those people, rather than work to curtail an exploding birth-rate.

There is no hypocrisy in this when you grasp the fundamental embrace of human tragedy innate in so much theology. It is, as I say, “our lot” and therefore we must see to it that it is inevitable.

If one were trying to get support from brutal regimes to alleviate the suffering caused by said regime, one would necessarily make an effort to stay on the good side of said regime, to say whatever pleases it. The same goes for economic despots.

The foot soldier never has the vantage to change the direction of a battle once engaged. Had the general/Pope spoken out against the regime, the soldier/nun could have taken a different position with impunity.

As a member of an oppressed minority in the organization (female), Theresa had little choice about her expressed position on birth control, if she would continue helping people on the front lines. Had she taken the long-term view in defiance of her church, she would not still be a celebrity eligible for eventual Sainthood.