Tea at Trianon: Why the Left Hates Mother Teresa

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Why the Left Hates Mother Teresa

From Breitbart:

Earlier this year, Salon called Mother Teresa “repugnant,” accusing her of glorifying suffering instead of relieving it. “Judged by any metric of medical standards,” the piece stated, “it is difficult to remember her legacy as anything other than an inefficient, sanctimonious and wholly ideological franchise.”

Last weekend, The New York Times showcased “one of the most vocal critics” of Mother Teresa, an Indian physician named Aroup Chatterjee who has made a career out of casting aspersions on the work of the Albanian nun. Chatterjee calls Teresa’s work “an imperialist venture of the Catholic Church against an Eastern population.”

“I just thought that this myth had to be challenged,” he added.

In 1994, Dr. Chatterjee teamed up with professional atheist Christopher Hitchens to produce a documentary trashing Mother Teresa and her missionaries, called “Hell’s Angel.”

Shortly afterward, Hitchens cashed in on Mother Teresa’s immense popularity by writing his own bestselling book excoriating the sister, irreverently titled The Missionary Position. In this “exposé,” Hitchens calls Mother Teresa “a religious fundamentalist, a political operative, a primitive sermonizer, and an accomplice of worldly secular powers,” as well as asserting that the secret ulterior motive behind all her work was “furthering Catholic doctrine.” (Read more.)