The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #158223   Message #3741203
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
01-Oct-15 - 07:59 PM
Thread Name: BS: The Pope in America
Subject: RE: BS: The Pope in America
Enormous numbers of quotes from Mother Teresa are of course online. The mass of them show her in a very good light indeed. No doubt there are others, and you refer to a number which you see as uncontrovertible evidence that she was a dyed in the wool villain.

But as you say, context is everything, and I'd question your evaluations.. For example to class abortion as murder is an inevitable conclusion of a definition of murder as the act of terminating a human life. I would take it that you would hold to a different definition, but Mother Teresa was hardly unique in accepting that definition.

That does not imply that she can be assumed to have dealt with women who had had abortions in an accusing or punitive way. Mothers who kill their infant children are rightly liable to be treated with compassion and sympathy rather than punitive blame, and the act is likely to be termed "infanticide".

Again, how poor and weak people should behave in the face of injustice is not a simple matter. People have to judge how far fighting back is the right way for them to deal with their situation, and it can be a choice between doing so and surviving. There are times when we have to just have to endure. "Offer it up" is the traditional counsel Catholics have often been given in such sitiations, and I believe it is good advice - even when we are engaged in fighting back, because that does not in any way remove the need to endure suffering.