Hating Mother Teresa

Kengor_Catholic_Mother Theresa Dartmouth_112712

It was one year ago, Christmas season 2011, that Christopher Hitchens, one of the world’s most aggressive atheists, died. Hitchen’s atheism was very cynical, and one of its ugliest faces was his bizarre contempt for Mother Teresa, the saint among us who Hitchens described as the “moonbat of Calcutta.”

Well, ideas have consequences. And, sadly, Hitchens disciples live on with his, carrying his torch, advancing his cause. And so, they, too, are persecuting Mother Teresa. Like Hitchens, they are angry, and can be really good at publicly expressing their anger. The saintly lady from Calcutta is receiving their rage.

A case in point: a group of atheists at Dartmouth College is planning an event besmirching the late nun. The campus Atheists Humanists Agnostics club sent out a campus-wide e-mail excitedly announcing a “full-out romp against [sic] why one of the most beloved people of the century, Mother Teresa, is as Hitchens put it… ‘a lying, thieving Albanian dwarf.’” This woman, claims the email, was “not a friend of the poor,” but “a friend of poverty.”

Ah, yes: the gospel according to Chris Hitchens.

The atheist-humanist-agnostic romp will include the screening of an anti-Mother Teresa film and a discussion of Hitchens’ epistle, Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.

These Hitchens’ true believers plan a hearty discussion as to how the public has been “conned into thinking this woman was good.”

Fortunately, the good Mother Teresa has defenders at Dartmouth. Reporter Oliver Darcy quoted one, Melanie Wilcox, editor of the conservative campus newspaper, the Dartmouth Review. Wilcox observes: “It’s easy for a group of privileged Ivy League students who have never experienced poverty to meet in a ‘super secret room’ and think themselves as intellectuals by bashing Mother Teresa. I’d like to know what they have done, if anything, to help the needy.”

Well, that’s something I can’t answer, but I do know that few on this earth have done as much as Mother Teresa did, despite what the faithful apostles of Christopher Hitchens contend.

Blessed Mother Teresa, pray for us.

For Catholic Exchange dot com and Ave Maria Radio, I’m Paul Kengor.

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Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” and “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.”

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