Hitchens' Dogma: "I hate Mother Teresa!"

Whatever else can be said about Atheistic Flavor of the Year Christopher Hitchens, the man has a penchant for rhetorical flourishes, which only go so far to cover up his obsessive dislike for Mother Teresa and his flimsy "damned if you doubt, damned if you don't" argument against the Catholic Church. Here are some of Hitchens' measured, careful reflections, courtesy of MSNBC.com:

• "These scrawled, desperate documents..." | Mother Teresa, in other words, didn't have a laptop. Funny, when Catholics talk about how happy they are to be Catholic, Hitchens says they are idiots. When they admit that they sometimes have doubts and frustrations, he calls them idiots. Sense a distinct pattern here?

• "So, which is the more striking: that the faithful should bravely confront the fact that one of their heroines all but lost her own faith, or that the Church should have gone on deploying, as an icon of favorable publicity, a confused old lady who it knew had for all practical purposes ceased to believe?" | What is even more striking is how Hitchens misrepresents or misunderstands faith and belief. But what do you expect from a man whose book, God Is Not Great, is chock full of howlers and mistakes that would make most 8-year-old atheists blush with shame?

• "...it is the inevitable result of a dogma that asks people to believe impossible things and then makes them feel abject and guilty when their innate reason rebels." | Which explains why so many people accept theism, rejecting atheism and the dogmas of nihilism and secular humanism.

• "The case of Mother Teresa, who could not force herself into accepting the facile cure-all of 'faith,' is that of a fairly simple woman struggling to be honest with herself, while also—this is important—striving to be an example to others." | So, Mother Teresa was too smart to blindly accept silly Catholic doctrine (i.e., existence of God, the divinity of Jesus Christ), but still remained a simple woman. And, making matters even worse, she continued to try to help others. Why, she could have been a Catholic-bashing political pundit with a whiny British accent! What was she thinking?

• "Wise bishops have long known to beware of the fanatical and the overzealous." | The Catholic Church is bad, on one hand, for supporting blind zealotry and violent fundamentalism. It is also bad, on the other hand, for suppressing those who are fanatical and overly zealous. Who cares what the stick it is (or if it even exists), just make sure you can beat the Catholic Church with it!

• "...the worldly English eccentric Malcolm Muggeridge..." | Who was smart enough to figure out that communism and atheism aren't answers, but merely excuses for worldly English eccentrics such as Hitchens to desperately run from reality and obsessively, to the point of embarrassment, mock old women who dedicate their lives to helping the poor.

• "...then Mother Teresa’s international crusade against divorce, abortion and contraception was the tribute that doubt paid to certainty: a strenuous and almost hysterical effort to drown out the awful fear of 'absence.'" | First Marx, now Freud. Let's see: since Mother Teresa had doubts about God's existence, she launched a moral crusade against sexual sins. How about this: Since Christopher Hitchens has doubts about God's non-existence, he has launched a moral crusade against Mother Teresa. Now wouldn't it be fun to see how Freud might interpret Hitchens weird infatuation? Okay, maybe not...

• "One strongly suspects that, like not a few overpromoted figures, she suffered from more self-hatred the more she was overpraised." | Speaking of overpromoted figures, did you know that Hitchens will be on C-SPAN for about 800 hours this coming Sunday?

• "The same goes for the alarming doctrinal excesses. Every Catholic is supposed to regard abortion as an abomination (and, if it matters, I concur). But surely it takes someone both insecure and fanatical to exceed the official teaching and to tell the Nobel Prize audience, as she did, that abortion is the greatest threat to world peace?" | As opposed to saying that religion, notably Christianity, is the greatest threat to world peace? Think about it, Christopher: if people are willing to kill their own children, what else are they willing to do? Two words: "Any" and "Thing". See Communism and Naziism for details. Duh.

• "...the Church should have had the elementary decency to let the earth lie lightly on this troubled and miserable lady, and not to invoke her long anguish to recruit the credulous to a blind faith in which she herself had long ceased to believe." | The Opiate of Christopher Hitchens: Using his hatred of Mother Teresa to bash the Catholic Church. Talk about a blinding faith that needs to believe in something—the faithlessness of Mother Teresa—so badly that he claims it is true without evidence, indeed, contrary to evidence. Notice that he earlier stated that Mother Teresa had "all but lost her own faith", but by the end of the piece, she had lost it completely. But not as completely as Hitchens has lost his mind.

Comments

[Ed Peters]

I seriously wonder whether CH is losing his mind. I don't wonder this lightly. His vitriol is surpassing any sense.

[Sandra Miesel]

Who can forget Hitchens' performance as an ABC "color commentator" at Mother Teresa's funeral? Spluttering with rage, he was, as Ken Woodward tried to remain calm and professional.

[TSO]

Perfect; you're on a roll on this Mother Teresa subject. Too bad you weren't debating Hitchens on MSNBC instead of Donohue.

[padraighh]

An Autobiography of Theresa of Calculta N.A.S.N.W.N.H (Not a saint no way no how)
by Christopher Hitchen S.S.A.G. (sometimes styled a god)

Nah na nah na nah nah.
I told you so! Who's your daddy!
Don't you mess with me.
Who's the man!
Who's the man! Yeah.
That's what I'm tak'in bout.

Face.

The end.

[Sharon]

I have read that the revelation about Mother Teresa's dark night came from private papers which she asked not to be made public.

Pope John Paul II also had private papers which he instructed to be destroyed - that was not done either.