CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; A Skeptical Look at Mother Teresa

By Walter Goodman
New York Times, February 8, 1995
Christopher Hitchens tells in the February Vanity Fair of the furious reaction to a
television program he wrote last year for Channel 4 in Britain as part of a series about "inflated
and bogus reputations." The program was called "Hell's Angel." The article is titled "Mother
Teresa and Me."
"Bogus?" "Inflated?" Mother Teresa! I had to see that show, and Mr. Hitchens kindly sent
me a tape. It lived up to the billing. For a half-hour the nun is portrayed as a creation of
"hyperbole and credulity." Mr. Hitchens, an Englishman of leftish leanings who resides in
Washington, says her reputation was baptized by a 1969 BBC program, "Something Beautiful
for God," that portrayed her mission to India's newly born and dying in worshipful tones. ("A
star is born," cracks Mr. Hitchens.) And 10 years later she received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Although reviewing programs that have little prospect of being shown in the United
States does not ordinarily seem useful, "Hell's Angel" invites attention because there is so little
prospect. In a season of complaints about the adversarial tendencies and the antireligious slant of
television, it is still difficult to imagine an American network or cable station going after so
esteemed a religious personage. If anybody is a television untouchable, it is Mother Teresa.
Acceptable religious targets here are pretty much limited to child molesters and
fundamentalists with outright political ambitions or inclinations toward mayhem. As for PBS,
even the hint of its carrying such an attack would bring a bolt of Congressional lightning.
Consider what Mr. Hitchens, who visited Mother Teresa's Calcutta orphanage in 1980,
has to say about the woman. By his accounting, she is "a demagogue, an obscurantist and a
servant of earthly powers," whose central message to the wretched of India and elsewhere is a
denunciation of abortion and contraception.
She is shown, wizened face piously bowed, not only accepting honors from respectable
right-wing heads of state like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher but also consorting with
disreputable figures like Jean-Claude Duvalier, the deposed Haitian dictator, and paying tribute
to the late Enver Hoxha, the longtime proto-Stalinist boss of Albania, Mother Teresa's birthplace.
The program's implication is that Mother Teresa gives more unto Caesar than is strictly required
by Scripture.
In a somewhat self-complimenting summation, Mr. Hitchens, the on-camera prosecutor,
says, "The profane marriage between tawdry media hype and medieval superstition gave birth to
an icon which few have had the poor taste to question." Be assured that he does not allow taste to
get in his way as he chops at the icon: Mr. Hitchens reveals that his preferred title was "Sacred
Cow."
"Hell's Angel" would have benefited from more reporting on what exactly goes on in
those Calcutta orphanages and hospices. It is possible, after all, that even an opponent of abortion
might give tender care to her charges. All that is offered here is the testimony of a disaffected
volunteer.
Yet there is enough to stir the juices of a producer who is bored with examining the usual
suspects. Kicking Pat Robertson around is soft duty compared to a skeptical inspection of a
universally admired Nobelist.

Mr. Hitchens's phrasings ("a roving ambassador of a highly politicized papacy") may be a
touch sharp for a mass audience, and he could be picking on Mother Teresa simply because he
doesn't like her politics or her church. All the more reason, now that such charges have been
aired, for sending a crew to Calcutta to see whether he failed to give credit where it is due.
How good or bad is the care? Where does the Mother Teresa multinational obtain its
money and on what is it spent? It could turn out that despite Mr. Hitchens's animadversions, the
lady is a saint.
Paying attention, "60 Minutes?"