It was difficult not to giggle out loud when “Daily Show” correspondent Jason Jones held up a photograph of Mother Teresa in front of Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) Co-president Dan Barker and mockingly stated, “This is the fight you are picking?”
The fight to which Jones referred in the March 8 episode is the FFRF’s opposition to the United States Postal Service’s decision to issue a stamp depicting Mother Teresa.
It is clearly stated in the USPS’s Stamp Subject Selection Criteria, “Stamps or stationery items shall not be issued to honor religious institutions or individuals”.
Additionally, the criteria also states, “Stamps or stationery items shall not be issued to honor fraternal, political, sectarian, or service/charitable organizations…” As pointed out by the FFRF, Mother Teresa’s “Missionaries for Charity” was sectarian and a service/charitable organization.
Advocates claim there is no controversy since religious figures have featured on USPS stamps in the past. That may be, but it certainly does not justify continued defiance of the accepted criteria.
The FFRF also notes that Mother Teresa is undeserving of the honor to be represented on a USPS stamp, and they are not alone. Mother Teresa had many critics, including Michael Parenti, Aroup Chatterjee, Vishva Hindu Parishad and most notably Christopher Hitchens.
Hitchens, whose book “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice” tells a tale not of a humble humanitarian, but of a fundamentalist and a hypocrite.
Her rise to fame was based on an assertion that divine light appeared in her House of the Dying during the taping of a documentary. Strangely, it was she who claimed the spotlight rather than the new Kodak film used by the crew.
With her new fame, however, and contrary to popular belief, Mother Teresa did little to help the suffering of the poor, according to her critics. Her clinics remained in utterly dilapidated states, despite receiving millions of dollars in donations. Her belief that poverty was a gift from an invisible being was the means to keep the substandard conditions in her hospitals. Yet, when Mother Teresa herself became ill, she was quick to visit some of the finest hospitals in America.
She was also known to accept money from some despicable people, according to Hitchens, including the Duvalier Family of Haiti and Charles Keating.
In fact, prior to his indictment for bankruptcy fraud and other charges, Keating gave Mother Teresa $1.25 million. When asked to return the money by the California courts, she refused to respond. Such humility from an old Albanian woman who believed she knew God’s mind.
Her militant stance against contraception and abortion were extremely detrimental to women and inhibited “the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction,” according to Hitchens’ 2003 Slate article titled “Mommie Dearest.”
The FFRF should be commended for bringing this issue to the fore, and we should realize that nobody is above criticism. So, yes, Jason Jones, this is the fight I am picking.
Noah is licking his stamps.
You can reach him at noah.lewkowitz@asu.edu
