I liked this book when I read it twenty years ago, appreciating it as a wicked piece of invective. Now, though, after I have—like all of us—endured twenty years of Christian assaults on our democracy, from both Protestant dominionists and Catholic irredentists, who conceal their political daggers beneath the simple peasant cloak of morality, I respect Hitchens’ criticism of Mother Teresa much more than I did before.He shows us a woman who, although she claimed to be apolitical, never met an oppr...

Money Does Smell (Usually Badly)Puncturing the self-inflated balloons of hypocritical cant is always entertaining. And Mother Teresa is right up there with Donald Trump when it comes to the latest fashion in imperial new clothes. Charity is its own reward or it is bunk. And anyone who sets charity up as a business becomes a huckster and seller of snake oil whatever they started out as. This is a law of nature and Hitchens confirms it magnificently in this wonderfully written case study.It is emp...

Hitchens does a grand job of taking down the woman that has been worshipped for her apparent saint-like qualities for time, by in particular, the Catholic Church, and obviously, not forgetting, the press. It is without a doubt, that over the years, she built up a huge amount of fame, and within this short book, Hitchens, with his marvellous wit, asks the questions which many others didn't dare to ask.As the title itself consists of a sexual position, Hitchens uses humour beginning from the front...

(view spoiler)[ Bettie's Books (hide spoiler)]04:09:2016: The day she was made a saint, I revisited Hell's Angel["br"]>["br"]>

Actually, this is a follow-up read to Mother Teresa: The Untold Story by Dr. Aroup Chatterjee, where he took apart the myth of this modern day saint with great precision. There, this book as well as the documentary by Hitchens were mentioned, which immediately whetted my appetite to read it. But whereas in Dr. Chatterjee's book, the approach is pedantic and clinical, Hitchens's tome is a no-holds-barred attack on the icon. In cricketing parlance, Mother Teresa: The Untold Story is a test match:

I really didn't need to read this book to figure out that Mother Teresa was just another globalist tool and a propaganda/fundraising cash cow for the Catholic church but Missionary Position does a good job of driving that point home and giving good solid evidence to that fact. To give a few examples, the millions she took from the mega swindler Keating and never returned, her response to the Dupont chemical spill in India instead of seeking justice and calling to make Dupont acountable was telli...

Mother Teresa is probably the last person I'd expect to be the target of an angry expose.In this short volume, Christopher Hitchens includes the following points:1. Much of the publicity around Mother Teresa is revisionistic and dubious, and her displays of humility are an act. How humble is it to claim a personal relationship with Jesus?2. Mother Teresa is about saving souls, not bodies. Her institutions are unsanitary and poorly operated despite a plethora of donations which should make better...

Hitchens has turned his humbuggery on little old nuns. Well played, Hitchens. Well played. As much as I'd like to just keep the review at that, I feel compelled to continue with an actual review. His complaints focus on several facets of her organization. 1. While she devoted her life to helping the poor, her goal was conversion rather than actually improving the lives of the poor. 2. Despite the millions of dollars donated to her organization, she actively stood in the way of high-quality healt...

In a very short literary work (I call it literary because I do admire the writing style of Hitchens), the author has shredded the claims of a 'saintly' woman who invested her life in helping the 'poorest of the poor' and 'lowest of the low'. However, the book brings the 'investment' side to light. The book questions Teresa's motifs. The book raises concerns about the misappropriation of funds and stature that the lady had received globally. Recommended for anyone who wants to see the other side

"The naive and simple are seldom as naive and simple as they seem, and this suspicion is reinforced by those who proclaim their own naïveté and simplicity. There is no conceit equal to false modesty"2018 is my year of Hitch. What a pleasure. My only quibble is at 100 pages with a large font, it is quite a bit shorter than I was expecting. Surely there was plenty more meat on the carcass for him to sink his teeth into? The Missionary Position is more an extended journal article than a book in its...

The Missionary Position, by the sake of its cover alone, is arguably one of the most bold polemics in recent memory. The title itself forces you to picture the wrinkled, ancient, and now deceased, woman on the cover.... well, let's just say engaging in an activity that we have good reason to believe she abstained from for the entirety of her life. Let me pause while I shudder quickly. Despite the pure shock power of the title, Hitchens' originally preferred title may have been more appropriate,

Christopher Hitchens’ contrarian nature made him suspicious that Mother Teresa’s actual work did not live up to her stellar image. As an atheist, he was not in awe of the Catholic Church and not inclined to overlook hypocritical aspects found in her charities. This book cites numerous instances where Mother Teresa was not the ‘saint’ we all believed her to be—so disillusioning.

From the blurb:Among his many books, perhaps none have sparked more outrage than The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens's meticulous study of the life and deeds of Mother Teresa. A Nobel Peace Prize recipient beatified by the Catholic Church in 2003, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was celebrated by heads of state and adored by millions for her work on behalf of the poor. In his measured critique, Hitchens asks only that Mother Teresa's reputation be judged by her actions-not the other way arou...

This is a very short book about how Mother Teresa really wasn't so saintly after all. It's not a mean book, it's completely based on fact. Mother Teresa visited despots, dictators and received large sums of money that she apparently did not spend on the poor - but that would have been enough to set up a very modern hospital in Calcutta. Her centers for dying including not giving enough pain killers and not saving children and youngsters from curable diseases. Plus being vehemently against birth

I enjoy reading books that plausibly and intelligently challenge commonly held beliefs. That is why I appreciated Diane Johnstone’s “Fool’s Crusade”, which questioned the almost religiously held belief that Serbia was the principal, if not only, malefactor in the Balkan wars that led to the break-up of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Christopher Hitchen’s book “The Missionary Position” provides a powerful challenge to another belief that began in the Balkans, the Mother Teresa phenomenon. Until I r...

The great polemicist Christopher Hitchens turns his attention to Agnes Bojaxhiu, aka Mother Teresa, in this searing look into her work that is universally accepted as humanitarian and above reproach. Hitchens presents an image of Teresa that is highly critical of her reputation in this brilliantly argued book on her life’s work. Hitchens recounts Teresa’s relationships with known dictators such as the Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and his wife Michele who all but bankrupted their country...