Book Review – The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens

There is a technique in building demolition industry - ‘building implosion’. When it comes to demolishing very large buildings and skyscrapers, which might prove to be time-consuming, risky and costly, they place explosives at some crucial, supporting points in the structure. When the charges are detonated, they destroy the supporting structures in the building, causing the top portion of the building to collapse on to the lower part. The huge weight falling from above, combined with the Earth’s gravity, makes the lower portions of the building crumble into dust, resulting in ‘implosion’, causing miniscule or no damage at all to the structures or people around.

Having decided to destroy the grand edifice called Mother Teresa, Christopher Hitchens has followed a similar technique. He clearly understood that to destroy the aura and charisma of Mother Teresa, he needs to place the charges in the very crucial areas of her sainthood, virtues and philanthropy and, lo, he attains his goal with impeccable precision.

He places the first charge on her sainthood. He questions the hurry shown by the Holy See to attribute sainthood to so many people in a hurry, along with the slackening of the criteria for the same. One of the miracles attributed to Mother Teresa is a photograph taken in poorly lit conditions that nevertheless appears so clear and bright. While the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge attributed it to the ‘divine aura’ of Mother Teresa, Hitchens dismantles the claim by taking the confirmation from the photographer that it was nothing more than the newly launched Kodak film roll that did the trick.
 

With the saintly aura sacked, Teresa’s staunch supporters and believers will then resort to her noble virtues, searching for some stable points to stem the tide of criticism. Hitchens hits out at it next.  He disparages her work of philanthropy, showing us that it was nothing more than an outwardly veil for the missionary work of a zealot with her own crisis of faith. He condemns the enforcement of three essential characters of chastity, poverty and charity on the patients. He criticizes the lack of amenities at the Missionaries’ centres despite the huge sum of charities pouring in from around the world, the senseless use of money for religious rather than medical purposes, the proselytizing rituals carried slyly at the deathbed of the people grimacing in pain. He uses the statements of past members and volunteers of Missionaries of Charity and destroys the praise for her ‘philanthropy’.
 

Having destroyed her sainthood, having killed her glory for philanthropic work, he then goes on to question her very integrity, wisdom and common sense. Her stance against abortion, siding with the Church, her accepting donations from tyrants and swindlers, despite being aware of their notoriety, her intervention in the legal process in favor of a conman that looted from the common men - now these are sufficient blames that can make anyone seem like evil. Then imagine what they can do for the reputation of someone like Teresa!
 

With the sarcasm and carping criticism that begin at the title – well, all of us know what is meant by ‘the missionary position’ – and end only at the very last word of the book, Hitchens has crucified Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa) on the very grounds in which she was glorified. If you are a Teresa-admirer – as I am - please don’t pick this book. He will make you go scurrying for cover, running in search of some straws to cling on to save yourself from the storm that could shake your very belief in her. He will blast the pedestal from your mind and will bring down Mother Teresa with a thud.
 

As Sunday Times rightly wrote about this book, ‘it is not looking good for Mother Teresa’!