More Hitch and Terri
One or two items from Christopher Hitchens’s The Missionary Position.
When Malcolm Muggeridge did his 1969 BBC documentary about Ma Teresa, one day they were taken to what MT called ‘the House of the Dying.’ It was badly lit, and the director was doubtful they could film inside, but they had just received some new film made by Kodak, and the cameraman, Ken Macmillan, a very distinguished cameraman, Hitchens says, known for his work on Kenneth Clark’s Civilization, said let’s try it, and they did. Then when they got back to London and were watching the rushes they were surprised when the shots came up: they could see every detail. And Macmillan said ‘That’s amazing, that’s extraordinary,’ and was about to go on to say ‘three cheers for Kodak’ but he didn’t get a chance to say that. Muggeridge, in Macmillan’s words (page 27), “sitting in the front row, spun round and said: ‘It’s divine light! It’s Mother Teresa. You’ll find that it’s divine light, old boy.'” In a few days journalists started calling him saying they’d heard he’d witnessed a miracle. That’s good, isn’t it? Kodak comes up with a new film that works brilliantly in bad light – and Muggeridge declares it’s divine light. That’s like that all-too-typical incident Chris Whiley mentioned in a comment the other day, where doctors save a guy who was critically ill or injured by, you know, using their skill and knowledge and technology, and when the guy wakes up he thanks – the people who prayed for him. You’ll find it’s divine light, old boy.
Then there is what Dr Robin Fox, editor of The Lancet, said about his visit to the MT operation in Calcutta in 1994 (pp 38-9). He went, remember, expecting to be favourably impressed. But doctors were there only occasionally…
I saw a young man who had been admitted in poor shape with high fever, and the drugs prescribed had been tetracycline and paracetamol. Later a visiting doctor diagnosed probably malaria and substituted chloroquine. Could not someone have looked at a blood film? Investigations, I was told, are seldom permissible…Such systematic approaches are alien to the ethos of the home. Mother Teresa prefers providence to planning: her rules are designed to prevent any drift towards materialism.
Emphasis added, by Hitchens. But that’s quite something, isn’t it. And there’s more.
Finally, how competent are the sisters at managing pain?…I was disturbed to learn that the formulary includes no strong analgesics. Along with the neglect of diagnosis, the lack of good analgesia marks Mother Teresa’s approach as clearly separate from the hospice movement. I know which I prefer.
She had tons of money; money poured in in an avalanche; it wasn’t poverty that caused this kind of primitive treatment; it was principle. And this is saintly? What would devilish be then?
She really is linking well to Swinburne, isn’t she? Mustn’t interfere with something as beneficial as suffering – could bugger up your whole afterlife, which could last for quite a while, or so one is led to belief.
I know the silly thread is supposed to be left behind, but if you want to wriggle out of the lighting problem without Macmillan and Muggeridge seeming so dreadfully to have conflicting views, maybe the answer is that god works for Kodak…
“Freudian” slip? I meant to write “led to believe.”
Yes indeed – she and Swinburne are a horrible pair. But it was that incident Sastra told us about that reminded me of Terri. I hadn’t thought of her before. I’d forgotten about the absense of analgesics.
Hmmyes – ‘You’ll find it’s patented divine light, old boy.’
“You’ll find that it’s divine light, old boy.”
It’s hard to know how verbatim the quote is, as I assume there was no tape recorder running when he said it, but the wording is actually very interesting. “You’ll find…” When, exactly? When you die and go to heaven and god confirms it for you? When Kodak confirms it for you? When you investigate it scientifically on your own? When you run the standard form of check for divine light? It does strike me as intriguing that he is quoted as saying it in a way that suggests verifiability. If Muggeridge did say it like that, he conceivably meant merely that there was no normal physical explanation, and therefore, as we all know, only one possibility remains. That was when? 1969? And has Macmillan already “found” that it was divine light? Muggeridge could have said that he was convinced it was divine light. But he’s quoted as saying it was something Macmillan would “find.” Interesting.