Word: teresas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Nirmal Hriday nor any other of Mother Teresa's homes does anyone get a sectarian hard sell. The dying get the rituals they want: Ganges water on the lips for the Hindu, readings from the Koran for the Moslem, last rites for the occasional Catholic. Babies left at Shishu Bhavan, the busy Calcutta center that feeds the hungry and shelters abandoned children, remain Moslems or Hindus if the parents wish; only foundlings are baptized. The nun who runs the center conspiratorially reveals that the sisters have saved more than one Hindu marriage from family pressure by quietly providing...
Such understanding of local ways is typical of Mother Teresa, who became a citizen of India in 1948. But her Catholic orthodoxy does not bend far. Though the sisters operate 28 family-planning centers in India and elsewhere round the world, the only birth control they offer is the papally-approved rhythm method. As for abortion, Mother Teresa calls it a crime that kills not only the child but the consciences of all involved...
...Mother Teresa and her sisters are not without their critics. To some, the nuns and brothers are merely bandaging a civic wound that needs drastic surgery. "We are not trying so much to do social work," Mother Teresa explains, "as to live out that life of love, of compassion, that God has for his people." The poor, she says, suffer even more from rejection than material want. "If we didn't discard them they would not be poor. An alcoholic in Australia told me that when he is walking along the street he hears the footsteps of everyone coming...
However deep her compassion for the poor, Mother Teresa nurses no hatred for the rich. She joyfully shows a scrapbook of pictures of orphans she has placed in affluent homes in the U.S. and Europe. But she is also alert to the perils of contemporary civilization. "Our intellect and other gifts have been given to be used for God's greater glory," she says, "but sometimes they become the very god for us. That is the saddest part: we are losing our balance when this happens. We must free ourselves to be filled by God. Even God cannot fill...
...Cicely Saunders of London, her Anglican faith is essential to her work in the St. Christopher's Hospice she founded there. Like Mother Teresa's Nirmal Hriday, it is a home for the dying-cancer patients whom Dr. Saunders treats with heroin and other drugs to ease the pain of their last days. The hospital is cheerful, even gay; patients nibble sweets, chat with visitors, have a drink if they want to. Dr. Sanders, 59, concedes that she could not maintain that atmosphere nor watch her patients die without her faith. "It makes a difference as a very...