Read Online The Missionary Position by Christopher Hitchens - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Christopher Hitchens
Ads: Link
into his heart—as he sentences Charles Keating—and do what Jesus would do. I submit the same challenge to you. Ask yourself what Jesus would do if he were given the fruits of a crime; what Jesus would do if he were in possession of money that had been stolen; what Jesus would do if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience?
I submit that Jesus would promptly and unhesitatingly return the stolen property to its rightful owners. You should do the same. You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the “indulgence” he desires. Do not keep the money. Return it to those who worked for it and earned it!
If you contact me I will put you in direct contact with the rightful owners of the property now in your possession.
Sincerely,
Paul W. Turley
Three years later, Mr. Turley has received no reply to his letter. Nor can anybody account for the missing money: saints, it seems, are immune to audit.
This is by no means the only example of Mother Teresa’s surreptitious attitude to money, nor of her hypocritical protestations about the beauty of poverty, whether self-imposed or otherwise. But it is the clearest and best-documented instance, and it is proof against the customary apologetics about innocence and unworldliness. In her dealings with pelf, as in her transactions with power, Mother Teresa reigns in a kingdom that is very much of this world.
Ubiquity
Naturally, there are puzzles. I would like to know whether or not the universe is finite or infinite. I would like even better to be assured that the two words are meaningless. But excepting the sort of puzzle which makes our passage here interesting and gives incentive to our questioning games, I see no mystery at the heart of things and take comfort from Wittgenstein’s profoundly unpopular dictum, “Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.”
Gore Vidal, Two Sisters
The Bible commands us to love our enemies. I love the Pope very much.
Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
president of Haiti
I
A t a certain point in the period of its medieval ascendancy, the Church of Rome was forced to confront a problem of theory and of practice. If a human soul could only be redeemed by acceptance of the New Testament canon—the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—then what was to become of those who had never heard the news? These were not heretics or infidels to be slain or burned but people who suffered from “invincible ignorance.” They fell into two categories: those who lived in parts of the world unvisited and untouched by the faith, and those who had died before the Christian era began. (There was also a third category, namely the disciples of Jesus himself, who had never read the Bible story, either. But they were, and remain, exempt.) Not much could be done for those who had expired before the birth of Christ, though Dante did his best for them and there are passages inthe Creeds which speak of Jesus descending into hell in order to carry out some retrospective redemption. But for those who lived in non-Christian lands, it was decreed that the work of conversion was an imperative.
It is, in a sense, a pity that this work will always be remembered for its association either with conquest, with religious fratricide or with imperialism. Very frequently, the main consequence was sanguinary conflict between different branches of Christianity itself. (Long after the Catholic Crusaders got to Jerusalem, for example, they sacked Orthodox and Byzantine Constantinople.) In later epochs, both Catholic and Protestant missionaries penetrated the interiors of China and Japan and the remotest parts of Africa and South America, but their presence was indissoluble from that of the trading post and the garrison.
I submit that Jesus would promptly and unhesitatingly return the stolen property to its rightful owners. You should do the same. You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the “indulgence” he desires. Do not keep the money. Return it to those who worked for it and earned it!
If you contact me I will put you in direct contact with the rightful owners of the property now in your possession.
Sincerely,
Paul W. Turley
Three years later, Mr. Turley has received no reply to his letter. Nor can anybody account for the missing money: saints, it seems, are immune to audit.
This is by no means the only example of Mother Teresa’s surreptitious attitude to money, nor of her hypocritical protestations about the beauty of poverty, whether self-imposed or otherwise. But it is the clearest and best-documented instance, and it is proof against the customary apologetics about innocence and unworldliness. In her dealings with pelf, as in her transactions with power, Mother Teresa reigns in a kingdom that is very much of this world.
Ubiquity
Naturally, there are puzzles. I would like to know whether or not the universe is finite or infinite. I would like even better to be assured that the two words are meaningless. But excepting the sort of puzzle which makes our passage here interesting and gives incentive to our questioning games, I see no mystery at the heart of things and take comfort from Wittgenstein’s profoundly unpopular dictum, “Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.”
Gore Vidal, Two Sisters
The Bible commands us to love our enemies. I love the Pope very much.
Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
president of Haiti
I
A t a certain point in the period of its medieval ascendancy, the Church of Rome was forced to confront a problem of theory and of practice. If a human soul could only be redeemed by acceptance of the New Testament canon—the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—then what was to become of those who had never heard the news? These were not heretics or infidels to be slain or burned but people who suffered from “invincible ignorance.” They fell into two categories: those who lived in parts of the world unvisited and untouched by the faith, and those who had died before the Christian era began. (There was also a third category, namely the disciples of Jesus himself, who had never read the Bible story, either. But they were, and remain, exempt.) Not much could be done for those who had expired before the birth of Christ, though Dante did his best for them and there are passages inthe Creeds which speak of Jesus descending into hell in order to carry out some retrospective redemption. But for those who lived in non-Christian lands, it was decreed that the work of conversion was an imperative.
It is, in a sense, a pity that this work will always be remembered for its association either with conquest, with religious fratricide or with imperialism. Very frequently, the main consequence was sanguinary conflict between different branches of Christianity itself. (Long after the Catholic Crusaders got to Jerusalem, for example, they sacked Orthodox and Byzantine Constantinople.) In later epochs, both Catholic and Protestant missionaries penetrated the interiors of China and Japan and the remotest parts of Africa and South America, but their presence was indissoluble from that of the trading post and the garrison.
Similar Books
