The rare success of a cult leader

In what feels like a million years ago, I blogged wondering whether we should think about the money that is donated as philanthropy.  Was the money earned through justifiable means?  Or, is it the case that most people simply do not care about the stink of the money.

In that post, I quoted the late Christopher Hitchens, who wrote about "Mother" Teresa, whom he referred to as MT:

MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan.

She was a friend of poverty.  I loved the way Hitchens phrased it.

Back then, there were two frequent commenters.  One was from the right side of the political spectrum here in the US, and another came from the right side of the political spectrum in the old country.  And, of course, true to their political ideology, they commented that money has no stink and that MT did nothing but good to the poor.

Ten days ago, Michelle Goldberg asked in her NY Times column if MT was "a cult leader."

I wonder if the right-wing commenters of the past read that column.  Perhaps not.

Goldberg writes about Mary Johnson, who spent 20 years in Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity:

“The Missionaries of Charity, very much, in so many ways, carried the characteristics of those groups that we easily recognize as cults,” Johnson told me. “But because it comes out of the Catholic Church and is so strongly identified with the Catholic Church, which on the whole is a religion and not a cult, people tend immediately to assume that ‘cult’ doesn’t apply here.”

Goldberg continues:

The former sisters describe an obsession with chastity so intense that any physical human contact or friendship was prohibited; according to Johnson, Mother Teresa even told them not to touch the babies they cared for more than necessary. They were expected to flog themselves regularly — a practice called “the discipline” — and were allowed to leave to visit their families only once every 10 years. 

A former Missionaries of Charity nun named Colette Livermore recalled being denied permission to visit her brother in the hospital, even though he was thought to be dying. “I wanted to go home, but you see, I had no money, and my hair was completely shaved — not that that would have stopped me. I didn’t have any regular clothes,” she said. “It’s just strange how completely cut off you are from your family.” Speaking of her experience, she used the term “brainwashing.”

Cult leaders maintain a tight grip over their flock.  It is difficult to flee from the leader.

Meanwhile, MT has been recognized by the Pope as as saint.

And you thought cult leaders always end up in trouble!