Talk:Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa's origins

A recent article in the BBC indicated that it's unclear whether her father was Albanian[1].

I don't know if she took the last name of her father, but bojaxhiu is a straight Albanian translation of house painter. Her first name gonxhe translates to bulb (as in the flower thing). I doubt a serb, vlach or whatever would have an albanian name. Besides she considered herself Albanian so the entire issue is moot. Dori 04:12, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Boiagiu or Boiangiu (same pronounciation as Albanian bojaxhiu) are not only Albanian, but also Romanian/Vlachian names (see al:[2] vs ro:[3]), since in Romanian/Vlachian, they mean the same thing: house painter. According to my Romanian dictionary, this term is borrowed from Turkish "boyaci".

That is interesting and I admit that I did not know that. However, if you look at the spelling it is the Albanian one that is used for her name. The reason I mentioned the name origin was in response to the articles floating around saying that her father must have been a Vlach because her last name ended in -u. Which is a ridiculous thing to say since that suffix is among -a, -i, etc in Albanian that denotes that a name is in a definitive form, and in no way signifies that a name is not Albanian just because it ends in u. At most what this shows is that the origin is still unknown. --Dori 14:14, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes, definitely Turkish origin, Bojad?ija would also be a painter in Serbian (from Turkish "boja" for color) although I would be more interested in hearing how come the Bojaxhiu was a Catholic family? From what I know, the Vlachs are by rule Orthodox. Did Bojaxhiu ever describe herself as an Albanian, I mean, did she speak Albanian or write it? --Igor 6:20, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes, she considered herself Albanian. Here's a quote from her: "By blood and origin, I am all Albanian. My citizenship is Indian. I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the whole world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to Jesus." Google for it, here's a quick link [4], or in the book The Albanians : an ethnic history from prehistoric times to the present by Edwin E Jacques (ISBN: 0899509320) --Dori 19:06, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I should mention that there are a few versions of the quote, but the quote was from sometime after she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 to a reporter [5]. --Dori 19:28, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I am reading a couple of biographies of Mother Teresa by foreign authors (i.e. non-Albanian), and they both mention that the Bojaxhiu family was Albanian. They have interviewed Agnes' brother Lazar who interestingly talks about his mother being Albanian even though she may have been of Venetian descent. About the father, Nikolla or Kole they say that he was a successful business man and aided financially the movement for Albanian independence. Kole is said to have spoken Turkish, French, Italian, and Serbo-Croatian, besides his native language Albanian. Lazar says that they celebrated the Albanian independence in 1912. The family was originally from Prishtina. At this point, I am very sceptical of any claims that Mother Teresa was anything but Albanian. Is there any actualy evidence supporting Vlach descent of Kole at this point besides the name (which as I have mentioned is in Albanian form to begin with)? Even if the parents were not 100% Albanian, I do not see how Agnes could have been anything but Albanian, especially since she and her brother are quoted as saying that they were Albanian by origin. --Dori 04:16, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

As Mother Teresa was born in 1910, she must have been born in the Ottoman Empire, not Turkey (which was founded only some years later). D.D. 15:54 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

I think it is BAD to have direct links to amazon.com. We are not their sales department, and they are even endangering projects like Wikipedia with their software patents policy. --zeno 01:27 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

In this article, 1/3 described her life and work, and 2/3 described detractor's claims. And this is for someone who won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Is this NPOV? --Kaihsu 16:35, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

If you think this article needs more biographical details, add them.—Eloquence 17:23, Aug 26, 2003 (UTC)

No; I think the part about detractors should be cut, with say, 1 long paragraph summarizing each major detractor's criticisms. I understand Wikipedians are not keen on deleting information, but Wikipedia is not a dump of simply more and yet more information either. --Kaihsu 18:57, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It is not a place for apologetics either. In fact, I am planning to add more information on the controversies -- I have just received Chatterjee's book, which includes many criticisms not mentioned here. Mother Teresa is not exactly the figure she was portrayed as, and if the article will give this picture in the end, that is not because of a lack of neutrality, but because of reality.—Eloquence 19:00, Aug 26, 2003 (UTC)

"Mother Teresa is not exactly the figure she was portrayed as, and if the article will give this picture in the end, that is not because of a lack of neutrality, but because of reality." Just because there are more people willing to list controversies than good acts, does not make history a reality. Dori 19:04, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Do you dispute any of the factual claims made by Bojaxhiu's critics?—Eloquence

No I dispute your claim as I quoted. I haven't even read the article because it's so damn long. Dori 21:43, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Why is there such a long DIATRIBE against this person in an aricle which is supposed to have a neutral POV? The criticisms are written with such bias that even as a stand-alone article it currently violates NPOV.205.188.208.72 21:38, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think the best solution would be to summarize the controversies here, and move the whole text to another article. This one has gotten way too long in my opinion. Dori 19:06, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hiding controversies on separate pages is not neutral. The correct procedure is to add to this article until the maximum size of about 32K is reached, and then individual sections can be summarized and split away (including those about non-controversial matters).—Eloquence 20:00, Aug 26, 2003 (UTC)

Who said anything about hiding. Like most other people, I see an article that long (which looks more like a book report) and I shy away. I said summarize and link to the long article. If you want to write your PhD thesis here, then go ahead. Dori 21:43, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

If you think this is long, try Wikipedia:Longpages. If an article has a reasonable structure, length is completely irrelevant. What makes it relevant is the fact that some people have problems editing large files in their browser, which is why we limit articles at 32K. Other than that, with proper structure and good chapter summaries, an article could well be 320K -- Wikipedia is not paper.—Eloquence 21:48, Aug 26, 2003 (UTC)

All I am saying is that the controversies are not all we should be focussing on as they're dwarfing everything else. No one wanting just some quick facts is going to read the whole things. If you spin off the information, then those who do want to read it can still do so, and the rest (in my opinion the majority) will not be put off by the sheer length. I don't see the point of such long articles, and I think one of Wikipedia's biggest strengths is in the ability to link to articles at will and for an internal web. If you put everything in one place, it doesn't matter how well structured it is, people will not bother to read it and they might lose out. Dori 22:09, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Both very long and very short pages are difficult to manage for different reasons. 32K is a reasonable optimal length for an article, and until that length has been reached, there's no reason whatsoever to talk about splitting off sections.—Eloquence 23:34, Aug 26, 2003 (UTC)

This page needs to better reflect todays beatification by the Vatican. Also the block para Controversies concerning Agnes Bojaxhiu's activities deserves a page of it's own. One that's probably named Controversies concerning the activities of the Missionaries of Charity or something similar. Btw, I'd hate for this page to get caught up in an Edit War with supporter vs. critic references littering the entire page or worse, get pulled up for a NPOV Dispute, but judging by the comments I've read so far on this talk page, I'd say we're already on our merry way down 'that' road. Phil R 20:37, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

There's no reason to separate the controversies from the article about Mother Teresa, that itself would be a violation of NPOV.—Eloquence 20:49, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)

Phil R: A saint or otherwise, Bojaxhiu is a controversial character, and these controversies should be presented here. If you disagree with any the way any of the points are raised, feel free to discuss it here. -- Viajero 21:13, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I agree, it seems quite NPOV to shuffle off all the "bad" things about her into some side article and leave only the "good" stuff here on the main page. Bryan 21:47, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The text added was based on a TV show analysis. Using one such analysis in an article to the extent that it dominates the text is a clear violation of wikipedia policy, breaches NPOV policy and breaks the elementary rule of biographical entry rule construction, which is that one person's critique should dominate a biographical page. Putting it in a linked page allows the critique to be linked to other pages where it is relevant, eg, MT's missionary organisation, religious orders, etc. Eloquence shouldn't let his chip on his shoulder about Catholicism blind him to how to construct a standard wikipedia page. Detailed criticism of the sort put in is far too detailed and far too complex to be included in a page where it dominates everything else. It is an elementary rule of biographical writing in an encyclopædia. Detailed critiques are always linked to avoid turning a page into an issue page when it is meant to be a biographical page. That was something RK used to specialise in. I thought Eloquence had more sense than that. FearÉIREANN 21:48, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Criticism directed at Mother Teresa belongs in this article. But criticism of the Missionaries of Charity doesn't. It belongs to the article for the organization, not the person who founded it. Criticisms of Mother Teresa is inapproprate. Move anything that is not criticism of specifically her actions to whatever the criticism is directed at. The rest belongs in this article. --Jiang 21:50, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I do agree that there's rather a large amount of quoted text here, which should be trimmed down and converted into summary. There's no need to duplicate that much here, just describe what the original source said and include a reference so that people can go look it up themselves if they need the text. Bryan

The first sentence is complete nonsense, as I have explained on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. No, detailed critiques are not "always linked" -- that would be in complete violation of our neutrality policy (giving extensive coverage to positive opinions and claims about one person, while moving all negative coverage to a separate page). What we can agree on is to summarize individual sections of this page and to link them as soon as they get too long to edit. This is standard Wikipedia policy. But this should be done regardless of the content of the sections, positive or negative.

The biographical standards you claim do not exist. A biography is supposed to describe the life and work of a person, dark sides and bright sides. I have big doubts that you would engage in an edit war over Sun Myung Moon, but of course with your proven pro-Catholic bias it seems obvious that you would want to defend the fiction that has been built around Mother Teresa, without any substantial arguments to support your edits. The controversy about Mel Gibson was about claims regarding Gibson's father -- these were shortened for good reasons, just like we wouldn't describe Prescott Bush's nazi connections in an article about George Bush. This article, however, is about the life and work of Mother Teresa, and as such, of course criticisms of that life and work have a place in it alongside the usual praise.—Eloquence 21:55, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)

Jtdirl, I agree that the page as it stands is rather awkward, but the way to fix this is not to split off all the awkward bits into their own article. These big chunks of quoted material need to be translated into ordinary Wikipedia article text. I won't work on that in the midst of an edit war, though. Bryan

I am not saying that alkward stuff should be split off. What I am saying is that a shortened summary of a paragraph or two should be included in the text here to counteract all the positive tone in the article, none of it by me. The detailed stuff, going into complicated allegations, should then be put in a link article. As to Eloquence's rant about my proven catholic bias, it is called 'academic standards', which is why I have been able to rewrite paragraphs properly in forms that kept both RK and EoT happy, that kept the Republic of Macedonia people and FYROM happy, pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinians happy, Australian monarchists and Australian republicans happy. I have removed illplaced text and NPOVed stuff in articles on protestantism, catholicism, Islam, etc. And if someone put poorly written wrongly located stuff in Sun Myung Moon you can be damn sure I would remove it. Few of Eloquence's edits on Catholicism have been anything but Catholic bashing. I don't care whether it is catholic bashing, protestant bashing, jew bashing, muslim bashing, humanist bashing or any other sort of bashing, it has no place in an NPOV article and I will rewrite it and will not be intimidated out of it by RK, EoT, Eloquence or anyone else pushing their agenda, whether it is pro- or anti- catholic, pro- or anti- jewish, pro- or anti- palestinian, pro- or anti the British monarchy or any other topic. And if I was so pro-catholic biased, why did I write a detailed article on clerical sex abuse which all sides said was fair, balanced and objective and which covered cases from many countries, something previous attempts failed to do. Eloquence's attempts to agendise articles on Catholicism are getting as tiresome as RK's attempts to agendise articles touching jewishness was. FearÉIREANN 22:24, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Here you have Jtdirl, the valiant defender of truth and neutrality who makes all people happy and contented. That explains why everyone is so happy and contented right now, I guess. I never recall saying that the Catholic sex abuse article was "fair, balanced and objective", in fact, there are quite a few neutrality deficits of the current version, but this is not the place to talk about them and I will fix them when I have the time. What is important to remember is that just because a person is being worshipped by thousands or even millions, that person is not beyond criticism, and that criticism, as long as it comes from reasonable sources, should be given equal weight to other claims about the person. You are trying to move it all to a separate article, in effect making this more of a hagiography than a biography. That is absolutely unacceptable.—Eloquence 22:30, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)

I have never said the current article is OK in its current form. It isn't. It is far too pro-her (and by the way, just so you know, I have no time for her and got into trouble on a radio show for saying that she "was more concerned with practicing her faith than practising good medicine.") but as usual you blew it by allowing your agenda to get in the way of professional encyclopædic writing. Frankly I want to take this article to pieces and rewrite it in proper NPOV language. But the stuff you want in is the sort of detail that does not feature in professionally written NPOV articles unless you go into it in minute detail, quoting references and sources from differing perspectives. That you could have done but didn't. If I wanted to silence criticism of this woman I would simply have deleted your stuff as POV (and it does contain some hilarious clangers, but then actual knowledge of catholicism as opposed to opinion about catholicism has never been your strong point. But instead I transferred your stuff to a separate article where it can be linked to other relevant articles and not just this one. ANd before you started your traditional edit war farce (something you seem to enjoy when you don't get your way) I was starting to NPOV this article which needs a hell of a lot of NPOV work to make it balanced and remove the hagiography tone which it currently has. FearÉIREANN 22:43, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

No, I do not enjoy being forced into edit wars. But I also cannot allow you to violate NPOV in an attempt to downplay criticisms. You can play up your oh-so-critical "lapsed Catholic" attitude as much as you want, that does not change the fact that you are trying to stow away very substantial and very important criticisms of this soon-to-be "saint". If you try to make substantial edits to the Mother Teresa article while engaging in an edit war about a major structural issue, it is your own mistake if these edits get lost in the process.

Wikipedia is not paper. There is no limit to the level of detail allowed herein. If things get too long, we can of course split them away, but this should be done with equal priority given to positive and negative information. When such split-ups are to take place, it is usually a good idea to talk to the primary authors of the page in any case. In this case, you simply removed the text without even an edit comment and did not engage in any prior discussion whatsoever. Other Wikipedians here agree that this is not the way to make progress on this article. You are the one who started this edit war and you are the one perpetuating it. We can all discuss ways to make this article better like reasonable adults, in small steps, with proper attention to each other's sensibilities.—Eloquence 23:28, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)

If you bothered to check the edits I was making, you would have seen that I was in the process of removing POV language (eg, 'revered') from the article, had a mention of the allegations against her in the opening paragraph and trying to write an executive summary of the allegations for use here to allow for the detail, in as much detail as you want, to be discussed elsewhere. (A 'holding' few lined had been added in, a larger section was in preparation.) That is how professional encyclopædic biography articles are constructed. People on this page had already complained about the detail being here, saying that its sheer length was intimidating. What I was doing was making sure a clear summation of the allegations was here, allowing those who want to read the full detail to get a direct link to it, something which is done regularly on wikipedia. Contrary to your usual wild allegations, I was not censoring the allegations; it would have been rather bizarre censorship to have put a mention in the very opening line, an executive summary in the centre and a link to a detailed article. If I was censoring the information, I would simply have deleted it. As usual on an article on anything touching religion, your response was paranoid screams of censorship and instant reversions of the sort that RK practiced and intimidated people with. The article I was working on was going to be much less revertial of MT, much more critical and linked to an article that could go into the sort of detail that previous users here found too much but which will work in a separate context where it is linked also to other articles with similar themes and relevancies. But as with other religion articles you decided that it wasn't following your agenda and therefore was unacceptable, even if more encyclopædic and NPOV. FearÉIREANN 23:54, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

See, this is what you usually do to get your way: Engage in an edit war and then complain that your great changes have been lost in the process and that the other party is responsible for that. You and I both know that this is not the way to write an article on Wikipedia. You can't make a major change like splitting away about 20,000 characters of text and then complain that the changes you pile on top of that are reverted together with it. This is simply bullying of other users to accept your prefererd structure of this article by claiming that they are destroying your work. I could engage in the same tactic easily -- by rewriting the criticism section and then complaining that you are reverting my changes -- but I do not. How about stopping this silly tactic yourself, and resolving the major structural issue first, before discussing further changes to the content of this article? It would be helpful if you would stop considering other people trying to work with you enemies against whom to employ some kind of strategy (in this case: personal attacks ["Eloquence knows little about Catholicism"], false claims ["based on a single TV show"], piling up of changes in an edit war, claiming that many users support your stance [you do this every time], and so forth).

Everyone can see through this and it's really time for it to stop. And before you add the next personal attack (something along the line of "paranoid rant"), think about what I'm trying to say here. I am willing to cooperate. I don't want to engage in a rhetorical war with you. Once you drop this perception of discussions as some kind of contest which you have to win, I predict that we can get along much more easily. I am not your enemy and you don't need to treat me as if I was.

There is a certain "optimal length" for an article. That length is generally considered to be in the area of 32,000 characters -- above that length the likelihood of edit conflicts becomes too high, some browsers have problems etc. Users being "intimidated" by the amount of factual arguments on a page, however, is certainly not a reason to split away parts of it (and especially not the parts of it which are critical, while retaining the ones which are not). If I would do the same on Irish potato famine you would be screaming bloody murder about how I was trying to dumb down Wikipedia.

When the optimal length is exceeded, the right thing to do is to summarize individual sections. A good example for this is the Scientology page. No preference is given to any particular topic. Similarly, the country pages provide brief abstracts of demographics, politics, history etc. without preferential treatment for any of these. It is completely unacceptable to split away 20,000 characters of text which are critical without doing a general overhaul of the text -- which is not necessary at this point because we have not reached the critical length yet, and we will not for some time if we summarize some of the longer quotes in the article. So it should be quite obvious that it is completely unnecessary to split away the criticism section.—Eloquence 00:15, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC)

Do you understand the difference between writing an essay on a topic and a biography of a person? An encyclopædic entry on a person reads differently, is constructed differently, uses different grammatical constructions. It may be written chronologically or it may be written thematically. If constructed thematically (and this article by necessity is; only public figures can be written chronologically to cover what they did in year x or y, when Minister for this and Minister for that, or acting in x film and y film, etc) then it has be constructed in a manner that works as a unit; no-one section can be excessively large because it dominates the text leaving the impression with the reader that that is the crucial section, which is by definition POV because by size you are drawing attention to this as being the most important section. In a thematic structure, where something because of information available, academic analysis or whatever is disproportionally large in relation to other segments, unless it is central and NPOV (Lincoln and the civil war, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Nixon and Watergate, etc) an executive summary is used, with a see . . . link in the text to a specially created article that can go into detail without unbalancing the thematic structure or the main biography. That is elementary biography writing in encyclopædias. You criticism section is interpretative and so requires knowledge and exploration of a sort that would if done properly drown the rest of the article. As a result it would end up culled by the editor from every encyclopædia on the planet and moved elsewhere. I presumed you knew a lot more about encyclopædic biography writing than you clearly do. It is amazing that you can make such a big row, and make wild accusations of censorship, when you clearly don't have even an elementary grasp of encyclopædic biography writing. If you did, you would know that what I was doing was standard encyclopædic practice, something I have done for a living with other encyclopædias.

If you could manage to be unbiased for a moment you would realise that your determination to preserve your text has nothing to do with objective analysis of the woman in question and all to do with your desire to 'expose her for what she was'. Frankly I don't care whether she was the greatest ever human being or the biggest bitch since Alexis Colby. All I want to see is a professionally written encyclopædia article, which means culling the excessive POV glorification language from one side, and the excessively large criticism segment on the other, both of which POV by nature of their content, layout and usage and both of which, if dealt with professionally, can be refactored, though NPOV language on the one hand, and executive summary + link on the other, to produce a properly structures NPOV article. FearÉIREANN 00:45, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

90% of the "criticism" section of this article is straight quotation of other sources, and IMO that shouldn't be in Wikipedia at all. It should be condensed down into a description and summary of the criticisms instead. And that summary, IMO, should remain right here in the main Mother Teresa article. It's just as important and central to an article about the woman as the other stuff that's here. This is why I keep reverting your attempts to split it off. Bryan 22:34, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

While I agree that the current version is too quote-centric (mostly for lack of time to summarize everything), I see no fundamental problem with having quotes in Wikipedia. I would say that the more indirect accounts about her (e.g. Chatterjee) should be summarized, whereas in cases of direct witnesses like former Missionaries of Charity, having a quotation may often be preferable.

As for moving discussion of the Missionaries of Charity to a separate article about that organization, that is certainly possible (provided there is a prominent link in this article), but up to this time, there exists no article about them. In any case, insofar as Mother Teresa had a direct role in determining the rules and operation of the MoC, that seems to be of relevance to this article as well.—Eloquence 22:41, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't mean to eliminate all quotations, just the stuff that is quotation of someone else's work about Teresa (sort of like quoting sections of another encyclopedia) I've finally managed to slip a bit of what I intended into the article, despite the constant edit conflicts. Bryan

...and of course, that edit has now been lost and locked away for now in the course of these reversions. I'll dig it back out of the history to reinsert later, once the page is live again. Bryan 23:34, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Beatification and the Nobel Prize

Is Mother Teresa the first Nobel laureate to be beatified? If not, who came before her, and would he or she have been canonized since? Rickyrab 21:58, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Give it a rest with the edit war, guys. There's no rush to get this issue settled - which state the pages are in for a day or two doesn't matter. Talk about it a while, and come to an understanding. This revert war is pointless. Evercat 22:53, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I agree and have protected the page in its pre-edit war state. Angela 22:58, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)

I have no objection to unprotecting the page as long as James pledges to discuss major changes to the structure and content here first and to seek consensus on them before proceeding. I have expressed many times my desire to seek a solution for these differences in the perception of an important historical person, but this needs to be done without personal attacks and in the spirit of neutrality and consensus. Mother Teresa, no matter what you think of her, should be treated like any other person on Wikipedia.—Eloquence 23:52, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)

That is a bit ironic, given that others complained about your overloading the article with stuff but you bulldozed ahead anyway. So you bulldoze you way through against the wishes of people on the page at the time, but I have to discuss NPOV changes with you? Sorry, I thought this was wikipedia, not ericpedia. Anyway, our policy is to be bold with edits, isn't it, or is it just edits that Eloquence approves of? FearÉIREANN 23:57, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It isn't just Eloquence who was objecting to your actions, bear in mind. Bryan

I have always defended my edits on the discussion page and have always been willing to approach compromise solutions. There has never been an edit war about my additions here up to now. Again, you are using your standard strategy of "Look at what the other people have been saying, they all agree with my stance" while ignoring the ones who do not. See my comment above; these kind of strategic games will do nothing to cool down conflicts. Please stop trying to win a game, and start trying to seek consensus. I am willing to look beyond our disagreements and to focus only on the issue at hand. Are you, too?—Eloquence

I was specifically addressing your accusation that Eloquence was trying to enforce a policy of "just edits that Eloquence approves of." That's clearly not the case, since at least one other person agrees with him on this matter (note that I'm not saying everyone agrees, BTW). As for seeking consensus, that's what I've been trying to do here - it was you that unilaterally cut all that text from the article without discussing it first. You can't cut first and seek consensus later, that's what leads to edit wars like this. Bryan 00:59, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Reply confusion -- the above paragraph was a reply be me to Jtdirl, not by Jtdirl to you. I've added a sig to make this clearer.—Eloquence

Oops, sorry. Bryan 02:14, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Splitting away the text that is critical of Mother Teresa is not a compromise solution, and will harm NPOV in many ways. You should be bold in editing pages -- by making additions, rephrasing sections and so forth. But when major structural changes or deletions are concerned, it is almost always a good idea to discuss them first.—Eloquence 00:28, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC)

Which was what I was about to do when you began reverting. See above on how to write biographical entries. FearÉIREANN 00:45, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

See my response above for the proper sequence of making changes. So, do you still want to move 20K of text away, in spite of it being clear that there is no consensus for this solution? If not, we can talk about ways of improving these and other segments of the article.—Eloquence 01:35, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC)

She "was a revered Christian nun, missionary, peace advocate and anti-abortion activist." Surely "revered" is a value judgement? One could just as truthfully say "reviled." Some revered her, some reviled her. Neither belongs in the opening sentence. And exactly what "peace advocacy" did she do? Adam 02:30, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The contents of the page may be somewhat true,but it is certainly not presenting the whole picture! Christian Next, but a Human First. The Doctors and Writers if the had the will, would have done good in the first place and then commented. What did the doctors and the writers do to the poor? Where was their will, if what they saw spun them, then why did they not do any action? Why just writing a book which very few read.. and which did not help even a person. [email protected]

Wait a second, where has the other side of this debate gone? There isn't even a link to it.212.112.98.68 10:21, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The reality is that no truly encyclopedic article on this woman can afford to ignore the serious doubts that many people have as to the nature of her work and that of her order. The article as it was pre the addition of the criticisms is little more than a eulogy. With the additions, it may be a bit overly slanted in a negative direction. Either the two strands have to be integrated into a coherent whole (and by the way I failed to find the additions convoluted or hard to read), or the whole thing should be scrapped and just have a simple entry giving her real name, dates of birth and death, and something like 'Catholic nun beatified in 2003 for her missionary work.'. Another by the way: I too am a lapsed (very) Irish Catholic. bmills

About the Critic

The critisism of Mother Theresa comes from Christopher Hitchens. To cite him for the bulk of the entry would be like citing the KKK on an entry on African-Americans. By his own admission Hitchens is not neutral. "I'm an atheist. I'm not neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself." - Christopher Hitchens http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/hitchens_16_4.html

Maybe the criticism would be better moved to Christopher Hitchens (since it is mainly by him), while still leaving part about it on the page. Evil saltine 10:36, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

That doesn't make much sense to me. The stuff in this article is mostly material by other people that Hitchens has simply collected together into his book. The quotes here actually come from Dr. Robin Fox, Mary Louden, Susan Shields, Tracey Leonard, Elgy Gillespie, Stern magazine, Aroup Chatterjee, Debi Charan Haldar, Sister Nirmala, and the London Telegraph as the primary sources. I didn't find very much at all that Hitchens himself said here. Bryan 15:02, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In addition, Chatterjee has published his own book, which is far more comprehensive than Hitchens'.—Eloquence 15:09, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC)