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The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Christopher Hitchens. London: Verso, 1995. $15.00 cloth.
From time to time, with seeming regularity, women who have devoted themselves to religious and charitable work achieve heroic stature in popular culture. Times past have borne witness to the ascendancy of the images of Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Jane Addams, and Mary Baker Eddy. Today, perhaps no figure has come to symbolize undiluted goodness, piety, and compassion more than the small, elderly Albanian nun Agnes Bojaxhiu-known to millions as Mother Teresa. Might it be, however, that both the image and the reality of Mother Teresa serve more sinister purposes than at first meet the eye? Christopher Hitchens answers this question in the affirmative and presents in this book a series of pointed, trenchant, and effective arguments aimed at undermining the myth of Mother Teresa.
In order to subvert Mother...