You know how when you notice something it's suddenly all around you? This is happening to me with international do-gooder women and their irretrievably imperious Ugly American attitudes.
One of them is a nun who writes an innocent enough blog, La Paz de Susan. What could be wrong with that? Plenty. Sister Susan jetsets back and forth from El Salvador to the States and lives in obvious luxurious digs with a complement of paid guards. A Poor Claire she is not. There's more.
She has gone to help the benighted Salvadorans delivering volunteer health care. But she hasn't bothered to learn the language beforehand. Oh, how "cute" she is speaking pidgin Spanish! Salvadorans who mess up her name or make some other mistake concerning her status are ridiculously silly and subject to mockery.
Of course, being a Catholic nun she's not above the occasional fund-raising scam based on -- wait for it! -- a needy child. And let's not forget to post the picture of the woman with the basket on her head to delight the folks back home with a picture of the "natives."
Reading her blog I have no doubt why the Salvadoran military men knew they could murder four American religious women in 1980 with impunity. Without a doubt, these insufferable, self-absorbed dogooders have no clue as to their surroundings.
All they want is to feel good allegedly helping the poor subhumans.
3 comments:
I have the same misgivings about such nuns like Mother Teresa. While she may have beem a champion for the poor, she seemed to me as someone who was a "user" of the impoverished to promote her own sanctity.
I apologise if I unjustly defame her (she's still dead, ain't she?)
George
About do-gooders, poor or rich, Mother Teresa or Sister Suzan, the cause is always the same: to get a "reward". What the philosophers call "cognatus", which is a postulate that says that the human beings naturally act always for their own good or in their own interest (the basis of your decalogue)
About sister, do you remember Sister Singing, Soeur Sourire, who sang Dominique? There is a new movie about her life (sad life)She left the covent three years after her success, without any money since she had signed a contract that left all the money coming from her songs to the nuns community, in virtue of her vow of poverty and obedience. Then the income tax people asked her the huge tax from the revenue she was supposed to have from her very successful disc She protests that the nuns community had the money, no way, she even asked the King of Belgium (she was a Belgian) to do something. Niet. She tried a coming back in the USA, but it didn't work. Finally after depression, with alcohol and drugs she commintted sucide with her companion ( a woman ,but note that she always claimed she was not a lesbian)She was 52. Interesting, about nuns, no?
I cast a dim eye on those who proclaim their own good works. While I suppose they still accrue some merit, I think the spirit of them is compromised when their perpetrators feel compelled to publicize their compassion instead of doing good anonymously.
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