The Missionary Position - Reviews

Reviews

In The London Review of Books Amit Chaudhuri praised the book, "Hitchens’s investigations have been a solitary and courageous endeavour. The book is extremely well-written, with a sanity and sympathy that tempers its irony." However he commented that the portrait "is in danger of assuming the one-dimensionality of the Mother Teresa of her admirers", and that he finished the book without much more of an idea of the character and motivations of Mother Teresa.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian says: "Anyone with ambivalent feelings about the influence of Catholic dogma (especially concerning sex and procreation); about the media's manufacture of images; or about what one can, should or shouldn't do for someone less fortunate, should read this book." In 1996, The New York Times published a favourable review by Bruno Maddox in which he says: "Mr. Hitchens, a columnist at Vanity Fair and The Nation, is rather convincing" and "Hitchens argues his case with consummate style".

The Sunday Times says: "A dirty job but someone had to do it. By the end of this elegantly written, brilliantly argued piece of polemic, it is not looking good for Mother Teresa." Also in 1996, a critical review of the book was penned by William A. Donohue, president of The Catholic League, who comments: "If this sounds like nonsense, well, it is."

Replying to a positive review of Hitchens' book in the New York Review of Books by Murray Kempton, Jesuit author James Martin offered a defense of Mother Teresa against the criticisms brought against her. Noting the difficulties involved with offering aid to the destitute in the developing world, he concluded by writing, "egarding the 'poorest of the poor,' those who today die neglected, there would seem to be two choices. First, to cluck one’s tongue that such a group of people should even exist. Second, to act: to provide comfort and solace to these individuals as they face death. Mr. Kempton chooses the former. Mother Teresa, for all of her faults, chooses the latter." In another letter in the same issue, literary critic and sinologist Simon Leys criticised Hitchens' portrayal of Mother Teresa, stating, "Bashing an elderly nun under an obscene label does not seem to be a particularly brave or stylish thing to do. Besides, it appears that the attacks which are being directed at Mother Teresa all boil down to one single crime: she endeavors to be a Christian, in the most literal sense of the word—which is (and always was, and will always remain) a most improper and unacceptable undertaking in this world." Hitchens replied to Leys' letter in a subsequent issue, and Leys in turn defended his original stance, writing that Hitchens' book "contain a remarkable number of howlers on elementary aspects of Christianity" and accusing Hitchens of "a complete ignorance of the position of the Catholic Church on the issues of marriage, divorce, and remarriage" and a "strong and vehement distaste for Mother Teresa."