Dr. Peter Dreier attempts to make an argument in today’s Huffington Post that Rosa Parks should be part of the “human rights pantheon [with] Bishop [Oscar] Romero and Eleanor Roosevelt,” located at the Washington National Cathedral, but Mother Teresa should not. His justification is grounded in the distinction between the two women’s approach to their particular cause. According to Dreier, Parks “believed in justice, not charity” like Mother Teresa. Therefore, Parks dedicated her life to the “‘struggle to bring equality and social justice to all people’ [while] Mother Teresa raised millions of dollars for her efforts, but never challenged the system that caused such widespread suffering.” That’s Dreier’s argument at least.
While Dreier says Mother Teresa “deserves praise” for her work, he makes plenty of accusations about horrible conditions for the patients in houses run by the Missionaries of Charity, the order Mother Teresa founded in 1950. Unfortunately, Dreier doesn’t provide any citations for these; however, a Google search helped me find out Dreier’s source – Wikipedia! Compare these two paragraphs: the first is from the Wikipedia article (hyperlinks removed) on the Missionaries of Charity under the banner of “controversy;” the second is from Dreier’s article.
