The Missionary Position

Introduction

On my table as I write is an old copy of L’Assaut (“The Attack”). It is, or more properly it was, a propaganda organ for the personal despotism of Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti. As the helplessly fat and jowly and stupid son of a very gaunt and ruthless and intelligent father (Jean-François “Papa Doc” Duvalier), the portly Dauphin was known to all, and to his evident embarrassment, as “Baby Doc.” In an attempt to salvage some dignity and to establish an identity separate from that of the parental, L’Assaut carried the subtitle “Organe de Jean-Claudisme.”

But this avoidance of the more accurate “Duvalierism” served only to underline the banana-republic, cult-of-dynasty impression that it sought to dispel. Below the headline appears a laughable bird, which resembles a very plump and nearly flightless pigeon but is clearly intended as a dove, judging by the stylized sprig of olive clamped in its beak. Beneath the dismal avian is a large slogan in Latin—In Hoc Signo Vinces (“In this sign shall ye conquer”)—which appears to negate the pacific and herbivorous intentions of the logo. Early Christian symbols, such as the cross or the fish, sometimes bore this superscription. I have seen it annexed on pamphlets bearing other runes and fetishes, such as the swastika. For a certainty, nobody could conquer anything under a banner bearing the device reproduced here.

On the inside, next to a long and adoring account of the wedding anniversary of Haiti’s bulbous First Citizen and his celebrated bride, Michèle Duvalier, is a large photograph. It shows Michèle, poised and cool and elegant in her capacity as leader of Haiti’s white and Creole elite. Her bangled arms are being held in a loving clasp by another woman, who is offering up a gaze filled with respect and deference. Next to the picture is a quotation from this other woman, who clearly feels that her sycophantic gestures are not enough and that words must be offered as well: “Madame la Présidente, c’est une personne qui sent, qui sait, qui veut prouver son amour non seulement par des mots, mais aussi par des actions concrètes et tangibles.”¹ The neighboring Society page takes up the cry, with the headline: “Mme la Présidente, le pays resonne de votre œuvre.”²

The eye rests on the picture. The woman proposing these lavish compliments is the woman known to millions as Mother Teresa of Calcutta. A number of questions obtrude themselves at once. First, is the picture by any chance a setup? Have the deft editors of L’Assaut made an exploited visitor out of an unsuspecting stranger, placed words in her mouth, put her in a vulnerable position? The answer appears to be in the negative, because the date of this issue is January 1981, and there exists film footage of Mother Teresa visiting Haiti that year. The footage, which was shown on the CBS documentary program Sixty Minutes, has Mother Teresa smiling into the camera and saying, of Michèle Duvalier, that while she had met kings and presidents aplenty in her time, she had “never seen the poor people being so familiar with their head of state as they were with her. It was a beautiful lesson for me.” In return for these and other favors, Mother Teresa was awarded the Haitian Légion d’honneur. And her simple testimony, in warm encomium of the ruling couple, was shown on state-run television every night for at least a week. No protest against this footage is known to have been registered by Mother Teresa (who has ways of making her views widely available) between the time of the award and the time when the Haitian people became so “familiar” with Jean-Claude and Michèle that the couple had barely enough time to stuff their luggage with the National Treasury before fleeing forever to the French Riviera.

Other questions arise as well, all of them touching on matters of saintliness, modesty, humility and devotion to the poor. Apart from anything else, what was Mother Teresa doing in Port-au-Prince attending photo opportunities and award ceremonies with the local oligarchy? What, indeed, was she doing in Haiti at all? The world has a need to picture her in a pose of agonized yet willing subjection, washing the feet of Calcutta’s poor. Politics is not her proper métier, and certainly not politics half a world away, in a sweltering Caribbean dictatorship. Haiti has been renowned for many years, and justly so, as the place where the wretched of the earth receive the cruelest and most capricious treatment. It is well and clearly understood, furthermore, that this is not the result of either natural disaster or unalterable misfortune. The island has been the property of an especially callous and greedy predatory class, which has employed pitiless force in order to keep the poor and the dispossessed in their place.

Let us look again at the photograph of the two smiling ladies. In terms of received ideas about Mother Teresa, it does not “fit.” It does not, as people say nowadays, “compute.” Image and perception are everything, and those who possess them have the ability to determine their own myth, to be taken at their own valuation. Actions and words are judged by reputations, and not the other way around. So hold the picture to the light for an instant, and try to take an impression of the “negative.” Is it possible that the reverse black-and-white tells not a gray tale but a truer one?

Also before me as I write is a photograph of Mother Teresa standing, eyes modestly downcast, in friendly propinquity with a man known as “John-Roger.” At first glance, it would seem to the casual viewer that they are standing in a Calcutta slum. A closer look makes it plain that the destitute figures in the background have been added in as a backdrop. The picture is a fake. So, for that matter, is John-Roger. As leader of the cult known sometimes as “Insight” but more accurately as MSIA (the “Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness,” pronounced “Messiah”), he is a fraud of Chaucerian proportions. Probably best known to the public for his lucrative connection to Arianna Stassinopoulos-Huffington—whose husband, Michael Huffington, spent $42 million of his own inherited money on an unsuccessful bid for a Senate seat in California—John-Roger has repeatedly claimed to be, and to have, a “spiritual consciousness” that is superior to that of Jesus Christ. Such a claim is hard to adjudicate. One might think, all the same, that it would be blasphemous to the simple outlook of Mother Teresa. Yet there she is, keeping him company and lending him the luster of her name and image. MSIA, it should be noted, has repeatedly been exposed in print as corrupt and fanatical, and the Cult Awareness Network lists the organization as “highly dangerous.”

It turns out that the faked photograph records the momentous occasion of Mother Teresa’s acceptance of a check for $10,000. It came in the form of an “Integrity Award” bestowed by John-Roger himself—a man who realized his own divinity in the aftermath of a visionary kidney operation. No doubt Mother Teresa’s apologists will have their defense close at hand. Their heroine is too innocent to detect dishonesty in others. And $10,000 is $10,000 and, as Lenin was fond of saying (citing Juvenal), pecunia non olet: “money has no smell.” So what is more natural than that she should quit Calcutta once more, journey to Tinseltown and share her aura with a guru claiming to outrank the Redeemer himself? We will discover Mother Teresa keeping company with several other frauds, crooks and exploiters as this little tale unfolds. At what point—her apologists might want to permit themselves this little tincture of skepticism—does such association cease to be coincidental?

One last set of photographs closes this portfolio. Behold Mother Teresa in prayerful attitude, flanked by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Marion Barry, as she opens an eight-bed adoption facility in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. It is a great day for Marion Barry, who has led the capital city into beggary and corruption, and who covers his nakedness by calling for mandatory prayer in schools. It is a great day as well for Hillary Rodham Clinton, who almost single-handedly destroyed a coalition on national health care that had taken a quarter of a century to build and mature.

The seeds of this multiple photo opportunity, which occurred on 19 June 1995, were sown the preceding March, as the First Lady toured the Indian subcontinent. Molly Moore, the fine Washington Post reporter on the trip, made it clear in her dispatches that the visit was of a Potemkin nature:

In such ways do Western leaders impress themselves momentarily upon the poor of the world, before flying home much purified and sobered by the experience. A stop at a Mother Teresa institution is absolutely de rigueur