In the foreword to â??The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice,â? Christopher Hitchens imagined the question he invited by writing the book: â??Who would be so base as to pick on her, a wizened, shriveled old lady, well stricken in years, who has consecrated her entire life to the needy and the destitute?â?
The short version of Hitchensâ??s answer: Me.
His longer version: The implied question â??Is nothing sacred?â? must always be answered â??with a stoical â??No.â??â?
This fierce stance was central to Hitchensâ??s work, and now that he has been dead for a year, and Mother Teresa has been dead for 15 years, the reissue of â??The Missionary Positionâ? as an audiobook is less an opportunity to revisit the history of their disagreement (his explicit, hers implicit) than it is an opportunity to remember the value of Hitchensâ??s great pugnacious willingness to examine, in cold detail, the things the culture has enshrined, and to â??scorn to use the fear of death to coerce and flatter the poor.â?
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