SOURCE: Spivey, Nigel. “All Made of Faith and Service.” Spectator (11 November 1995): 52–53.

In the following review of Hitchens's The Missionary Position and Mother Teresa's A Simple Path, Spivey commends Hitchens's audacity, but concludes that his demand for a “rational critique” of Mother Teresa is futile.

Saints take opprobrium. It is a sort of dietary supplement which helps them to thrive. So there is no harm in repeating the current charges against Mother Teresa, imminently of the company. Which are that she is a pernicious bigot; that she has pledged the propagation of a faith whose tenets descend from the worst excesses of the Counter Reformation; that she has garnered large amounts of global cash from her base in Calcutta, most of which has gone to extend and sustain the worldwide diffusion of a fundamentalist cult; and that in furtherance of this aggressive mission, she has happily laundered the proceeds...