Mother Teresa’s Lack of Faith

I wrote a response on UA: I politely disagree with Mr. Mehta about what we should be focussing on.

Mike C –
Your inane explanation above is not “irrelevant”; it’s simply inane.

well, I met her as a child, so I guess maybe I’m a little biased b/c I remember her fondly. all I know is a huge crowd of people turned out to mourn her at her funeral (willingly), so she obviously did something right. I don’t deny she probably did some wrong stuff too-just like everyone else in the world, she was mixed. Overall though, I tend to believe a huge crowd more over one man (Christopher Hitchens), especially when I find him so distasteful and often just as hypocritical as those he criticizes (I’d take Ghandi, Mother Theresa, and the Dali Lami over Hitchens any day). I am interested to learn about these letters though. I wonder why if she lost her faith, why she didn’t just focus on helping the poor more without the whole faith thing-it’s what I would have done. Guess she had her reasons, but it is rather odd.

Mike C –
Your inane explanation above is not “irrelevant”; it’s simply inane.

It’s his opinion and he’s entitled to have it

I’ve seen Hitchen’s little polemic against Mother Theresa. I was not very impressed. His reasons for disliking her are rather weak IMHO.

I have to wonder why Christopher Hitchens is the only one who says it and everyone else just references him. You’d think other people would want to do their own “investigating” of her instead of just relying on him.

As I noted, the Time article seems to gloss over the problem that it makes no sense to praise, in general, unwavering conviction in the face of doubts: different people believe different contradictory things, all passionately. Logically, the doubts of some (or of all) must be justified.

Overall though, I tend to believe a huge crowd more over one man (Christopher Hitchens)

The problem is, of course, is that the huge crowd is just going on her public image, while Hitchens cites actual information about how her charities operated. It’s just a plain fact that, despite soliciting money from people by talking about helping Calcuttans, the vast majority of the money seems to have gone towards setting up convents in her name around the world. It’s just plain fact that she hobnobbed with and praised violent dictators, knowingly accepted stolen money from Keating, and so on.

I find that people never really respond to or try to refute Hitchen’s arguments and evidence: instead they simply pull a variation of “it’s just patently ridiculous that you attack such a wonderful saint!” What’s ironic is that this plays right into Hitchen’s point: people in the West have simply come to use Mother Theresa as an image that assuages their guilt without having any idea what the facts on the ground were, or that she was a human being. It’s Hitchens who argues that she was “mixed.” The “crowd” is who paints her and her work as if it were some sort of Platonic ideal.

What Mike C describes is the ultimate one-sided love-hate relationship. It’s reasoning like this that depicts just how viral (and therefore strong) Christianity is: it comes equipped with so many built-in self-reinforcing mechanisms that by the time someone realizes that *gasp* god isn’t there, they are compelled to take this lack of evidence as evidence that he is “there.” Mind-boggling and sickening.

I could have sworn I posted on this (once with one link and then again in another thread with no link) and that my posts went through… Did I mess it up somehow?

I just think she’s a twat.

Hmm, I can believe my friends who have worked on the ground with Teresa and seen her operation first hand… or I can believe a self-proclaimed know-it-all who uses sexist words like “twat” to demean people he disagrees with.

Dunno, tough choice…

@stogoe and Reed Braden,

I guess I’m naive. I’m surprised by what you guys are saying about MT. All I knew about her was the popular image of an old lady trudging through the 3rd world grime, presumably helping the poor.
Are you saying that she really wasn’t doing good? Do you have a link or a source or something? I’m genuinely curious.

or I can believe a self-proclaimed know-it-all who uses sexist words like “twat” to demean people he disagrees with.

My feeling exactly.

I agree Raghu. She was a regular person who made mistakes like anyone else. She wasn’t perfect, but at the same time, I didn’t see anything about Teresa’ mistakes that were not at least somewhat understandable/ justifiable, or else just based on Hitchen’s own ideological differences about what is worthwhile ministry to the poor in the first place.

And frankly, someone who thinks that the Iraq War is justified because the Iraqis are religious is not someone whose judgment I would trust on matters of justice and compassion.

i’m with Polly on this – i’d really like some non-Hitchens references to go check out for myself please?

So all those who disagree with Teresa’s methods: what will you do differently? Are you willing to go and spend your life on behalf of the poorest of the poor and do it the way you think it ought to be done?

A non-Hitchens book on “Mother Teresa”, Mother Teresa by Aroup Chatterjee

Mother Teresa:
wanted people to live in poverty.
denounced women’s rights to divorce (unless your rich) and abortion.
misappropiated charity money, on converting people to catholicism instead of caring for them.
praised a brutal dictator for money.

She didn’t just “make mistakes”, she was a wicked person who did extremely bad deeds. It’s hard to see what good she did for people at all, but there’s plenty of bad she did. It’s insanity to ask others whether they would dedicate their life to the poor when she did no such thing.

Disagree with her methods…
I’d rather believe a crowd than one man…
Hitchens is in support of the war in Iraq so he must be wrong on this…
“Mother Teresa” is human, we make mistakes…

Please stop, I’m going to be sick, too much nonsense.

Mike C,

In short: no. That is a calling that is beyond me. I freely, and humbly, admit it. Regardless of what I find out, it will not change anything I do in my own life. This is purely for historical knowledge.

It reminds me of the surprise I got when I first read about some of Ghandi’s less than ideal non-violent extremism. He would actually push people (verbally) into violent situations by castigating them for fleeing from violence. Until then, I thought he was a saint – so to speak. I’d like my OWN “saint-worship” tempered with reality, that’s all.

I agree that people are seldom all-good or all-bad. I’m not looking to classify her, I just want perspective on an important and well-know person in recent history. If we were talking about Britney Spears, I wouldn’t have the faintest interest.

A non-Hitchens book on “Mother Teresa”, Mother Teresa by Aroup Chatterjee

You can read this online at

http://www.meteorbooks.com/

The explanation you gave (2nd comment from top) is not irrelevant to atheists, it is one of the things in religion that looks especially bad. It links to the idea of a “test of faith”, as if “passing” such a test (by forgoing reason for faith) were the desirable outcome. Implicit is that atheists are failures. I realize there are lots of rationalizations behind this that can perhaps make it consistent with the Christian worldview, but the end result is a bit offensive.

But I guess that’s just the way it goes. Every worldview has corrolaries that are offensive to other worldviews.

Miller, I’m sorry if you find the idea of apophatic theoology offensive. I’m afraid I really don’t know what you mean about a “test” though. This is not about testing anything or proving anything. The via negativa is not about “reasons for belief”. It’s not a “test of faith”. And this isn’t apologetics, it’s spirituality and theology. It is not a rationale to convince people to believe in spite of a lack of evidence. It is for those who already believe but want to know why their belief doesn’t always lead to an immediate experience of God’s presence. I don’t really see what that has to do with atheists at all or why you would feel judged by it. Forgive me for not getting it.

It is for those who already believe but want to know why their belief doesn’t always lead to an immediate experience of God’s presence. I don’t really see what that has to do with atheists at all or why you would feel judged by it. Forgive me for not getting it.

It’s a difference between the the religious vs. rational viewpoints. In the religious viewpoint, underlying assumptions are often unquestionable, so the question then is “given that there is a god, why don’t I feel his presence? Because I have faith that he’s there, so there must be another reason”. The rational viewpoint is that the thinking should be “if there is a god, why don’t I feel his presence? Possibly because my earlier assumption is wrong, and there is no god, and I must investigate that possibility first”.

To a rational person, the refusal to question the underlying assumption is at best, stupid, and at worst, sheer pig-headedness, and the elaborate framework needed to find another, more acceptable answer when the underlying assumption seems to be in question (such as your apophatic theology), is a deliberate rejection of reason. Rational types don’t like that any more than the religious like a rejection of faith.

Does that help to explain it?

And those who accuse Teresa and her sisters of actually taking joy in the suffering of others ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

I didn’t say that, and I don’t see where anyone else did either. I said that she and the church think suffering is good for people, that they consider it an offering to god and that it’s necessary for people to suffer in order to make them more humble and holy and so forth. If someone thinks that way, why bother to alleviate suffering at all? Just give the poor a clean place to do it in, that’s enough, and that’s what she did.

Me, I think unnecessary suffering is a bad thing, and all treatable ill health is unnecessary suffering.

But I will trust the friends I know personally who have gone to Calcutta, who have worked with Mother Teresa, and who will say that the people there were given death with dignity and the chance to be loved before they died, and that the value of this should not be discounted.

I don’t discount the value of hospice care at all – I just object to substituting hospice care for medical care. I don’t see a mention of your friends seeing any medical care – did they? Did they see that people brought in off the streets were given a complete medical workup to determine if they needed medical care instead of hospice care? Were they doctors who could tell if the people dying were treatable or not? Or did they just assume anyone there in the hospice needed to be there because they looked pretty bad off? These are not rhetorical questions, by the way – I’m interested to know what they actually saw in terms of deciding whether hospice or medical care was needed.

Mike C. said:

don’t condemn others who see another, different need, and rush to meet that as well. You don’t have to belittle the work others are doing because it’s not the work you would do (if you are actually doing anything at all).

I agree with that… really some of the comments seem angry at her for not solving the problems of an entire sub-continent in one lifetime.
I have to say though that i have found some of what Mother T is quoted as saying a bit off-putting – I feel more drawn to someone like Dorothy Day who was subversive as well as saintly (though she would have hated being called that.) She once said: “Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.”

I think she is up for beatification also, but fat chance with this pope.

In regards to the Via Negativa I have heard it presented as a way to break down limited, parochial, projected versions of God. It’s more a discipline to remind the believer that whatever they think they know about God, it’s wrong. So yes, I don’t see why atheists have to be threatened by it. It seems similar to the Buddhist project of attempting to achieve an unmediated experience of reality (“reality is free of all notions.”) in other words, don’t believe everything you think.

As far as Mother T’s doubts, whenever you commit to a person or a cause, there will be times when whatever shiny happy feelings that first drew you in disappear and you have to reach for a deeper level. So I find the revelations about Mother T’s very moving, actually.

Wow – ABC nightly news just quoted Dan Barker on camera about this story! They actually cited the “atheist” response to a news item. That’s gotta be a measure of progress!! 🙂

So you’ve read Hitchens or Chatterjee, but have you read Teresa’s own writings? You accept their interpretation of her actions, but have you read her for yourself? Or have you read the stories of those who have worked with her?

this is a problem I see with some people. they will only read what their “own” say-i.e. some religious will only read other religious, some atheists will only read other atheists. I think it’s ridiculous both ways. The reason I said what I said was b/c like Mike C, I knew people who dealt with her and some that were helped by her, and I’d take their word over Hitchen’s any day b/c they were actually there-for years.

Disagree with her methods…
I’d rather believe a crowd than one man…
Hitchens is in support of the war in Iraq so he must be wrong on this…
“Mother Teresa” is human, we make mistakes…

well, I’ve seen the first arugment used many times against religion. I wonder if you’d have a problem with it in that context? probably not. as for the second one, umm, yes, we can critcize Hitchens. I’ve heard this argument used against religion too (it’s wrong on one thing so it must be wrong on everything) and again, I bet you wouldn’t have a problem with it in that context. If he’s going to criticize others, he opens himself up. He’s not above criticism, and he doesn’t get a special pass, just like she doesn’t. I never said she did, all I said was she wasn’t the evil person Hitchens made her out to be, though apparently that is the same as thinking she was a “saint” and “attacking Hitchens” according to some. Even Aroup Chatterjee admits she did “something” for the poor. My verdict was she was mixed, and I think that’s ultimately how most people will end up feeling. And the last one is a truism, it can be said of anyone.

People like her, Ghandi, Diana, and the Dahli Lama are always going to be admired by some, no matter what Hitchens says. He hasn’t exactly made himself likeable, nor does he have a reputation for having an open mind, so even when he says something true most people don’t want to listen. And what he said that the people of Iraq “deserved” to be invaded b/c they are religious to be invaded was totally out there-(ask yourself, how would you react if someone said that a secular country deserved to be invaded b/c it was secular? it’s inane both ways).

I’d like to see “evidence” other than people regurgitating what Hitchens says. So far what I have to go on is people I spoke to who knew and dealt with her, to several Indians who wrote books about her help, vs. Hitchens- well, I’m going to be more inclined to believe the former more, for obvious reasons. But sometimes I get the impression that they are dismissed out of turn b/c they’re “poor and stupid” (I’ve actually used that phrase used) and “easily duped”. As someone here pointed out, obviously everyone who went to her funeral must have been “duped”, it couldn’t have been they may have found some good in what she did.

As for Mother Theresa’s big image (which I do think got out of hand), umm, the secular western media had just as big a hand in that as religion. Same with the other figures I mentioned. To me they were all mixed, but certainly not totally useless as Hitchens would have us believe (Ghandi especially). Other than criticizing famous people, I don’t really see what Hitchens has accomplished-his whole identity is built on attacking people, IMO. If there were no more famous people to attack or religion he’d be out of a job. But of course, I’m sure I’ll get told off by someone for saying and thinking that, b/c some people seem to feel that he is above criticism. Rather ironic.

Hmm, I can believe my friends who have worked on the ground with Teresa and seen her operation first hand… or I can believe a self-proclaimed know-it-all who uses sexist words like “twat” to demean people he disagrees with.

yeah I know. but apparently that doesn’t count to some people, only what Hitchens says counts.

At the risk of sounding too radical, may I suggest that there might be a middle ground between “saint” and “twat” where Teresa might fit :-).

I have mixed feelings about her. On the one hand, I cannot discount the criticisms have been raised. On the other, I have talked to people who have seen her operation first-hand and they do agree that she is doing a lot of good for the poor of Calcutta.

Raghu

exactly. this pretty much sums up what I was trying to say, but obviously some people didn’t get it. I just didn’t want to take Hitchens word for it, I wanted to hear it from others and so far most of what I’ve heard is people parroting Hitchens-ironic I think. I will check out that other book.

I don’t think there is much doubt that Hitchens is somewhat right about this. Believe what you want about Mother Theresa: the fact that most people are never even told about the more controversial aspects of her ministry and actions is proof enough that she is simply treated as a symbol instead of a person in the media and public mind.

He may be, but there should be more information than just everyone parroting Hitchens. Obviously if he got the “info” it’s not that hard to get. As for it not being known, these stories have been circulating for years, and most people I’ve met have at least heard of them. And the media does this to lots of people-it’s unfortuantely something that they do-make huge images out of ordinary people.

Well, no one in India that wrote about her and KNEW her seemed duped. They knew very well how how she ran her operation. I heard she gave that “rich money” to the poor. Don’t know if it’s true or not, it’s just what was written by some of the very poor people she helped in India, whose judgement seems much more trustworthy than Hitchens. If she was really as “bad” as Hitchens, says, I don’t think all those “poor duped Indians” would have turned out to go to her funeral. How could they have been “duped”, when she was “leaving people to die”? If she was doing this out in the open, wouldn’t they have known? I don’t deny she made mistakes. I did not agree with her views on birth control and abortion. I think the woman was neither sinner nor saint. I don’t see things in black and white-isn’t this what people get mad at religion for? but hey, it seems with some people on here in this matter, unless someone is an atheist their opinion doesn’t count-you’re either with us or against us? Obviously, as the above poster said, those people who say she helped them know less than Christopher Hitchens.

It’s a difference between the the religious vs. rational viewpoints. In the religious viewpoint, underlying assumptions are often unquestionable, so the question then is “given that there is a god, why don’t I feel his presence? Because I have faith that he’s there, so there must be another reason”. The rational viewpoint is that the thinking should be “if there is a god, why don’t I feel his presence? Possibly because my earlier assumption is wrong, and there is no god, and I must investigate that possibility first”.

To a rational person, the refusal to question the underlying assumption is at best, stupid, and at worst, sheer pig-headedness, and the elaborate framework needed to find another, more acceptable answer when the underlying assumption seems to be in question (such as your apophatic theology), is a deliberate rejection of reason. Rational types don’t like that any more than the religious like a rejection of faith.

Claire, thank you for your reply. Unfortunately I see you falling into two common false stereotypes atheists often have about Christians. First, most Christians that I know do question their beliefs, quite frequently. You are right that some do not, and that some churches discourage questioning. But that is not what I consider healthy faith and is not the kind of religion that I myself represent. Personally I can recall from my early adolescent days being encouraged by my parents and pastors to “make my faith my own”, in other words, to question and think through my beliefs for myself from top to bottom, including the existence of God (and I grew up in a conservative evangelical background).

The second misconception I see you espousing is that Christian people are deliberately irrational. Perhaps I didn’t explain it thoroughly enough, but apophatic theology is not a rejection of reason. It does not say that we should believe in God despite the lack of all evidence. What apophatic theology says is that we have reasons for believing that God may exist – we have had experiences of God in the past or encountered philosophical arguments or personal stories that seem convincing to us, among other things – but at the same time we have these experiences of God’s distance or absence too. Apophatic theology is thus simply one possible explanation for why we have these conflicting experiences.

In that sense it is highly rational – we are simply considering all our options. On the one hand you could be correct – our experiences of of absence may mean that God does not exist and our earlier experiences were just a counterfeit. But wouldn’t rationality direct us to consider other possibilities too? Another possibility is that our original experiences of God were in fact true and yet for other reasons God chooses to subsequently remain “hidden”. Apophatic theology explores what some of those reasons may be – and there are many, some of which I find quite convincing – not ad hoc at all.

At any rate, I can quite understand why others like yourself would look at God’s absence and conclude that he must not have existed in the first place. That is clearly one rational option. But please understand that others of us have had such overwhelming experiences of God’s presence that it is difficult for us to simply say “that wasn’t real”, even when that presence fades. For people like me, apophatic theology helps describe another rational possibility.

(And monkeymind is also right that another key strain of apophatic theology is about “breaking down limited, parochial, projected versions of God.” For instance, my wife is currently working on a book that uses apophatic theology to help her establish why it is appropriate to refer to God with feminine metaphors and language as well as male.)

Anyhow, I hope that clarifies some of the misconceptions. I apologize for contributing to them in any way.

I said that she and the church think suffering is good for people

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but suffering is good for people. That is not a religious doctrine – it is a simply observation of real human experience. Any psychologist would tell you the same. I mean c’mon, have none of you gone through a period of trial and suffering in your life that helped shape you and strengthen you and made you a better person? Let’s be honest here – if we were having a different conversation that had nothing to do with Mother Teresa or religion at all, but instead were talking about difficult experiences we’ve all faced in life, I can imagine that most of you would say that those experiences have had positive effects in your life.

The paradox that we all live with (atheists too, not just MT and other Christians) is that while on the one hand suffering does produce good results in our life, on the other hand no one should think that this is an excuse to simply do nothing about the suffering of others. I think most people, atheist or Christian or whoever, will recognize that while on the one hand suffering is something that can produce good results in our lives, on the other hand, it is something to be resisted and alleviated whenever and however we can.

This is just a tension we all have to wrestle with and it does no good to blame Mother Teresa for wrestling with it too. As far as I can see she did find a balance. Her work was about alleviating the suffering of others insofar as she was able, but she also realized the limitations of her own abilities to alleviate all of the suffering around her, and thus sought ways to transmute the suffering into positive spiritual growth as well (for her, the nuns and the patients). The basic existential reality we all have to face is that in this life you can fight suffering or you can utilize suffering for good ends. Mother Teresa did both.

I don’t see a mention of your friends seeing any medical care – did they? Did they see that people brought in off the streets were given a complete medical workup to determine if they needed medical care instead of hospice care? Were they doctors who could tell if the people dying were treatable or not?

Yes, there were doctors that examined people and helped treat the ones who could be treated (with the limited supplies they had – if you’ve never been to a Third World country like India you may not realize just how overwhelming the needs are and how impossible it is to help everyone who comes… no matter how many millions of dollars a charity has). My friend spent a portion of his summer there rolling cotton balls in the doctor’s office while watching them perform examination after examination. That’s all the details I know, but to answer your question, yes, there were doctors and there was a triage system of sorts.

“Forgive me for stating the obvious, but suffering is good for people.”

This seems particularly ridiculous in the face of the SORT of suffering we are talking about, most of which involved lack of access to basic medical care, nutrition, and so on.

Countless people have lived and died rich full lives without experiencing the sort of suffering of these people, and if the world is one day made free of such suffering, I see no reason to think that we will somehow be less complete human beings for it. The fact that some people can rise above suffering (and clearly, not all can: a heck of a lot just die, or fall into despair, etc.) does not mean that suffering is a good or necessary thing, or that we should be indifferent to reducing it when it is in our power to do so.

None of this provides any sort of good refutation to the issue of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of donations never showing up in Calcutta, the accusations of some of the former people in her order, her hobnobing with brutal dictators, her hypocrisy on divorce when it came to the rich and famous, and so on. I’m not bringing these things up because I’m trying to make the case that she was an evil person. But the picture we are given of her is distorted without including these things, and “oh, well she struggled with stuff, we all do” is really not an acceptable deflection of all criticism, unless of course you are prepared to use it for everyone all the time for any action.

Countless people have lived and died rich full lives without experiencing the sort of suffering of these people, and if the world is one day made free of such suffering, I see no reason to think that we will somehow be less complete human beings for it. The fact that some people can rise above suffering (and clearly, not all can: a heck of a lot just die, or fall into despair, etc.) does not mean that suffering is a good or necessary thing, or that we should be indifferent to reducing it when it is in our power to do so.

Bad, I don’t disagree with what you said here, and I don’t see anything I said as contradicting what you said. I was not trying to say that suffering is in itself a good thing, only that good can be brought out of suffering. And of course we should attempt to reduce suffering. That is a given. Again, you seem to be reiterating the same point I was trying to make: suffering is not good, it should be diminished, but even when it cannot, some good can be brought out of it.

All due respect to the Buddhists, with whom I agree on many things, but I think on this one I’m going to go with Captain Kirk

Are you sure? When you envision Heaven, do you then see people starving to re-death, murdering each other, cheating, lying, stealing, raping, taking drugs, and engaging in all of the other sordid affairs which cause human suffering? Or do you imagine an afterlife in which you lose your identity due to the absence of pain?

The woman questioned the teachings that were feed to her , and that food did not taste as well as she was told it would . Was sour more so than sweet .