SECRET LIFE OF MOTHER TERESA: Newly Published Letters Reveal 50-Year Crisis of Faith …
Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith screams the headline.
Says Christopher Hitchens, author of The Missionary Position, a scathing polemic on Teresa, and more recently of the atheist manifesto God Is Not Great: “She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person, and that her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself.” Meanwhile, some familiar with the smiling mother’s extraordinary drive may diagnose her condition less as a gift of God than as a subconscious attempt at the most radical kind of humility: she punished herself with a crippling failure to counterbalance her great successes.
Please take the time to read this article. As for me? Who doesn’t sometimes have doubt on their beliefs? I was taught that there was but one without sin…As for her letters…shame on the church for allowing their publishing..they were private and no one had the right to go against her wishes.
August 23, 2007 - 03:53 PM on August 23rd, 2007
“Who doesn’t sometimes have doubt on their [religious] beliefs? ”
Me.
August 23, 2007 - 04:31 PM on August 23rd, 2007
So I guess Mother Theresa was not all she cracked up to be, eh Chris? Hmmm, she really was human after all…with dubts, fears, imperfections, and yes even lapses in faith at times. So what?
Her lifetime of deeds speaks for itself. Who are Hitchen’s heros? Bill Klinton? Fidel Castro? Or some other degenerate who never thought of anyone or anything but themself? 
And I agree is was shameful for her letters to be published. What can be gained by providing fodder for the haters to exploit?
August 23, 2007 - 05:55 PM on August 23rd, 2007
2. Hitchens has written a book attacking Clinton called “No One Left To Lie To” and he’s been an outspoken critic of communism. He also initially supported the war in Iraq (though like most sane people, he’s reconsidered this position).
His attacks on Mother T. aren’t centered on her crises of faith; they’re centered on, e.g., her preaching that the use of condoms is a sin in countries where AIDS is an epidemic and her opposing women’s rights acts in the third world.
Maybe you should read one of his books before you fire something off.
August 23, 2007 - 06:08 PM on August 23rd, 2007
1- are you saying that aethism is a religion?
August 23, 2007 - 06:11 PM on August 23rd, 2007
2- Robert, there were letters/writings of Pope John Paul II’s that he had requested and granted that they never be made public..and they won’t be. I just think that it was wrong for them to publish against her wishes…
August 23, 2007 - 06:49 PM on August 23rd, 2007
hosten, have you really read his books? I mean did you really read them? I’m guessing not…
You are correct on his position of communism and Bubba, but that is about it..
August 23, 2007 - 10:18 PM on August 23rd, 2007
1- “are you saying that aethism is a religion?”
Absolutely not. Only religion is religion. Not prescribing to religion is not a religion. We leave that to you to kill, maim and injure more humans.
August 23, 2007 - 11:08 PM on August 23rd, 2007
TT you’ve apparently confused Christianity with Islam…
August 24, 2007 - 06:01 AM on August 24th, 2007
7- are you sure about it not being a religion? Court rules atheism a religion
Decides 1st Amendment protects prison inmate’s right to start study group
A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate’s rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion.
“Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being,” the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.
August 24, 2007 - 07:39 AM on August 24th, 2007
6. I have read his books, as well as his articles in the Nation. Though I often disagree with him, he’s actually a pretty funny guy. What reason have I given you to think that I haven’t read him? (Robert, on the other hand, was wrong from beginning to end.)
August 24, 2007 - 07:54 AM on August 24th, 2007
10 histen- if you had actually read the books, you would know that he is attacking her faith, attacking religion in general, and basically questioning her motives. She took money from shady characters, iho. She didn’t promote women’s rights..it wasn’t that she opposed them. She did much for the aids victims, set up homes, tried to convince people not to treat them as leapers. Hitchens took her stance, Church doctrine, to mean that she didn’t care for aids patients
August 24, 2007 - 08:02 AM on August 24th, 2007
10. Her stance, whether or not it’s Catholic doctrine, has the same worldly effects. If Hitchens simply attacked the Christian religion for being stupid (which he does in his recent book), the Mother T. book would have been a lot easier for people to ignore.
As for the comments about women’s rights: Because many of the issues that M.T. was ostensibly addressing related fairly directly to women’s rights, silence and non-engagement looked a lot like a tacit acceptance of the status quo.
Show me where I said that she treated AIDS victims like lepers.
August 24, 2007 - 10:29 AM on August 24th, 2007
No, I wasn’t wrong. Let’s take this point by point.
1. I said that MT was human after all, subject to human nature like the rest of us.
2. I questioned who Hitchens admired, if he didn’t think MT measured up to his standards.
3. I said imo it was wrong to publish her letters.
The first is a fact, the second is a question, the third is my opinion.
So what is wrong?
August 24, 2007 - 03:29 PM on August 24th, 2007
13.
1. You suggested that Hitchens’ criticisms were directed towards MT’s very human “doubts,” “fears” etc. They weren’t; they were directed towards what I (and peejz) described above. “Her lifetime of deeds” is precisely what is at issue in Hitchens’ text; you stated these deeds speak
for themselves. See the problem?
2. As to your “question” about Hitchens’ influences… If I were to write, “Who are Bush’s heroes? Hitler? Caligula? Or some other degenerate who never thought of anyone or anything but himself,” you’d be correct to note that I’m drawing a comparison between Bush and the other figures I mentioned. I pointed out that the comparison you outlined through your own “question” isn’t apt.
3. OK.
August 26, 2007 - 02:27 PM on August 26th, 2007
12- hosten, you didn’t..the world did and still does treat AIDS patients as leapers, her words, not yours…
MT was a Catholic Nun, therefore she lived her life according to the Catholic Church…Are you suggesting she should have abandoned that? What is it that she should have done for women, that she didn’t? I am curious.
August 27, 2007 - 07:52 AM on August 27th, 2007
“MT was a Catholic Nun, therefore she lived her life according to the Catholic Church:Are you suggesting she should have abandoned that?”
Yes, insofar as the Catholic Church (like all the great religions of the world) supports positions that are harmful and untrue. At the very least, she shouldn’t have been so happy to support dictators and wealthy criminals (though the Catholic church certainly has a proud record of doing so). See below.
“What is it that she should have done for women, that she didn’t? I am curious.”
In locales where women are treated as second-class citizens, MT was more interested in upholding the Catholic church’s archaic positions on birth control than on speaking out for equal rights.
Here are some other facts that Hitchens dug up: http://www.salon.com/sept97/news/news3.html
“In 1981 Mother Teresa journeyed to Haiti, to accept that nation’s highest award, the Legion d’Honneur. She received it from the Duvalier family, and made a glowing speech in which she said that dictator “Baby Doc” and his wife Michele not only loved the poor, but were loved by the poor in return.
In 1990 she made a trip to Albania, then the most oppressive of the Balkan Stalinist states, and laid a wreath on the grave of the dictator Enver Hoxha as well as on the irredentist monument to “Mother Albania”. She was herself of Albanian descent (born in Skopje, Macedonia), but many Albanians were shocked by her embrace of Hoxha’s widow and her silence on human rights.
In 1992 she intervened with a court in Los Angeles, which was about to sentence Charles Keating, the biggest fraud and embezzler in American history. His S & L racket stole a total of $252 million, mainly from small and poor depositors. A strong Catholic and right-wing campaigner against pornography in his spare time, Keating gave Mother Teresa $1,250,000 in cash and the use of a private jet, in return for which she gave him many useful endorsements, including a character reference to the court. The court had asked Mother Teresa to return Keating’s donations, which may well have been stolen, but she never replied to the request.”
The last is the most damning and has been a matter of public record for awhile.
August 27, 2007 - 08:56 AM on August 27th, 2007
16- Hosten, I’ll adress your points, but I would like to take this discussion away from Hitchen’s position and find out more about yours…I am very familiar with his work, and happen to be a fan, but I don’t always agree with him.
1. So her taking money from dictators for her order is the issue? I just want to be clear. IMO, she should not have accepted money from them. Did taking money from them help the greater massess? Probably, but at what/whos expence.
2. What geographic regions are you referring to where women are oppressed? Again, we are getting back to birth control and woman’s rights, but the point about her career seems to be lost here. Did MT seek out the press, or did the press seek her out? MT was not a spokesperson for b.c. or woman’s rights, it was never in her calling. It was others that felt she should have done these things, because she had the attention of the world. She didn’t capture our attention because she denounced her faith, on the contrary, it was her faith that drew us to her.
3. Keating/money..doesn’t that go back to the first point, or are you pointing out a sin? She was a human with sin.