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Mother Teresa's crisis of faith

Sahara

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Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith - Yahoo! News

By DAVID VAN BIEMA
Thu Aug 23, 12:05 PM ET



Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.
- Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979


On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the "Saint of the Gutters," went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. "It is not enough for us to say, 'I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,'" she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had "[made] himself the hungry one - the naked one - the homeless one." Jesus' hunger, she said, is what "you and I must find" and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world "that radiating joy is real" because Christ is everywhere - "Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive."


Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, - Listen and do not hear - the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me - that I let Him have [a] free hand."


The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction - that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.


And in fact, that appears to be the case. A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever - or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."


That absence seems to have started at almost precisely the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and - except for a five-week break in 1959 - never abated. Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God - tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'" Says the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and the author of My Life with the Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa's doubts: "I've never read a saint's life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented." Recalls Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light's editor: "I read one letter to the Sisters [of Teresa's Missionaries of Charity], and their mouths just dropped open. It will give a whole new dimension to the way people understand her."


The book is hardly the work of some antireligious investigative reporter who Dumpster-dived for Teresa's correspondence. Kolodiejchuk, a senior Missionaries of Charity member, is her postulator, responsible for petitioning for her sainthood and collecting the supporting materials. (Thus far she has been beatified; the next step is canonization.) The letters in the book were gathered as part of that process.


The church anticipates spiritually fallow periods. Indeed, the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross in the 16th century coined the term the "dark night" of the soul to describe a characteristic stage in the growth of some spiritual masters. Teresa's may be the most extensive such case on record. (The "dark night" of the 18th century mystic St. Paul of the Cross lasted 45 years; he ultimately recovered.) Yet Kolodiejchuk sees it in St. John's context, as darkness within faith. Teresa found ways, starting in the early 1960s, to live with it and abandoned neither her belief nor her work. Kolodiejchuk produced the book as proof of the faith-filled perseverance that he sees as her most spiritually heroic act.


Two very different Catholics predict that the book will be a landmark. The Rev. Matthew Lamb, chairman of the theology department at the conservative Ave Maria University in Florida, thinks Come Be My Light will eventually rank with St. Augustine's Confessions and Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain as an autobiography of spiritual ascent. Martin of America, a much more liberal institution, calls the book "a new ministry for Mother Teresa, a written ministry of her interior life," and says, "It may be remembered as just as important as her ministry to the poor. It would be a ministry to people who had experienced some doubt, some absence of God in their lives. And you know who that is? Everybody. Atheists, doubters, seekers, believers, everyone."


Not all atheists and doubters will agree. Both Kolodiejchuk and Martin assume that Teresa's inability to perceive Christ in her life did not mean he wasn't there. In fact, they see his absence as part of the divine gift that enabled her to do great work. But to the U.S.'s increasingly assertive cadre of atheists, that argument will seem absurd. They will see the book's Teresa more like the woman in the archetypal country-and-western song who holds a torch for her husband 30 years after he left to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returned. 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.



<<<<Snipped, read rest at above link>>>>

Wow, I am suprised she kept on going, I couldn't do it.

Might explain this though:

Christopher Hitchens Interview
The Final Verdict
'+'

If she didn't actually have as much faith as was originally thought, or constantly shown, then being corrupt wouldn't be that much of an issue.

Interesting morning read.
 

Sahara

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Thinking about it, the article says that her loss of faith happpened after she went to calcutta, could her loss of it have been more to do with realising the corruption she had to accept as part of organised religion?

Having maybe not spoken out, or having gone along with the vanishing money, do you think she then felt she recieved no personal communication/feeling from jesus or god, feeling not worthy of it and eaten up with guilt?

The idea of this all is really suprising to me, as she was one of the figures who made accepting certain parts of islam hard, ie the belief that any non muslim was destined for hell, then I would inevitably ask "But what about mother Teresa", who I was sure I could hold up as a good moral example of a non muslims in a way that muslims understand morality.:(

I can understand minor shakes of faith, but the article said she struggled with this for just over 50yrs, which is a very long time and hard for me to wrap my mind around. Yet she continued to wear this mask of pure belief.
 

ygolo

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I don't know what to make of it.

Isn't it Saint Teresa now?

My understanding is that many of the great leaders and spirtual people were accused of similar displays (Washington, Lincoln, King, Ghandi, and even Buddha) of being image consious. "Corrupt" seems strong.

But it wouldn't surprise me if any of them were a bit calculating towards their image, and secretive about their doubts and fears (maybe that's how they become famous).
 

Sahara

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I don't know what to make of it.

Isn't it Saint Teresa now?

My understanding is that many of the great leaders and spirtual people were accused of similar displays (Washington, Lincoln, King, Ghandi, and even Buddha) of being image consious. "Corrupt" seems strong.

But it wouldn't surprise me if any of them were a bit calculating towards their image, and secretive about their doubts and fears (maybe that's how they become famous).


I'm using the word corrupt more in regards to the missing millions? :shock:

Honestly though my amazement is more to do with her having felt no real faith in over 50yrs, and yet still maintaining a public charade to having it. I am just curious about wether her loss may have coincided with her appointment to calcutta and watching money not being used for the right things etc. Was she involved, is her loss of faith to do with guilt, stuff like that.
 
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I read the article you linked to and I must admit I found it very disappointing and disturbing until I remembered it was Hitchens that wrote it.

As for Mother Teresa's crisis of faith, I am surprised by it but not necessarily troubled by it. I think any person that has dedicated the whole of themselves to an idea or a cause doubts themselves at times. Hell, even Jesus had his 40days in the desert.
 

Sahara

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I read the article you linked to and I must admit I found it very disappointing and disturbing until I remembered it was Hitchens that wrote it.

Only one of the links was Hitchens.

As for Mother Teresa's crisis of faith, I am surprised by it but not necessarily troubled by it. I think any person that has dedicated the whole of themselves to an idea or a cause doubts themselves at times. Hell, even Jesus had his 40days in the desert.

Yes, but we are talking over 50yrs here, that's a long time.

Where did the millions go that were raised by and in her name? (genuinely curious here, no offence meant)
 

ygolo

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I'm using the word corrupt more in regards to the missing millions? :shock:

Honestly though my amazement is more to do with her having felt no real faith in over 50yrs, and yet still maintaining a public charade to having it. I am just curious about wether her loss may have coincided with her appointment to calcutta and watching money not being used for the right things etc. Was she involved, is her loss of faith to do with guilt, stuff like that.

It's late for me, I should be asleep, but I have insomnia. I missed the other links.

If the allegations prove true. That would be quite a blow to her sainthood, and the process the Church uses to name saints.

About her letters of doubt....

Not all atheists and doubters will agree. Both Kolodiejchuk and Martin assume that Teresa's inability to perceive Christ in her life did not mean he wasn't there. In fact, they see his absence as part of the divine gift that enabled her to do great work. But to the U.S.'s increasingly assertive cadre of atheists, that argument will seem absurd. They will see the book's Teresa more like the woman in the archetypal country-and-western song who holds a torch for her husband 30 years after he left to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returned

Not sure she was devoid of faith, though.

I'm not Christian, but every person of faith that I know well (in any religion) has had at least one crisis in faith, if not several.

Not also in one of her letters she asks for prayers for God to restore her faith (which would indicate a form of faith also).

But, this is way too deep for me to think about right now.
 

Sahara

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Guess I go with the athiest perspective as to what it means, but I can see where it is explainable to those who have faith.:)

See I had a crisis of faith, I prayed for it to return, it didn't, I left, 50yrs would be such a long time for me to still feel unsure about something. (thats me though, I didn;t realise such a high figure when it comes to piety and dedication could be so unsure, breaking apart yet another preconcieved notion of mine lol)
 

Sahara

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I just read that thread, and it touches on what kept her going. But I had pretty much wrapped my own head around before the thread.

I am now curious how she could reconcile living according to the tenets, yet took donations that were not being put to proper uses, and wanted to hear any other responses about that part too.

I haven't made up my mind on anything (as to the money, I am just working on that theory but counter explanations would be very welcome), I hadn't when I posted this story, I like hearing responses, other peoples views, what sources they use etc, before making up my mind.

So far the only person who has made a comment about the 3 bottom links in regards to the money accusations has been Ygolo.
 
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I'm not so certain that Teresa's condition was so much a lack of faith as just the symptoms of chronic clinical depression. In fact, the case could very well be made that, because she continued to live according to the requirements of her faith, she never lost it at all.

If a doctor comes to hate people and yet continues to heal them, he hasn't quit being a doctor. Likewise, if Mother Teresa stopped feeling the presence of her God and yet continued to pray and to serve, she never quit being faithful.

I think her actions speak louder than her words.
 

Totenkindly

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Actually, I found the revelation encouraging.

It doesn't mean God is necessarily dead. It doesn't mean he exists either.

But what it tells me is that the emptiness that I am feeling in regards to God doesn't necessarily mean I'm unspiritual or unloving. If Mother Teresa, who was able to give so much for so long, often felt so empty and wondered where God's presence was, then it's possible for my life to have value and be that sacrificial as well. I might actually be "on the right track."

I don't think her faith was dead at all, or that she was living a charade. I think it takes great courage to accept and question the emptiness, yet choose to live like there's something more.... and I mean truly live, not preach. She wasn't one who stood around and pointed fingers and tried to proselytize (i.e., the proliferation of religious ideas), she spent her time ministering.
 

Sahara

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If a doctor comes to hate people and yet continues to heal them, he hasn't quit being a doctor. Likewise, if Mother Teresa stopped feeling the presence of her God and yet continued to pray and to serve, she never quit being faithful.

I like the way you put that, it's like the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place after reading it. :)

I think her actions speak louder than her words.

That's part of what I am trying to ascertain too though.

Actually, I found the revelation encouraging.

It doesn't mean God is necessarily dead. It doesn't mean he exists either.

But what it tells me is that the emptiness that I am feeling in regards to God doesn't necessarily mean I'm unspiritual or unloving. If Mother Teresa, who was able to give so much for so long, often felt so empty and wondered where God's presence was, then it's possible for my life to have value and be that sacrificial as well. I might actually be "on the right track."

I don't think her faith was dead at all, or that she was living a charade. I think it takes great courage to accept and question the emptiness, yet choose to live like there's something more.... and I mean truly live, not preach. She wasn't one who stood around and pointed fingers and tried to proselytize (i.e., the proliferation of religious ideas), she spent her time ministering.


I can see it that way too now, really I posted it with my initial thoughts still raw, and input or feedback helps my thoughts further develop.

What I want to know now really is about the last 3 links, with them swimming around in my mind, it's hard to judge her by her actions completely.
 

Totenkindly

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The links are interesting. I haven't read the Hutchins one yet. It is worth more exploration, except for this very basic question:

If the nuns were taking so much money and not using it for its intended purposes, where did it go? Usually in cases where religious figures are accused of this sort of impropriety, they are living lavishly off their contributors; but Mother Teresa certainly wasn't taking advantage of the money. Where did it go? And what would her motivations be, if she wasn't using the money herself?

I had always considered her an ISFJ type; and at first cursory glance, her life and the criticisms leveled at her would support that. Lots of hands-on relational compassion, but a lack of real Ne, understanding how she could be perceived, a sort of "rose-colored" naivety in some areas of her life and over-frugalness/rigidity in others.

If these tales are true, it's quite possible that others were taking advantage of her financially, while she was doing her thing.
 

Sahara

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If these tales are true, it's quite possible that others were taking advantage of her financially, while she was doing her thing.


True, guess I was making a connection between her "faith" taking a turn for the worst possibly coinciding with the point where people began taking advantage, and maybe the cracks appeared then. This is me trying to fill in blanks of my own lol and maybe getting it wrong along the way. :)

Have to wait and see if any investigations come up with anything.
 
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I just read that thread, and it touches on what kept her going. But I had pretty much wrapped my own head around before the thread.

I am now curious how she could reconcile living according to the tenets, yet took donations that were not being put to proper uses, and wanted to hear any other responses about that part too.

I haven't made up my mind on anything (as to the money, I am just working on that theory but counter explanations would be very welcome), I hadn't when I posted this story, I like hearing responses, other peoples views, what sources they use etc, before making up my mind.

So far the only person who has made a comment about the 3 bottom links in regards to the money accusations has been Ygolo.

As for the money allegations, the articles were not specific about amounts donated and amounts spent...most of it was conjecture based on the testimony of a very few people. Still, I'll grant that there was enough smoke to indicate a fire. I agree with Jennifer that most religious figures accused of fleecing the flock live high on the hog, while Mother Teresa clearly didn't. One possiblility that wasn't mentioned was an endowment situation. I find this entirely plausible and even likely. Colleges have millions and millions stashed away that they don't touch. They use the interest and thus have a steady stream of funds. Mother Teresa's organization could have just been planning long term for a future in which they would be solvent. When funds donated don't immediately turn into tangible relief, embezzlement is a natural reaction, but is far from the only explanation.
 

The_Liquid_Laser

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There are lots of ways to classify religion and faith, but one useful way that I have seen done before is the following: There are essentially four ways that either an individual or a group acts upon their faith. Each person and religion has some manifestation of each of these four, but it is easy to see that certain people and denominations have their preferences.

1) The first category is knowledge: People who act upon their faith by knowing God through scriptures and various doctines.
2) The second category is personal morality: People who act upon their faith by continually refining their personal character and doing what they believe is the moral thing.
3) The third category is activism: People who act upon their faith by doing positive things in the community or to make a difference in the world through concrete actions.
4) The forth category is mysticism: People who act upon their faith through meditation and contemplating the mysteries of God.

The above is a classification that I have learned is used in theological circles. The following is my own analysis:

If you look carefully at the four categories you will notice that each one corresponds to one of the MBTI judging functions. Respectively

1) Ti
2) Fi
3) Te
4) Fe

As I've said before each person approaches their faith in each of the four ways, but each person also has obvious preferences. Likewise each person uses all of the MBTI functions, but each person has obvious preferences.

In the case of Mother Teresa, I believe she was some type of FJ (probably ISFJ or maybe INFJ). I also believe that the primary way for her to act upon her faith was to ponder the mysterious aspects of God. In one interview, the interviewer asked her, "What do you say when you pray to God." She replied, "Nothing I just listen." "What does God say to you" asked the interviewer. "Nothing, He's listening too" she replied. :)

A person using Fe naturally seeks to know more about the people that are close to them. When that "person" is God Fe tends to focus on the parts of God that are mysterious in order to understand the mystery. If a person focuses on the mystery for too long, then they can begin to doubt their faith. (Or at least that is how it feels to the person.) My wife ladypinkington, an INFJ, often talks about the spiritual things that she is uncertain about and she wonders if her faith is weak. Of course when she as around someone who truly does not believe she suddenly realizes that she has quite a bit of faith. It's her constant pondering of the mysteries that makes her feel uncertain.

So in the case of Mother Teresa I believe that she was such a pious woman, and that she contemplated the mysterious of God for so long that all she could see was the parts that she did not know and probably could not ever know. Did this mean that she was actually a woman who seriously doubted her faith? No, I don't think so. Because I believe that the parts of God that she was certain about lead her to have compassion on the people she helped in India. Her faith explains her actions. But at the same time I believe that all of the "not knowing" was painful for her. So that is how I explain the apparent contradiction. :)
 

ladypinkington

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There are lots of ways to classify religion and faith, but one useful way that I have seen done before is the following: There are essentially four ways that either an individual or a group acts upon their faith. Each person and religion has some manifestation of each of these four, but it is easy to see that certain people and denominations have their preferences.

1) The first category is knowledge: People who act upon their faith by knowing God through scriptures and various doctines.
2) The second category is personal morality: People who act upon their faith by continually refining their personal character and doing what they believe is the moral thing.
3) The third category is activism: People who act upon their faith by doing positive things in the community or to make a difference in the world through concrete actions.
4) The forth category is mysticism: People who act upon their faith through meditation and contemplating the mysteries of God.

The above is a classification that I have learned is used in theological circles. The following is my own analysis:

If you look carefully at the four categories you will notice that each one corresponds to one of the MBTI judging functions. Respectively

1) Ti
2) Fi
3) Te
4) Fe

As I've said before each person approaches their faith in each of the four ways, but each person also has obvious preferences. Likewise each person uses all of the MBTI functions, but each person has obvious preferences.

In the case of Mother Teresa, I believe she was some type of FJ (probably ISFJ or maybe INFJ). I also believe that the primary way for her to act upon her faith was to ponder the mysterious aspects of God. In one interview, the interviewer asked her, "What do you say when you pray to God." She replied, "Nothing I just listen." "What does God say to you" asked the interviewer. "Nothing, He's listening too" she replied. :)

A person using Fe naturally seeks to know more about the people that are close to them. When that "person" is God Fe tends to focus on the parts of God that are mysterious in order to understand the mystery. If a person focuses on the mystery for too long, then they can begin to doubt their faith. (Or at least that is how it feels to the person.) My wife ladypinkington, an INFJ, often talks about the spiritual things that she is uncertain about and she wonders if her faith is weak. Of course when she as around someone who truly does not believe she suddenly realizes that she has quite a bit of faith. It's her constant pondering of the mysteries that makes her feel uncertain.

So in the case of Mother Teresa I believe that she was such a pious woman, and that she contemplated the mysterious of God for so long that all she could see was the parts that she did not know and probably could not ever know. Did this mean that she was actually a woman who seriously doubted her faith? No, I don't think so. Because I believe that the parts of God that she was certain about lead her to have compassion on the people she helped in India. Her faith explains her actions. But at the same time I believe that all of the "not knowing" was painful for her. So that is how I explain the apparent contradiction. :)

Wow, you never cease to amaze me, well put and explained. And you have me completely pegged by the way. I can absolutely relate to the things you were saying about Mother Teresa in the not knowings being the difficulty and hardest part to deal with but it not being a faith debilitating factor. And it's like you said, I always feel like my faith is weak and I question things and am so inquisitive about all the unknowns and mysteries but when I am around people with no faith I realize just how much faith I really do have which is quite strong actually. I am not even aware of it because I am so busy and absorbed in the ponderings and the questions and the uneasiness that is for me especially since I like having closure and definates and the unknown is so uncomfortable and scary to me but when there is call for action and living life in making choices, and when I am around those with no faith my faith comes out for me to see and suddenly the things that I do know for sure trump anything I don't know- any insecuritues are trumped by the securities, fear is trumped by trust and well...faith. I question and ponder but it doesn't debilitate my faith- it is simply part of the experience of it- the ups and downs- the hard and easy.
 
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