Very few people in this universe ever took Mother Teresa and her legend on except Christopher Hitchens. Mr. Hitchens views himself as an anti-theist and, over the years, he found Mother Teresa, in his perception, to be less than real.
He recently wrote an article in Newsweek that is pretty darned interesting. In a major departure he almost seems to be sympathetic towards her rather than attacking her with the ferocity that he did before. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20497111/site/newsweek/
Some things have become painfully obvious in reading about her, her letters, and such. She had become a very tortured soul. We can debate as to why she had become such a tortured soul, if it was the foundation of a remarkably deep spirituality, or grievous depression.
Her life had a radical transition. She had grown up and joined the convent. She felt God was calling her into a new ministry and through her persistence she founded her own religious order, the Missionaries of Charity. Their ministry was to work with the poorest of the poor, the most wretched people in society. It was and is a religious order of women who take vows of profound poverty, chastity, and obedience. This order and their ministry was her dream and her dream was fulfilled.
The problem became, however, upon accomplishing the dream and actually doing it, practicing the spirituality that she desired and doing the work that she wanted to do, Mother Teresa moved into a long, life-long period of great spiritual darkness. Her life became one of profound pain and the feeling of abandonment of God.
Hitchens, who ever much liked her, seems to indicate some sympathy for her. His theory is that her time of spiritual darkness did not come despite her practices but because of her practices. His argument, not mine.
What he points out, and is true of her, is that she became and was very, very dogmatic. She was adamantly opposed to divorce, birth control, and abortion and spoke often about these three subjects. It seemed that the more miserable she became personally, the more vehement she became in preaching on these topics most especially.
What I find to be ironic is that the Roman Catholic Church ethical teachings on these subjects as, to be kind, suspect in the first place.
The Roman Catholic rules on divorce are less about divorce and remarriage. The annulment process in Roman Catholicism attempts to reconcile divorced (and remarried) folks to the good graces of the Roman Catholic Church by demonstrating that spiritually the marriage did not take place. The problem, of course, is that people do marry in good faith and things do happen, and go wrong. Many Protestant Churches are filled with former Roman Catholics who were divorced and remarried only to find themselves banned from Sacraments. It is, in my opinion, a pretty ugly discipline.
The Roman Catholic teachings on contraception and birth control are, frankly, based on medieval 'science' and are totally irresponsible in this day and age. Additionally, they are written about mostly by people who have never been married and are basing their perceptions of marriage on their parents' marriage. (Like anyone really knows....)
Abortion, most everyone knows, is forbidden by Roman Catholicism. What many people do not realize is that it is forbidden in all times and circumstances. What this means is that if a woman's life is in peril she is ethically forbidden to have an abortion. At least officially.
Why it is that Mother Teresa focused her attention on these issues is baffling....at least to me.
Hitchens blames the Roman Catholic Church ultimately in exploiting her. He ends his article in a fierce but almost poignant matter when he writes:
I say it as calmly as I can—the Church should have had the elementary decency to let the earth lie lightly on this troubled and miserable lady, and not to invoke her long anguish to recruit the credulous to a blind faith in which she herself had long ceased to believe.
A couple of things to strike me.
First, it hits me that the whole idea of naming people 'saints' is absurd. From a universal perspective of Christianity a 'saint' is a person in Heaven with God. When we sing hymns about the saints they are not hymns to the people 'named' saints but to everyone we believe has died and gone to be with God. A person's spiritual journey, ups and downs, etc., ought not be debated or put up for scrutiny or, frankly, even honored. People who live holy lives, it would appear, are strictly doing what God would have wanted them to do. Nothing more, nothing less. No honors are necessary for doing what one ought to do in the first place.
Secondly, I do agree with Hitchens on the point that Roman Catholicism did use this woman. She was exploited. She was willingly exploited and did 'her thing' world wide, but she was promoted as the 'ultimate Roman Catholic' the 'ultimate Christian.' Her interior life and what was promoted, did not match.
Thirdly, and I say this most seriously, when we see a person become so fanatical about almost petty doctrines without seeing or investigating beyond what they see or believe, we are usually witnessing a person out of touch and often a person suffering from something like depression. One of the symptoms of depression is that depressed people have a difficult time concentrating and because they have a difficult time concentrating any complexity of thinking is thrown out the window. They simply cannot handle it. I say this not as an ethical indictment, but a statement of great empathy for people who suffer from this.
The life of Mother Teresa was, to say the least, profound. She did a great deal of good for a great many people and offered compassion to God's most wretched of people. And she wrestled with her faith in a profound way.
There is that lingering question. Was she a confused and miserable old lady; or a saint?
Maybe that's not our's to answer.
No comments:
Post a Comment