Mother Teresa"s Sadness
When I was in graduate school at Rutgers University, one of my professors handed out copies of an article called "The Ghoul of Calcutta" about Mother Teresa.
The article was written by Christopher Hitchens who has been called an anti-catholic crusader as well as a mouthpiece for left wing politics.
That was in 1992, and until a few days ago, I'd forgotten all about the article and about its criticism of Mother Teresa.
However, Sunday a friend handed me a short article about Mother Teresa and the publication of her personal letters in which she described her depression, her spiritual struggles and her conclusion that there may be no God.
She had lost faith, according to her own words.
The article reflected on the five years since the publication of Teresa's once confidential letters and highlighted the theories that people who admire her have offered in her defense.
I myself find it difficult to criticize Mother Teresa.
One book I read about her when I was a child described the first home for the dying she developed in Calcutta in 1952.
The city allowed her to use a deserted Hindu temple, and Teresa's goal became to allow the dying to die with dignity.
Her philosophy allowed people of different religions to practice the rituals of their own faith: her sisters read the Quran to the Muslim people, Hindus were washed in water from the Ganges, and the Last Rites were given to Catholics.
This practice seems to demonstrate respect for people who walk different paths to God.
One of the criticisms of Mother Teresa and the Sisters of Charity was that, although she offered people the opportunity to die with dignity, she didn't offer them potentially lifesaving medical treatment.
Another criticism was that Mother Teresa discouraged her sisters from receiving medical training to better assist the ill.
Although I understand these criticisms, I think people need to take a holistic view of Teresa in order to understand her and her objectives.
Mother Teresa was born in what is now Macedonia in 1910; her father was a politician who was assassinated in 1919 when she was 8.
The Russian Revolution had occurred in 1917 and the entire area, including Macedonia, was undergoing massive political and social change.
She grew up in a time when life meant less than ideology, and death was preferable to life without hope.
By age 12, she wanted to dedicate her life to the poor, and by 18 had left home never to see her mother or siblings again.
When Teresa got to Calcutta, she met people who lived in the most horrific conditions and who were dying of painful and degenerative diseases in the streets.
She described one person in her Nobel Peace Prize speech, saying, "I did for her all that my love can do.
I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face.
She took hold of my hand, as she said one word only: Thank you--and she died.
" In that same speech, she described a man she'd helped, "...
that man whom we picked up from the drain, half eaten with worms, and we brought him to the home.
I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.
" I think Teresa saw people whose lives had offered them nothing and for whom death would have been a relief.
I guess I understand this because someone in my own family who I loved very much had lung cancer.
He was dying and had declined further treatment.
He felt that leaving this world would be preferable to living in pain and without hope.
Human beings are products of their cultures and their generations; for that reason I understand that Teresa clung tightly to many 19th Century ideas.
Although I don't agree with some of Teresa's beliefs, I do understand that once internalized, our visions of the world are difficult to set aside.
At the time when she grew up in Europe, Eschatology or the Christian passion for the ecstasy of heaven and the dismissal of all the pain of suffering of this world was consoling and uplifting.
No wonder Blessed Teresa believed dying with dignity was preferable to life in despair.
But getting back to Teresa's depression, some people attribute her despair to clinical, chemical depression to which she was genetically predisposed.
Some say she was suffering from extreme, extended exhaustion that mimicked the symptoms of spiritual despair and blocked her ability to reach out to God in prayer.
The theological explanation is that Blessed Teresa was on a journey through the Dark Night of the Soul as illustrated by John of the Cross that involves the disintegration of all our human concepts of God in order to develop a greater union with God: she lost her ability to pray as the rest of us do because she was preparing to experience a true blending with God.
Whatever the reason for her despair, she was certainly the vehicle for human compassion.
Further, how could anyone, even a potential saint, live in the midst of so much agony and despondency and filth and disregard for life and so much disdain for humanity without feeling a loss of faith or the exhaustion of the human soul.
I don't blame Mother Teresa; she may someday be Saint Teresa of Calcutta, but she was still only human.
The article was written by Christopher Hitchens who has been called an anti-catholic crusader as well as a mouthpiece for left wing politics.
That was in 1992, and until a few days ago, I'd forgotten all about the article and about its criticism of Mother Teresa.
However, Sunday a friend handed me a short article about Mother Teresa and the publication of her personal letters in which she described her depression, her spiritual struggles and her conclusion that there may be no God.
She had lost faith, according to her own words.
The article reflected on the five years since the publication of Teresa's once confidential letters and highlighted the theories that people who admire her have offered in her defense.
I myself find it difficult to criticize Mother Teresa.
One book I read about her when I was a child described the first home for the dying she developed in Calcutta in 1952.
The city allowed her to use a deserted Hindu temple, and Teresa's goal became to allow the dying to die with dignity.
Her philosophy allowed people of different religions to practice the rituals of their own faith: her sisters read the Quran to the Muslim people, Hindus were washed in water from the Ganges, and the Last Rites were given to Catholics.
This practice seems to demonstrate respect for people who walk different paths to God.
One of the criticisms of Mother Teresa and the Sisters of Charity was that, although she offered people the opportunity to die with dignity, she didn't offer them potentially lifesaving medical treatment.
Another criticism was that Mother Teresa discouraged her sisters from receiving medical training to better assist the ill.
Although I understand these criticisms, I think people need to take a holistic view of Teresa in order to understand her and her objectives.
Mother Teresa was born in what is now Macedonia in 1910; her father was a politician who was assassinated in 1919 when she was 8.
The Russian Revolution had occurred in 1917 and the entire area, including Macedonia, was undergoing massive political and social change.
She grew up in a time when life meant less than ideology, and death was preferable to life without hope.
By age 12, she wanted to dedicate her life to the poor, and by 18 had left home never to see her mother or siblings again.
When Teresa got to Calcutta, she met people who lived in the most horrific conditions and who were dying of painful and degenerative diseases in the streets.
She described one person in her Nobel Peace Prize speech, saying, "I did for her all that my love can do.
I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face.
She took hold of my hand, as she said one word only: Thank you--and she died.
" In that same speech, she described a man she'd helped, "...
that man whom we picked up from the drain, half eaten with worms, and we brought him to the home.
I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.
" I think Teresa saw people whose lives had offered them nothing and for whom death would have been a relief.
I guess I understand this because someone in my own family who I loved very much had lung cancer.
He was dying and had declined further treatment.
He felt that leaving this world would be preferable to living in pain and without hope.
Human beings are products of their cultures and their generations; for that reason I understand that Teresa clung tightly to many 19th Century ideas.
Although I don't agree with some of Teresa's beliefs, I do understand that once internalized, our visions of the world are difficult to set aside.
At the time when she grew up in Europe, Eschatology or the Christian passion for the ecstasy of heaven and the dismissal of all the pain of suffering of this world was consoling and uplifting.
No wonder Blessed Teresa believed dying with dignity was preferable to life in despair.
But getting back to Teresa's depression, some people attribute her despair to clinical, chemical depression to which she was genetically predisposed.
Some say she was suffering from extreme, extended exhaustion that mimicked the symptoms of spiritual despair and blocked her ability to reach out to God in prayer.
The theological explanation is that Blessed Teresa was on a journey through the Dark Night of the Soul as illustrated by John of the Cross that involves the disintegration of all our human concepts of God in order to develop a greater union with God: she lost her ability to pray as the rest of us do because she was preparing to experience a true blending with God.
Whatever the reason for her despair, she was certainly the vehicle for human compassion.
Further, how could anyone, even a potential saint, live in the midst of so much agony and despondency and filth and disregard for life and so much disdain for humanity without feeling a loss of faith or the exhaustion of the human soul.
I don't blame Mother Teresa; she may someday be Saint Teresa of Calcutta, but she was still only human.
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