Should Mother Teresa Be Canonised Even If She Died An Atheist?

Question

Calcutta's archbishop Lucas Sirkar announced yesterday that he anticipated that Mother Teresa 'would soon be pronounced a saint'.

However, recently released personal letters indicate that at her death she had formed serious doubts about her catholic faith, bordering on atheism.

Should her canonisation be completed even if it turns out that she died an atheist?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6979228.stm

Answer 1

Stop the lies. She was a Christian. She did everything in the Mighty Name of Jesus. She was a True Christian. She may have had doubts but every Christian may from time to time - but they are still saved.

Answer 2

Nowhere in the article does it even hint that her doubts were so serious that they bordered on atheism. You're adding to the seriousness of those doubts on your own.

She did more for the world than you or I did or will do. I have no problem with the Catholic church cononising her as a saint. The only quote re: doubt that I've actually read anywhere so far is that she couldn't feel the presence of God any longer. Maybe it's because he was calling her home to be in his presence there. We'll never know.

And any Christian who has never had doubts is either lying or hasn't lived long enough to have any hard life experiences yet.

Answer 3

I read an article a few months ago re Mother Teresa's orphanages - and I was shocked. There were reports of theft, children being abused (physically) and starved - a whole catalogue of stuff that wasn't known before she died. If you believe this article - and I didn't have any reason NOT to - she should be demonised never mind canonised. Saint she ain't.

I'll check google, etc - see if I can find the article. Doubt it cos it was a magazine - and I can't remember which one! I just picked it up in the surgery or something.

Answer 4

Her doubts are part of the "dark night of the soul' experienced by many of the faithful, including saints. This term was coined by Saint John of the Cross. It was experienced by Saint Therese of Lisieux and Saint Paul of the Cross. St Therese of LIesieux is said to have told God, "If this is how you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few of them." It is hard to describe perhaps, but it results from being more fully open to the Truth of God, a fuller acceptance of reality and its conficts, and can be really scary.
Mother Teresa remained faithful despite her pain. The fact that she persevered in the face of spiritual trials is in her favor rather than against her in the process of canonization.

Answer 5

I love inflammatory questions like this, so let me add a little fuel to the fire.

Emperor Constantine (One of the Canonized founders of the Catholic Faith) was a Pagan and worshiped a Sun God.

Many of the Saints that were canonized after their deaths were not Catholics, nor even Christians.

These are proven and verifiable statements if people would be willing to look beyond what their religion teaches. I personally think She'll be canonized, and the world will be all the better for it. Screw the scandal.

Answer 6

Sr Nirmala,one of Mother Teresa's best friends and confidants,said'"Mother did not doubt God;she continued to love Him.If you doubt someone sooner or later you stop following Him,but she continued right up to her death and to put into practice her devotion'(quoted in La Repubblica)

M teresa was no atheist but a "victim soul' who lived the Dark Night of the Soul", feeling abandoned by God, yet responding with ever greater acts of faith,hope and love.

Answer 7

She was NEVER an atheist or agnostic, merely struggled with doubt, exerpts from an article:

"The “feeling of not having any faith” is painful because it is an authentic purgation, during which “faith is really particularly strong all the time,” and one is being brought into closer union with the suffering Christ.

This was exactly the way Mother Teresa learned to deal with her trial of faith: by converting her feeling of abandonment by God into an act of abandonment to God. It would be her Gethsemane, she came to believe, and her participation in the thirst Jesus suffered on the Cross. And it gave her access to the deepest poverty of the modern world: the poverty of meaninglessness and loneliness. To endure this trial of faith would be to bear witness to the fidelity for which the world is starving. “Keep smiling,” Mother Teresa used to tell her community and guests, and somehow, coming from her, it doesn’t seem trite. For when she kept smiling during her night of faith, it was not a cover-up but a manifestation of her loving resolve to be “an apostle of joy.”

One can better understand, having read The Soul of Mother Teresa, why she insisted that adoration of Christ present in the Blessed Sacrament should occupy the center of the Missionaries’ daily work; and why she felt it imperative to establish purely contemplative communities that would make the Missionaries of Charity an order of adoration as well as apostolic service. Adoring Christ in the Sacrament is also a way of dark knowing and dark loving. To all appearances he is absent, as Aquinas says in the Tantum ergo Sacramentum, so faith must supply what is lacking to our feeble senses. Humanly, there were times when Mother Teresa felt burnt out, but faith supplied what was lacking even to troubled faith; spiritually she was often desolate, but her vow endured and her visible radiance—to which everyone attests—was undiminished. This lifelong fidelity should not be confused with a Stoic determination to keep going in the face of defeat. It was something else entirely: objective Christian joy."

Answer 8

Mother Teresa was not an atheist. Ten years after her death, a new book of Mother Teresa's personal letters illustrates a profound and private spiritual struggle— much of it unknown to the world that would come to embrace her as a living saint.

Teresa's belief in God never wavered—just her feeling of connection to Jesus, especially after her intense mystical experiences.

It's one thing to feel that God is not with you, like Mother Teresa felt many times. It's another thing to believe that God doesn't exist. Whether it be an average Christian or a saint, doubts on the existence of God and turmoil over the inability to feel His presence is something every Christian has wrestled with.

A letter to Archbishop Ferdinand Perier in 1953, according to TIME, read: "Please pray specially for me that I may not spoil His work and that Our Lord may show Himself — for there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started 'the work.'"

Another letter in 1956 read: “Such deep longing for God – and…repulsed – empty – no faith – no love – no zeal. – [The saving of] Souls holds no attraction – Heaven means nothing – pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything.”

Mother Teresa also painfully shared her inability to pray saying she just “utter words” of Community prayers– a confession that came from a woman who once said the Christmas holiday should remind the world “that radiating joy is real” because Christ is everywhere.

Yet despite the “pain and darkness” in her soul, Mother Teresa served tirelessly among the outcasts, the dying and the most abject poor in India. She brought countless sick Indians to her center from slums and gutters to be treated and cared for under the banner of Christ’s love.

“The very essence of faith, you see, is believing even in the absence of evidence,” said Chuck Colson, founder and chairman of Prison Fellowship, in a column Wednesday in response to the TIME article. “And it is the only way we can know Christ.

Answer 9

She was not an atheist by any stretch of imagination.

She was surrounded by death and sickness anywhere she looked. Even, the most fervent Christian can have moments of desperation and looking for answers/doubting faith etc.

There is aboslutely nothing abnormal about what she did. More than anything, it goes to show how grounded and sincere she was. Why can't people leave dead people alone?

Answer 10

Staggerlee, where are YOU getting this slanderous information from about Mother Teresa??? This woman devoted her LIFE to the poorest OF the poor, ate one meal a day in old age, worked 17 hrs a day, in old age; and her Missionary of Charity order of nuns, in SF stripped the convent bare of carpet used only cold water, to emulate the suffering of those they tended to. She wanted NOTHING of this world, nor any glory. You evil do-er trolls who would trash such a saintly woman are nothing but trouble making sicko's. She only wanted to do Christs' work and she did just that. Having DOUBTS is HUMAN. We all have DOUBTS. Hardly, a sin to question or doubt matters in our lives. I SAW her in person, and someone so tiny old and frail, worked that tirelessly dispite Drs telling her to eat more, and slow down. She brought moving tears to my eyes.

Answer 11

Sheesh, it seems there is no end to the fabrications about Mother Theresa. Next they'll be saying should she be considered a saint since she climbed a bell tower and took out a bunch of college students with an Uzi before she died?