All in all, there is no good reason to doubt the claim that religion is associated with happiness for most people.
Posted on 09/24/2007 7:42:28 AM PDT by presidio9
For more than a half century, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was revered for her service to the poorest of the poor, and inspired people by the joy she apparently derived from pure faith and charity. But earlier this year, it was revealed that her faith and happiness may not have been all they seemed. In a newly published set of letters written over the course of her adult life, she expresses terrible sorrow about her life, describing it in terms of "dryness," "darkness" and "sadness."
For some commentators, this was evidence that, if we scratch the surface of religious conviction -- even that of a future saint -- we will tend to find unhappiness, echoing H.L. Mencken's claim that "God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable."
Does Mother Teresa's apparent misery truly expose an inconvenient truth about the happiness of religious people? A convincing answer to this question is not to be found in arguments for or against religion by believers or atheists -- but rather in the abundant surveys that for years have anonymously asked people about their faith and life satisfaction. What story do the data tell?
Americans can be divided into three groups when it comes to religious practice. Surveys indicate that about 30% attend houses of worship at least once per week (I will call them "religious"), while about 20% are "secular" -- never attending. The rest attend sometimes, but irregularly. These population dimensions have changed relatively little over the decades: Since the early 1970s, the religious group has not shrunk by more than two or three percentage points.
How do religious Americans compare to the secular when it comes to happiness? In 2004, the General Social Survey asked a sample of Americans,
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
All in all, there is no good reason to doubt the claim that religion is associated with happiness for most people.
And the sole purpose of life is to be happy, right?
Where does it say that she was miserable? Does having a few sad moments of doubt equate with a lifetime of misery? Those who have never experienced a life of faith-filled service are incapable of comprehending its vicissitudes.
People my age (pretty old) may remember the white left-wing terrorist groups that emerged in the USA and Europe in the 70's: the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army and such. They were young people who had had easy, pleasurable lives--- comfortable and indulgent parents, sex, drug,and heck,even food-and-drink experiences gratifying to the senses, etc. Most were University grads, most had seemingly good prospects ahead.
It seems what they found intolerable about their lives was meaningless pleasure. Not necessarily the "pleasure" part, but the "meaningless" part.
Both pain and pleasure are hard to tolerate for long --- for some people ---if it is apparently pointless.
That's where religion comes on. Not that it abolishes all ambiguities and totally unveils all the meaning of life -- far from it, things remain ambiguous and perplexing --- but religion involves a "Yes" to God, which ---without abolishing mystery ---is a "Yes" to meaning, A "Yes" to the conviction (even if you don't feel it in the senses and the emotions) that the Universe makes sense, Creation makes sense, and your life and all things will fit together and work out meaningfully in the end.
For this reason, I think religion per se is as essential to human beings as oxygen. I also think the question "Which is the TRUE religion?" or "What is religious TRUTH?" is the most important question of human existence.
You are on my side. I have NO use for religion.
The mindless pursuit of pleasure is like a moth turning always to the flame. The act of turning has a certain logic, but the end is always the same.
While the information about Mother Teresa’s spiritual trials is interesting, I think the reactions and commentary are even more interesting.
“I’m so happy that a person who caused me to feel bad about myself was unhappy!”(paraphrase) The Mustard Mists of Meanness cloud the whole topic.
I’ve heard this before.
I would associate it with what St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila called the “dark night of the soul.”
God often rewards His servants with joy. But He also sometimes tests them with dryness and absence. It’s perfectly possible to have His grace without feeling it.
The greater the saint, the greater the tests tend to be. The Temptations of St. Anthony are famous, to take just one example. And for Jesus Himself, there was the Agony in the Garden and on the Cross.
It’s easy to do God’s will when He instantly rewards you. But ultimately, He wants people to follow Him for Himself, and not for the associated rewards. I’d be interested to read an informed life of St. Teresa of Calcutta, but as a rule, the greater the Saint, the greater the tests. It’s a form of purification. Most of us couldn’t take it, but it’s obvious that her love for God was all the greater when she could do His will in spite of any lack of comfort.
You are right in what you say. I would justget rid of that word “religion”.
I spent 18 years in a religion that is highly popular but cold and lifeless. All that ever happened was an hour of mumbo-jumbo on Sunday. There was never any payoff.
Then I was saved and born again, and experienced a glowing relationship with God Himself in Christ Jesus. What a difference! A stack of recipes versus a sizzling filet mignon!
All the word “religion” means to me is those cold, lifeless ashes of dry leaves that church on Sunday always was. Meaningless.
Scratch the surface of an areligious person and you'll find an equal level of unhappiness, that's for sure.
“…”dryness,” “darkness” and “sadness.”…”
Anybody who spends one’s life taking care of the dying as she did is not going to be jumping for joy. There is no comic relief in this. It could only have been pure hell and depression for her.
“...People my age (pretty old) may remember the white left-wing terrorist groups that emerged in the USA and Europe in the 70’s: the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army and such. They were young people who had had easy, pleasurable lives-— comfortable and indulgent parents...”
In other words they were spoiled brats like most American young people but wer not anchored to anything real and had no heart for God. I’m currently reading SOLIAH: THE SARA JANE OLSON STORY. She and her sisters in the Symbionese Liberation Army through “white guilt” and a Marxist outlook followed the likes of Doanld DeFreeze and justified his rapes of women (like Patty Hearst). These women had no legitimate concept of good and evil once the revolutionary mindset took over.
I think many well known Christians have written of such struggles. I’ve read Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross and Madame Guyon wrote of it in her book Spiritual Torrents. John Bunyan documented such doubts in Pilgrim’s Progress and other writings. The questioning, doubting can even be seen in John the Baptist when he was imprisoned and facing death. He sent his disciples to Jesus to ask questions, and Jesus reply, “Blessed is he who is not offended by me.”
Saint Teresa? What does SAINT Teresa have to do with Calcutta? Saint Teresa was a medieval Spaniard.
Putting up a photo of a nihilistic, spoiled rich kid in an airport, who happens to be a fanatical follower of a false religion, doesn’t prove anything about those whose religion is based on the truth.
Union with God is bliss beyond understanding. But what did Jesus experience on the Cross? Abandonment. Aloneness. Thirst without refreshment, suffering without comfort. "My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?"
This is the one who said, "The Father and I are one."
All the Christian life is not satisfaction and sizzle. Christ did not say "take up thy sparkler and follow Me." It doesn't lead to the cook-out. It leads to the Cross.
And beyond, where "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and neither has it ntered into the mind of man to imagine, what God has prepared for those who love Him."
Where our Teresa is now.
What a hideous wrong turn they took. And what horrible destruction the brought upon themselves.
There are now three St. Teresas, although the French name is usually differently spelled.
There are St. Teresas of Avila, of Lisieux, and of Calcutta.
No, there are St. Teresa, St. Therese, and Bl. Teresa.
(There is also the Jewish woman, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a.k.a. Edith Stein.)
Mother Teresa may likley be a saint, but she is not a Saint.
>> These women had no legitimate concept of good and evil once the revolutionary mindset took over. <<
Kinda like a lot of Maryknoll and Jesuit missionaries (which is not to assert that the Meryknoll and Jesuit missionaries ever did anything as despicable as the SLA.)
There are four.
St. Teresa of the Andes.
Ask a Carmelite :-)
Three of these Teresa-s were Carmelite.
Boy—do I stand corrected—yes, there are 4 Carmelite Saints: Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Teresa of the Andes and—Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. I am so used to just calling her St. Benedicta—others often refer to her simply as Edith Stein—
Two of these saints are Doctors of the Church-—St. Teresa and St. Therese—St. T. Benedicta also could be made a Doctor of the Church one day.
One of her best works is entitled “the Science of the Cross”.
How right it is: Jesus told us to “take up our Cross and follow Him”. He knew that unless we shared His Cross we could not share His crown.
Viva Cristo Rey!
The irreligious and unread will interpret this in a worldy way; that is, they will determine that the saintly Mother Teresa regretted her vocation. However, Catholics and all faithful Christians will know that what Mr. Teresa was describing was what is widely known in Christianity as "the dark night of the soul". The closer one reaches to God in this world, the more they will be attacked and ravaged by Satan. Reading about the lives of the Saints reveals that just about every holy man or woman who adored Christ and tried to immitate Him was attacked by Satan in the form of doubt and lonliness. Their human desires and feelings were at war with their spiritual desires. Saint Paul also wrote about this in Scripture, as he revealed that although his spirit was willing his flesh was weak.
Leave it to the media and the ignorant to attack such a Saint as Mother Teresa of Calcutta; but then again, we all know the force behind our modern media is Satan, so these attacks are to be expected, even welcomed.
For later.
Since when did happiness become the measure of saintliness, or, even the measure of sincerity by the faithful?
BUMP
What struck me about this article is that as usual and expected, the media and the professoriat project everything onto surveys and statistics, as if Mother Teresa (or any individual’s) pain, doubts and suffering were utterly meaningless and only statistics themselves meaningful and significant. Well, maybe they are to the marketers, engineers and salesmen reading the Wall Street Journal, but as the meaning of life is concerned, they are completely devoid of significance, sorry professor Brooks.
"Mumbo jumbo" is a term of convenience used by men to describe their inability to comprehend something that transcends their shallow understanding, and to attack the object of their ignorance. How utterly sad that you were looking for a 'payoff' in Church when no 'payoff' in this world was promised by Christ. In the 'mumbo-jumbo' of Church we are to pay homage and worship to Him, not vice versa. No wonder you never found Jesus Christ in His holy house and the Tabernacle, you were looking for Him with feelings and intellect, and through 'payoffs', when you needed to be experiencing Him with faith.
Well said.
“...Kinda like a lot of Maryknoll and Jesuit missionaries (which is not to assert that the Meryknoll and Jesuit missionaries ever did anything as despicable as the SLA.)”
Well perhaps not all Jesuits have gone completely over to the theology of liberation fold. But many of them and the Maryknolls have done worse damage than the SLA. In El Salvador they worked for those “brother guerrillas” in the FMLN and thus share guilt for those endless terrorist attacks which killed innocent women and children.
There are plenty of Maryknolls here at Fort Benning every November and they are all accusing this Army post of teaching murder. They carry crosses with the names of Leftists foreigners like Ita Ford and Jean Donovan who were killed in El Salvador. But I always ask them why I do not see the names of Fracisco Peccorini, Bobby Chacon, Gabriel Payes, and so many other true Salvadorans who were murdered by the foreign-dominated FMLN and its foreign lackeys like the Maryknolls.
Sorry, you are right. I was recalling the beatification ceremony and confusing it with some of the other recently named saints.
There have certainly been left-wing Jesuits and Maryknollers out there. The memory of the blessed martyrs is unfortunately used, politically, by those who pressed for revolutionary violence. Romero's memory was used by the Left, although he was not a man of the Left. He's pasted into the poster-art posthumously as a Marxist icon, next to Che! But that's not his fault.
It seems it's not enough that such women as Ita Ford and Jean Donovan are abducted, beaten, raped, and murdered. Now they have to be slandered, as well! But when God judges the souls of good people martyred by the the FMLN or by the right-wing death squads, I don't think He sorts them by the criteria of political partisanship.
I based my statements about Maryknoll from having read their magazine regularly while growing up, and my statements about the Jesuits from having attended a Jesuit university. Both orders are dominated by Liberation Theology types, which dogmatically assert that the underclasses are in no way culpable for their sins. While desperation born of poverty can diminish culpability, the total whitewashing has permitted vast numbers of Jesuits and Maryknollers to side with abortion providers, communist revolutionaries, etc.
In the instance of Oscar Romero, even the movie which Leftists gush over does clearly depict him lamenting that his friends, who had been tortured by the anti-communist death squads, had brought their suffering apon themselves and perverted their mission by aligning themselves with communists. (I don’t know how well this reflects history, but the point is that even the Catholic Leftists who idolize Romero acknowledge the presence of Catholic priests among the communist revolutionaries.)
Nothing Ital Ford or Jean Donovan did could have justified the tortures dealt to them, but then nothing I stated referred to them or could ever be construed as justifying such horrors being committed against anyone. Nonetheless, I will repeat my original assertion, in different and even stronger words: truly vast proportions of Maryknollers and Jesuits have apostasized from the Christian faith altogether, and have for decades worked to bring about communist regimes across the planet. They share some of the blame for the atrocities committed against their brothers and sisters, for having associated their orders with such savage totalitarian regimes that depraved violence, while in no ways justified, was the obvious, foreseeable result. I would easily estimate that the vast, vast majorities of Maryknollers and Jesuits in America side with the perpetrators of the American Holocaust, such as Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi, who have overseen the slaughter of a number of innocent souls which dwarfs the Soviet and Nazi holocausts.
You will not find me defending the left-wing aberrations of Marxist Maryknollers and Jesuits. But take care not to violate the commandment which forbids "bearing false witness against your neighbor," since too-broad generalizations do harm to the innocent who are among them. (Yes, I know innocent Jesuits!)
Surely you realize that in situations of civil war, to call a person a "communist" can be a rash judgment and a pretext for murder.
“...Monterrosa’s characterization of Ita Ford and Jean Donovan, by name, as “foreign leftists,” which is a shabby (as well as inaccurate) way to refer to murdered missionary women...”
It was indeed an accurate way to refer to Ita Ford. That she was a foreigner cannot be denied. If her concern was for the poor why did she not go next door to Honduras which was statistically poorer than El Salvador? Why did she arrive in El Salvador in 1980 with the cadres of international communists who tried to keep the Nicaraguan momentum going?
There was no war in El Salvador before the Sandinista takeover in Nicaragua. Ita Ford’s mission was not to help the poor directly but to assist the revolution. She said over and over that the poor in El Salvador were being murdered but made no mention of the murders carried out by the Left. The Army, the “coffee barons”, the (mythical) 14 families, and the campesinos, the vaqueros, the middle class, and most Salvadorans were shocked that there was suddenly in late 1979 and 1980 such a situation in El Salvador. Foreigners and logistics via Nicaragua brought this situation that started a back and forth killing spree. Ita’s Leftist’s killed the poor constantly. If she spoke out against the Left please give me those references and quotes. Of couse a Marxist could not view the FMLN as evil.
If you were a Marxist and wanted your ticket punched then El Salvador was THE place to go in the ‘80s.
“no ‘payoff’ in this world was promised by Christ”
“29: And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake,
30: Who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.
“ - Luke 18:29
“38: Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. “ -Luke 6:38
And what I’m really referring to is the Joy of the Lord and tons of peace. That’s the payoff IN THIS WORLD when you repent, confess your sins to Jesus and obey his command to “Come Unto Me”!
Try it.
I buy your Latin definition of religion if it means relating directly to Father God through Jesus, wthout going through ministers, Bishops, priests, Cardinals, archbishops, Popes or Mary!
Virtually every lesson in our curriculum (to include Abraham, Jacob & Esau, David, Esther, Job, to name several) involves unhappiness, pain, and suffering. From studying those lessons, the kids obtain "arrows for their quivers" for the eventual trials and tribulations they'll face.
The objectives for my class have changed markedly over the past several years. I now gear my lessons so that, hopefully, my students will remember something from the year they spent with me, 5-10-15 years down the road.
How am I doing? I have no earthly idea! My two oldest kids were in my class during years 1 and 3. However, it makes my kids roll their eyes when I have former students come and give me a big hug when they see me!
Did this Church, with its Apostles and their Councils (as at Jerusalem) and its successors (as Matthias) --- did it just disappear?
1 Corinthians 12:28
"And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues"---
And those offices which God appointed --what do you think? Did these offices die out? Or did they have a historic, growing, developing, continuous existence in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th centuries, in all the 20+ centuries from then until now?
Beautiful!! Thanks a lot.
I’m glad you posted that.
“But what if Christ founded a Church? And what if He taught His Apostle, Paul, that the Church is His Body?”
That’s it! You hit it! His Body is the Church. The whole New Testament witnesses to that and not to steeplehouses, rituals, round collars, prayer beads, dead saints, mother worship and magic cookies.
“But what if Christ founded a Church? And what if He taught His Apostle, Paul, that the Church is His Body?”
That’s it! You hit it! His Body is the Church. The whole New Testament witnesses to that and not to steeplehouses, rituals, round collars, prayer beads, dead saints, mother worship and magic cookies.
“But what if Christ founded a Church? And what if He taught His Apostle, Paul, that the Church is His Body?”
That’s it! You hit it! His Body is the Church. The whole New Testament witnesses to that and not to steeplehouses, rituals, round collars, prayer beads, dead saints, mother worship and magic cookies.
Sorry for the three postings.
But please don't bother answering. Not once, not twice, not three times. Thank you.
“I can just see it: Jesus at the Last Supper, holding up the bread and saying “This is My Body,” and Road Test popping up and saying, “No it’s not: it’s a magic cookie!””
You have the priest mixed up with Jesus; Jesus didn’t hold up a wafer to be wprshipped. That’s a false god.
Spell check!
And what have you left behind, for the kingdom of God's sake, but the one true church, the "pillar and foundation of truth", (1 Tim. 3:15)? If you have found the worldly 'payoff' you sought by leaving the Church and becoming your own heirarchy, your own interpreter of Scripture, your own Pope, then I'd take a very, very long and hard look at that. Chances are, it isn't God Who rewarded you for leaving His Church, but His adversary. It was the Devil who promised worldly 'payoff' to Christ, if Christ would bow before him, while Christ promised nothing to His followers but travail and persecution. More importantly, speaking to the Church heirarchy He appointed, (the Apostles), Jesus taught the Church these ominous words:
"He who listens to you listens to me, and he who rejects you rejects me" (Luke 10:16).
Receving "manifold more" in this present time is referring to GRACE and FAITH, the greatest gifts that God bestows on humans. THAT is the 'payoff'.
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