Posted on 09/28/2007 10:00:11 AM PDT by presidio9
Whenever I start feeling sorry for myself over personal attacks by my far-left media opponents, and those have been known to happen, I think of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Here's a woman who devoted her adult life to helping the poor and sick in one of the worst hellholes on earth. In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and up until her death in 1997 she was revered around the world.
A couple of weeks ago, Newsweek magazine ran a story by atheist Christopher Hitchens about Mother Teresa's crisis of faith, which she articulated in a number of letters to confidants. Mr. Hitchens, who had previously blasted the nun over abortion and birth control, wrote a nasty diatribe against the woman and the Catholic church.
Now, I don't blame Hitchens. He has been totally up-front about his loathing for organized religion and his contempt for the intellects of those who believe, including Mother Teresa. But why would Newsweek print a stand-alone attack on a good woman, an article that called Mother Teresa "miserable" and a "confused old lady?"
If Newsweek wanted fair and balanced controversy, all it had to do was print two articles: the one by Hitchens, and another by someone challenging the guy. But no, just the hatchet job appeared in the magazine.
I asked the editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, to explain, but he declined to be interviewed. Since Meacham wrote a book about faith and the founding fathers, which he was happy to discuss, I found that strange. In fact, the whole deal is strange.
Two years after her death, Mother Teresa was still the most admired person in the world, according to a nationwide Gallup Poll. There are 65 million Catholics in the United States, and more than 80% of Americans say they are Christian. So does it make any sense to hire an atheist to trash Mother Teresa? Does it?
The answer is no. It is bad journalism, awful economics (trust me, there are now more than a few former Newsweek readers), and just plain unfair. Mother Teresa deserves better.
Most people of faith have doubts. The New Testament tells us Jesus had a crisis of faith in the Garden of Gethsemane shortly before he was executed. Faith is a tough thing when the going gets tough. But until the end, Mother Teresa attended to Christian doctrine by helping those in dire need.
The evidence is overwhelming that the good sister was a kind and generous woman. I can't read minds, and it would be unfair to assign motives to those who run Newsweek, but the Mother Teresa article was disturbing, to say the least.
The bestseller lists are full of books telling us God is a fraud and religion is spawned by the devil (sorry). In a free society, those points of view should be heard. But Mother Teresa's legacy deserves respect. Newsweek has done her and its readership a huge disservice.
However, knowing Mother Teresa's philosophy, she would forgive them. Because that would be the Christian thing to do.
While not a Catholic, I still dig the lady.
Comments?
You’ll know them by their fruits.
Hitchens’.
Mother Teresa’s.
Amen.
To the left, the more virtuous a person is who is either a Christian or a conservative, the more desperate the is to find them flawed. The hypocrisy is that what they consider to be a flaw in a conservative or a Christian may be a character trait they would consider laudable in a liberal, leftist or communist revolutionary. Sexual devianace, chemical abuse or even a viciously violent propensity gets the seal of approval so long as the perpetrator carries the right political credentials. Hanging gays gets a pass if you’re a communist dictator, but using the word ‘fag’ is outrageous and criminal for a Christian or conservative. This duplicitous and hypocritical thought process renders their criticisms, IMHO, unworthy of even passing notice.
In 200 Years Mother Theresa will still be revered.. The world was made a better place because she was here.
Hitch on the other hand might be remembered as a footnote an remarks about mediocre writers.. No ones life was bettered by his presence.
I’m thory...I type with a lisph...
Mother Theresa is untrashable.
Mother Teresa is untrashable, that is.
One of the problems with Saints is that they are uncomfortable.
A saint does not need defense. Still, I feel compelled to comment.
The woman was given a very rare privilege by God: she felt His total abandonment which the Catholic Faith calls the Dark Night of the Soul. This is rare and it is especially rare for it to last for so long. During this entire time, she was still faithful to her God to the very end.
Mother Teresa founded a religious Order of nuns which now has on the order of 300 outposts and still growing. There are over 3,000 Sisters in her Order. Many were not simple folk but highly educated professional women who still remain faithful. They minister to the “outcasts of society” including AIDS patients and abandoned children.
If you wish to see what the Missionaries of Charity do, I invite you to read accounts of priests who fly into these outposts in places like rural Romania or the Uzbek mountains in winter around Christmas where the nuns care for deeply disturbed children many of whom are deformed. The accounts bring me to tears and it is obvious the priests are similarly affected by their encounters with true holiness.
Mr. Hitchens is gifted in emptying bottles of various alcoholic beverages. He is the bete noir of journalism although he is embraced by the right for his stand on Iraq.
Mother Teresa pawned many of the awards she won and donated the funds to Charity. I am almost certain that is the case with the gold medal she won from the K of C. She was faithful to the end and found the face of Jesus in all she met.
A prominent priest recounts how he spent the day with “Mother” in Calcutta. On his way to the train station, he encountered a dying man in the street. He raced back to the Mission and berated Mother as this man was left alone to die and their was nobody to see to him. Mother’s response was, “I care for all those placed in MY path. Jesus placed this man in your path.”
I rest my case.
This is the same view that makes hanging the Butcher of Baghdad an evil act, but murdering an innocent unborn children because next Tuesday is an inconvenient time to give birth to be an act of moral choice.
This view follows from their belief that there is no higher moral order to our world. From this it all follows.
Acts done out of greed, lust, or casual convenience are ordinary and even righteous. Acts done in the light of some claimed Higher Moral Authority are an outrage, and the greater the morality claimed, the greater the outrage.
To call them atheists is to name them for what they are not; not believers in God. Better perhaps to call the left secularists, for what they do hold highest - which is just this ordinary mortal world, nothing more.
We are engaged in a three-way religious war: the Judeo-Christians, the secularists and the Muslims.
The leftists, the secularists, are our most dangerous enemy. Without the left, the Muslims wouldn't stand a chance. Without the Muslims, the left still has a good chance of destroying Western Civilization and enslaving freedom loving believers world wide.
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