There are no atheists in the streets of Calcutta

Vivificat! - News, Opinions, Commentary, from a Personal Catholic Perspective ^ | 11 August 2007 | Teófilo

[Teófilo]

Helping others to the extreme, that is.

Folks, we've often heard the expression "there are no atheists in foxholes" repeated over and again to imply that, in the direst of situations, even the most recalcitrant soul gambles on the existence of a transcendent divine being and prays to him in one single, fear-induced, intuitive leap. This notion has had enough traction in popular culture that organized atheists have begun to complain and have been, in fact, complaining for a while now that the oft used cliché is untrue and unrepresentative of the feelings of the vast majority of atheists.

Since I am feeling uncommonly generous today I will grant these longsuffering atheists the recognition they demand: yes, there are atheists in the foxholes. They arrive there as atheists and leave as atheists, perhaps even more so. I even grant that many arrive into the foxholes as religious believers and leave as atheists, even if militant atheists are either unwilling or unable to recognize that another significant segment of our servicemen and women who were atheists or agnostics at best, do in fact experience a religious reorientation, if not an outright conversion, while fighting in foxholes. From an empirical viewpoint we must recognize that the phenomena are too variegated to extract a meaningful generalization except this one: you take from the foxhole what you brought into it. And, to sweeten this pie of concessions, I also admit that the phenomenon extends to those serving in police, firefighting, and emergency services and other such humanitarian capacities whose members often have to face human evil first hand.

There are atheists in the foxholes and atheists who are endowed with perfectly ordinary morality living outside the foxholes. Fine, let's grant that and let's grant too that most of them are outstanding citizens who, in their behavior, are no better or worse than that of your average, nominal Christian.

Why be a Christian, then? That's a fair question. Let me attempt an answer.

What I fail to see in them—in atheists and nominal Christians alike—is a sense of morality so strong, so intense, and so overwhelming, that it drives them to extremes in tending to the needs of the dregs of society, those fellow human beings left behind by all our utilitarian calculations—their vague feelings of solidarity, impotence, and guilt notwithstanding.

No, that kind of drive to serve the downtrodden to the extreme does not come from human empathy alone. It comes from a Source outside of the self and only those who are attuned to this Source are able to transcend the demands of ordinary humanism into something larger and more glorious. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean:

• It took a believer like Mother Theresa to serve the poorest of the poor, the dying even, on the streets of Calcutta and not an enlightened atheist. Not one atheist joined her at first and I don't know of any one now, though I know that there are no atheists among the nuns and brothers who continue her work today.

• There were no atheists in the leprosarium of Molokai either, washing the oozing wounds of those confined therein during the 19th century, or outside of Assisi in the 13th during the so-called "Dark Ages" but it took a Fr. Damien and a Francis of Assisi to do that. But perhaps that's unfair, maybe because there were no atheists in Francis' time, but definitely there were plenty during Fr. Damien's time. Not one atheist joined him, though, probably because they didn't want to end up like Fr. Damien, dying himself of leprosy in the service of others.

• Nor do we know of one single atheist volunteering to die in other's stead in a Nazi death camp, but Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, a darned believer, did so willingly and lovingly. The man Kolbe saved later attended the slain priest's canonization ceremony. He was not an atheist.

• Dorothy Day, a non-canonized saint—her process is ongoing—is one with whom socially-minded atheists can relate to, but only up to a point. According to Jim Forest, she founded the Catholic Worker movement here in the U.S. back in 1933. The movement is best known for houses of hospitality located in run-down sections of many cities, though a number of Catholic Worker centers exist in rural areas. Food, clothing, shelter and welcome is extended by unpaid volunteers to those in need according to the ability of each household. Beyond hospitality, Catholic Worker communities are known for activity in support of labor unions, human rights, cooperatives, and the development of a nonviolent culture. Those active in the Catholic Worker are often pacifist people seeking to live an unarmed, nonviolent life. During periods of military conscription, Catholic Workers have been conscientious objectors to military service. Many of those active in the Catholic Worker movement have been jailed for acts of protest against racism, unfair labor practices, social injustice and war. But I say that she held none of these activities and labels as ends in themselves. Dorothy Day may have held a progressive attitude toward social and economic rights, but she did so with a very orthodox and traditional sense of Catholic morality and piety. Although she had written passionately about women’s rights, free love and birth control in the 1910s, she opposed the sexual revolution of the sixties, saying she had seen the ill effects of a similar sexual revolution in the 1920s, when she had an abortion (cfr. Dorothy Day's Wikipedia article). She had the courage to retract her earlier, very bad ideas as she beheld the outcome of such opinions late in her life. The final end of her activism was Man in God.

What did Blessed Mother Theresa, Sts. Damien of Molokai, Francis of Assisi, Maximilian Kolbe, and Dorothy Day had in common? Well, that they all believed in the crude superstition—"crude" in the eyes of the "bright" atheists— that an executed Jewish carpenter of 2,000 years ago—whose claims, and perhaps his very existence, are highly questionable—was the one and only incarnation of a bloodthirsty tribal desert deity who dared to preach human brotherhood and universal love at the cost of one's own life, having had the temerity to back this message with his own death.

This firm belief in the person, teachings, life, death, and resurrection of a certain Jesus of Nazareth drove these men and women to look at the most needy from among us, not as fortuitous products of a blind, undirected natural process, but as children of God. These holy people moved beyond any inherited or learned feelings of social solidarity and sympathy, choosing instead to see their neighbor as men and women endowed with an intrinsic, inalienable dignity transcending any selfish, "objectivist" calculus and utility, and worthy of a disinterested, even self-sacrificial love.

Really, what is the value, according to our culture, of helping a terminally ill AIDS victim in India and Africa, or a leper in a leper colony hidden in the armpits of the world, when these resources should be better spent in helping only those who have a chance to recover, or better still, for illness prevention? Our materialistic culture, imbued with secular values, impels us to write off the downtrodden in the quest of making the healthy and the sane more "happy" at the expense of the sick, the suffering, and even the unborn. It takes a religious believer to go to the extreme of ministering to those whom society has labeled as not worth the time saving, curing, and comforting.

The funny thing is that God—because there is a God—wants us to live and behave like Mother Theresa & Co. did. Mediocrity was never to be the standard of Christian living: heroism in the service of others was and is. Nominal Christians are just practical atheists, unable or uninterested in loving others as themselves. They need not apply for the label of "compassionate people."

All right, there are atheists in the foxholes. Let's all agree to that. But look into the nook and crannies where the poorest of the poor crawl in to die and you will see that it is highly unlikely you'll find one single atheist ministering to them, but you can be almost certain that you will find with them believers who love them unconditionally, often even sharing their bitter fates to the very end.

To soothe and cure the sick and the downtrodden of the world we need more, no less believers. Atheism will become much more convincing the day it can generate a Mother Theresa whole cloth from purely atheistic moral principles.

[Teófilo]

Typos. Blunders. Mine.

[Teófilo]

PING!

[Salvation]

**What did Blessed Mother Theresa, Sts. Damien of Molokai, Francis of Assisi, Maximilian Kolbe, and Dorothy Day had in common? Well, that they all believed in the crude superstition—”crude” in the eyes of the “bright” atheists— that an executed Jewish carpenter of 2,000 years ago—whose claims, and perhaps his very existence, are highly questionable—was the one and only incarnation of a bloodthirsty tribal desert deity who dared to preach human brotherhood and universal love at the cost of one’s own life, having had the temerity to back this message with his own death. **

God bless all these people who choose (and chose) to tell the world about Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior!

[Salvation]

American Catholic’s Saint of the Day

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September 5, 2007

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

(1910-1997)

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the tiny woman recognized throughout the world for her work among the poorest of the poor, was beatified October 19, 2003. Among those present were hundreds of Missionaries of Charity, the Order she founded in 1950 as a diocesan religious community. Today the congregation also includes contemplative sisters and brothers and an order of priests.

Speaking in a strained, weary voice at the beatification Mass, Pope John Paul II declared her blessed, prompting waves of applause before the 300,000 pilgrims in St. Peter's Square. In his homily, read by an aide for the aging pope, the Holy Father called Mother Teresa “one of the most relevant personalities of our age” and “an icon of the Good Samaritan.” Her life, he said, was “a bold proclamation of the gospel.”

Mother Teresa's beatification, just over six years after her death, was part of an expedited process put into effect by Pope John Paul II. Like so many others around the world, he found her love for the Eucharist, for prayer and for the poor a model for all to emulate.

Born to Albanian parents in what is now Skopje, Macedonia (then part of the Ottoman Empire), Gonxha (Agnes) Bojaxhiu was the youngest of the three children who survived. For a time, the family lived comfortably, and her father's construction business thrived. But life changed overnight following his unexpected death.

During her years in public school Agnes participated in a Catholic sodality and showed a strong interest in the foreign missions. At age 18 she entered the Loreto Sisters of Dublin. It was 1928 when she said goodbye to her mother for the final time and made her way to a new land and a new life. The following year she was sent to the Loreto novitiate in Darjeeling, India. There she chose the name Teresa and prepared for a life of service. She was assigned to a high school for girls in Calcutta, where she taught history and geography to the daughters of the wealthy. But she could not escape the realities around her—the poverty, the suffering, the overwhelming numbers of destitute people.

In 1946, while riding a train to Darjeeling to make a retreat, Sister Teresa heard what she later explained as “a call within a call. The message was clear. I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them.” She also heard a call to give up her life with the Sisters of Loreto and, instead, to “follow Christ into the slums to serve him among the poorest of the poor.”

After receiving permission to leave Loreto, establish a new religious community and undertake her new work, she took a nursing course for several months. She returned to Calcutta, where she lived in the slums and opened a school for poor children. Dressed in a white sari and sandals (the ordinary dress of an Indian woman) she soon began getting to know her neighbors—especially the poor and sick—and getting to know their needs through visits.

The work was exhausting, but she was not alone for long. Volunteers who came to join her in the work, some of them former students, became the core of the Missionaries of Charity. Other helped by donating food, clothing, supplies, the use of buildings. In 1952 the city of Calcutta gave Mother Teresa a former hostel, which became a home for the dying and the destitute. As the Order expanded, services were also offered to orphans, abandoned children, alcoholics, the aging and street people.

For the next four decades Mother Teresa worked tirelessly on behalf of the poor. Her love knew no bounds. Nor did her energy, as she crisscrossed the globe pleading for support and inviting others to see the face of Jesus in the poorest of the poor. In 1979 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On September 5, 1997, God called her home.