Posted on 08/24/2007 8:40:01 AM PDT by HarleyD
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who has been put on the “fast track” to sainthood, was so tormented by doubts about her faith that she felt “a hypocrite,” it has emerged from a book of her letters to friends and confessors. Shortly after beginning her work in the slums of Calcutta, she wrote: “Where is my faith? Even deep down there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. If there be a God — please forgive me.” In letters eight years later she was still expressing “such deep longing for God,” adding that she felt “repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal.” Her smile to the world from her familiar weather-beaten face was a “mask” or a “cloak,” she said. “What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.” Mother Teresa, who died in 1997 and was beatified in record time only six years later, felt abandoned by God from the very start of the work that made her a global figure, in her sandals and blue and white sari. The doubts persisted until her death.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
How about a quote from the Houston Chronicle?
On whether she tried to convert Hindus:
"Of course I convert. I convert you to be a better Hindu or a better Muslim or a better Protestant. Once you've found God, it's up to you to decide how to worship him."
If any source proof-texts, out of context, someone’s work, and that source has demonstarted an agenda to denigrate that someone’s work, it may be certainly legitimate to note that agenda, even without denying the authenticity of the quotes.
A good quote provides an example as to one’s thoughts. It’s often not hard at all to provide a misleading example. An irreputable source may be likely to provide misleading examples without the examples themselves being false.
>> Would you be willing to state that anyone who said such things was preaching heresy? <<
If it were the entirety of her message, it could certainly lead someone to heretical inferences. But it is not heresy, itself.
It's one thing to question God's will; it's a very different thing to question His existence. Don't you think?
Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)" -- Hebrews 10:22-23 "Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
"He is faithful." It would seem very possible that if Mother Teresa had not gone the route of the universalist and instead had remained faithful to the narrow way of Jesus Christ that she would not have felt so bereft and uncertain for so many years.
They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate." -- Titus 1:15-16"Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.
Even the good works of the reprobate mean nothing because "whatsoever is not of faith is sin" (Romans 14:23).
Her quote is a denial that she is proselytizing, a charge which could get thousands of her fellow sisters martyred. To use that quote as evidence that she has no desire that any of the people she helps would accept Christ is unfounded; all she is doing is ascribing free will to the people she helps and to God.
In India, millions of people accuse her of trying to use her charity to bribe people into accepting Christ. She insisted that she was not doing that, that she loves them because of who they are, not that she only loves them because she’s trying to proselytize them. She merely cares for them. Would she be delighted if every dying sole she touches makes a deathbed confession in Christ? Would she want her ministry to grow, so that every dying soul in India has the same opportunity to do so? If you doubt that, you know nothing at all of her.
She doesn’t have to proselytize. She loves. And everyone she touches knows who she regards as the source of that love. Those who she inspires to seek, will find.
a note about other posts about not knowing Mother Therese so well:
I have not read her works so well as to know she has not misspoken, or to know what secrets she has held in her heart.
For you to insinuate (by Biblical quotes) that Mother Teresa was a “reprobate”, or that she had “not remained faithful to the narrow way of Jesus”, is conjecture, presumption, detraction and rash judgment.
The sin of presumption is the sin of believing you can commit any sin, die unrepentant of it, and still go to heaven, or alternatively, that you can commit any sin and expect the grace of repentance as if it were your due.
A Catholic can have a moral, though not an infallible, certainty that he or she is in a state of grace and an heir of heaven.
What you claimed she said was heresy. What she actually said was not.
Which was why I asked.
If you don't know anything about her, then you are in no position to defend her. She appears to be a universalist heretic.
If you can show me anywhere where she has ever stated flatly that there is no other path to heaven except through Jesus Christ, then maybe you might have something to defend her with.
As it stands right now, however, all the quotes I can dig up from her suggest that she believed that Christianity was her chosen path to Heaven and that Hinduism is the Hindu's path and Islam is the Muslim's path, etc. i.e., that somehow it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are faithful in the practice of your chosen religion.
So if those quotes are accurate, then you would agree she was a heretic?
Can you show me some evidence that she was misquoted?
No, I just said that what she said wasn't heretical.
“Eckleburg replied as if the person was talking about legitimate victims, and used it to slur Catholics as a whole. He is not an honest guy.” He? (snicker)
So Jesus Christ is not the only way? Do you believe there are parallel paths to heaven other than through Jesus?
If I am a good Hindu and worship the Hindu gods in a loving and respectful manner and do good works, and feed the poor, will that all be accounted unto me for righteousness?
This is a very unfair attack on Mother Teresa.
Christians on the way to mystical union with God undergo terrible trials of Faith where things are so black it seems God has abandoned them. Remember Christ on the Cross? “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Does Christ fail your standard because He doubted?
The mystical path mirrors the path of Calvary - persecution, torture, insults, false accusations, trials of Faith, abandonment, death and resurrection. Some experience a spiritual resurrection in this life, others suffer until death. The Church is going through this process right now.
If anyone wants to understand the concept read Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila. St. John of the Cross is excellent as well but his works are a little more intense. Interior Castle is approachable and easier reading.
No, which is why I asked you to prove that Mother Teresa had actually said that. She hasn't.
If I am a good Hindu and worship the Hindu gods in a loving and respectful manner and do good works, and feed the poor, will that all be accounted unto me for righteousness?
If you're a Christian, and you thump your chest in public about how "saved" you are, and carry a great big Bible to church on Wednesday night, while privately you wallow in all sorts of egregious sins (because, after all, you're "once saved always saved"), will all of that be accounted unto you as righteousness?
No.
Now why don't you answer my question:
If I am a good Hindu and worship the Hindu gods in a loving and respectful manner and do good works, and feed the poor, will that all be accounted unto me for righteousness?
Yes or no?
Mary, Mother of Jesus: "Do whatever He says."
Jesus: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."
Doesn't really look like she was following either Mary or Jesus.
It seems to me that in His own parable, Jesus counted as righteous the good deed done by the Samaritan, and again, Jesus was pleased with the Samaritan (whom He had cured), singling him out as the one of ten who was cured who came back to give thanks.
Jesus also promised “living water” to the Samaritan woman at the well.
In two of these instances,(one a parable and one a real happening) Jesus counted as righteousness the acts of the Samaritans; first for compassion, and second, for gratitude.
In the third, he reached out to a Samaritan. In all cases, as a Jew, he was supoosedly not to have anything to do Samaritans.
Yet He found rightouesness in a Samaritan.
God’s ways are not our ways.
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