Flawed heroes - ABC listen In an interview with the author of a new book, he claims that Mother Teresa as in fact an atheist, cared not where her donations came from and was stingy spending it.
Well, if Otto English (AKA, Andrew Scott) says it, it must be true. Or not. He's a journalist, an anti-Brexit activist, and professional debunker, who told us in his previous book, Fake History, that historians got it all wrong, and have been lying to us all these years. I may be old-fashioned in preferring history written by professional historians who have PhDs and write under their own names. Scott's previous book, Fake History, was criticized for being riddled with errors. https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/otto-english-ten-lies/ How the culture wars came for history A book that is exactly what it claims to debunk: fake history - History Reclaimed This is the sensationalist sequel. The bit about Mother Teresa being an atheist probably comes from an incident in which she asked her confessor to pray for her because she could feel nothing when she prayed herself and no longer had any experience of God.and these doubts persisted for over fifty years while she was working with dying and suffering people in Calcutta. Wow! Most atheists I know either say they don't believe in God. Mother Teresa said she wasn't feelin' it. Previously, she felt plugged in--a kind of Jesus high; then nothing. Clinically, she might have been bi-polar.She was on a Jesus high! My "born again" friends joke about the "pink cloud" immeidately following their conversion experiences. It tends to fade, but the important thing to them is "finding Jesus" and the transformation of their lives it brought. Does anybody who feels no personal experience of God qualify as an atheist? Would any normal person in her situation, confronted with such human tragedies on a daily basis, not ask "where is God"?. Before that, she thought she was in intimate contact with Jesus, who directed her to work among the poor. Then the feeling of intimacy with God stopped. Other saints--John of the Cross, Gemma Galgani, Paul of the Cross, Thérèse of Lisieux, Padre Pio – reported similar periods of spiritual abandonment. I tend to view this as a hopeful sign from the standpoint of mental health. "Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me?"she wrote. Where have we heard similar words before? Mark and Matthew say from the mouth of Jesus on the Cross. Was He an atheist? Wait for Scott's next book! But this may simply be what other mystics called "the dark night of the soul." Or were Jesus' words simply put into His mouth by Mark (or whatever was his real name) from Psalm 22? Interesting questions. As a Christian of sorts, I'd find it incredible that intelligent, rational people wouldn't question the existence of God from time to time, especially if they're looking for the omnipotent, omniscient Dude in the Sky who keeps in direct, constant touch with them. As one who became a Christian as a result of a conversion experience, I nevertheless share the view of the late comedienne Lilly Tomlin, who asked "Why is it that when you talk to God, it's prayer; but when God talks to you, its schizophrenia? See also, the thesis of Jennifer Callaghan, "If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia" : distinctions between psychosis and spiritual experience among Christians".https://scholarworks.smith.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1791&context=theses As for her alleged lack of concern for the sources of her donations, and her stinginess in spending them, Scott (or English) repeats the charge by another critic of the saint, the late atheist "Horseman" Christopher Hitchens, that she accepted a donation of more than a million dollars from financier Charles Keating, who was later imprisoned for defrauding investors, and that she wrote to the court asking clemency for Keating without explaining their relationship. She has been accused of s providing stingy or substandard medical care to her charges, and valuing the virtue of suffering over alleviating it. Maybe so. But others made these charges before English, whom we might accuse of sensationalist muckraking for fame and profit. I suspect that since she was human, she was not perfect. The canonization business is a Catholic thing, requiring proof of miracles, of which I tend to be skeptical. (Father Guido Sarducci, a character on Saturday Night Live, claimed some of them these days are card tricks). But I'm also skeptical of cynics who make a living trying to discredit any sign of virtue in the human species. We're all human, but hopefully won't be unduly discouraged in striving to be as good as we can be.
