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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Kevin Horrigan: Courage to doubt shows faith

Kevin Horrigan St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“The standards of the media are not those of saints.”

Well, of course not. That goes without saying. Saints are interested in eternal salvation, and we in the media are interested in tomorrow’s story and free lunch, not necessarily in that order.

So even though there’s no lunch involved, the publication of a book of Mother Teresa’s letters, revealing that she endured a 50-year “dark night of the soul,” sometimes doubting God’s very existence, qualifies as big news.

This, after all, is a world in which many people who are sure of God’s existence slaughter one another and ignore the poor in his name. Here’s a woman who had her doubts and did his work anyway.

Time magazine celebrated the publication on Wednesday (the 10th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s death) of “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light,” with a cover story. Newsweek responded with a screed by Christopher Hitchens, the sardonic British atheist, critic and skeptic. Newspapers large and small editorialized; television ran long feature stories.

Much of the Catholic press decided the attention was good news, too, that faithfulness in the face of doubt was a message that everyone should hear:

“(The letters) may be remembered as just as important as her ministry to the poor,” the Rev. James Martin, associate editor of the liberal Jesuit magazine America, told Time. “It would be a ministry to people who had experienced some doubt, some absence of God in their lives. And you know who that is? Everybody. Atheists, doubters, seekers, believers, everyone.”

Well, not quite everyone. Elizabeth Lev, a columnist for Zenit, a Vatican-based news agency funded by the ultra-conservative Legion of Christ, wrote, “The predatory glee with which news services leapt upon word of Mother Teresa’s ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ resembled the same relish with which they report celebrity arrests. Questions such as, ‘Can she still be made a saint?’ demonstrated an utter lack of knowledge regarding the Church’s idea of sanctity while attempting to sow division by casting doubts on her holiness.”

Lev then went on to observe that “the standards of the media are not those of saints,” which, while true, is a little harsh. Many of us are trying to become saints, at least lower-case saints, but doubt and skepticism are occupational hazards.

So it’s a comfort to read that Mother Teresa had the same problem. In a letter to a spiritual adviser, she wrote, “I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God – tender, personal lover. If (you had been) there, you would have said, ‘What hypocrisy.’ “

And then there are these words: “So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them – because of the blasphemy – If there be God – please forgive me – When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven – there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. – I am told God loves me – and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.”

Readers, listeners and viewers tend to bring their own biases to any story, even a story as remarkable as that of the Albanian schoolgirl Agnes Bojaxhiu, who became a nun, founded her own missionary order and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Thus liberals, who’ve always been a little uncomfortable with Mother Teresa’s condemnation of abortion, see publication of her letters as affirming that she was a humanist, a secular saint. Conservative Catholics, who’ve always been a little uncomfortable at Mother Teresa’s preference for the poor over real estate, will cite her 50-year longing for Jesus, in the face of overwhelming doubt, as proof of her sanctity. She’s just one recognized miracle away from full status as a saint, which matters deeply to many Catholics.

Even atheists will take some comfort. Hitchens made himself a legend in the cynicism business in 1995 by writing a book decrying Mother Teresa as a fraud. He says her letters prove “she was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person.”

I bring my own biases, but I find myself even more moved by her courage than I was before, and that was profoundly. It’s one thing to write a check to the United Way; it’s quite another to scoop lepers off the streets of Calcutta and wash their sores.

I find myself, speaking of secular saints, remembering a quote that’s been ascribed to John Wayne: “Courage is being scared to death, and saddling up anyway.”