Thanks to the extraordinary outpouring of admiration and, yes, love directed at Mother Teresa of Calcutta not only during her lifetime but since her death in 1997, it’s easy to overlook the fact that some people didn’t and don’t like this holy woman.
Yet even after her beatification two years ago by Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa — foundress of the Missionaries of Charity, Nobel Peace Prize winner, model of selfless service to the needy and suffering — remains a sign of contradiction.
Jesus once identified the fundamental explanation for this phenomenon: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before you” (Jn 15:19). Whenever Christ-like goodness appears in this unredeemed world, the world's ancient enmity toward Christ is certain to reassert itself.
A recent illustration of this fact can be found in the sleazy attack on Mother Teresa mounted during a Penn and Teller program on Viacom's Showtime channel. The program was noteworthy (if that's the word) mainly for its use of language that couldn't be repeated in decent company.
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, who has seen a lot, called the show the “most obscene” he'd run into. Some may see this trashing of Mother Teresa as irreverent humor. It would be more accurate to call it trash. (Organizers of the protest say the person to write to is Mr. Leslie Moonves, CBS Television Network, 7800 Beverly Blvd., Room 23, Los Angeles, CA 90036-2112.)
“She came preaching universal holiness in a universally unholy time.” That's how David Scott puts the matter in his splendid new book A Revolution of Love: The Meaning of Mother Teresa (Loyola Press). The reason for much of the hostility toward her still found in some quarters may be no more — and no less — complicated.
In fairness, though, it sometimes has sprung from other, different sources, especially when the critics were Mother Teresa's fellow Catholics. One of the features of Scott's book is its intelligent probing of the rationale of such people. In brief, he argues, some influenced by liberation theology found her not “radical enough.” Instead of trying to change the system — by violence if necessary, as Marxists insisted — she spent herself serving the dying and the outcasts.
The complaint that Mother Teresa was a charismatic defender of the status quo would be damaging if true. Is it? There was indeed a sharp contrast between her approach and that of her liberationist critics, but it was hardly to her disadvantage.
“She never faulted those working to nonviolently change political institutions and economic structures,” writes Scott. But she did hear “a different calling.”
“Mother Teresa worked from below, waged her war on poverty person to person, soul to soul. 'I know there are thousands and thousands of poor, but I think of only one at a time,' she explained. 'Jesus was only one and I take Jesus at His word. He has said, 'You did it to me.'”
Looking at these two approaches to poverty and injustice — the social reformers' and Mother Teresa's — a reasonable person may conclude that the world and the Church need both. There is no intrinsic conflict between trying to change evil institutions and binding up the wounds of those they harm. And in the end the binders-up also are changing the world.
“When all recognize that our suffering neighbor is God Himself,” Mother Teresa said, “on that day, there will be no more poverty.” Was that naïve? Of course it was. But also true? Beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, DC. You can email him at RShaw10290@aol.com.
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