There are People that Hate Mother Teresa
Like, how dare you?
My daughter is named Teresa.
I didn’t always get Catholicism, but I always got Mother Teresa. A fearless warrior for Christ, serving the poorest of the poor. All of the anecdotes about double Holy Hours and wiping the sweat off the faces of the dying. All of her quotes about faith, and belief, and trust. Her radical “yes”, her solemn vow to be obedient to Christ forever. Her years and years (and years) of spiritual darkness. This holy saint, this humble woman, has changed my life forever. I also have a dear affection for her spiritual big sisters, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Therese of Lisieux, so the name Teresa felt like a holy alchemy; the greatest gift I could give my rabble-rousing daughter was a name of saints.
When I released an essay on Dorothy Day a few months ago, defending her honor against those who would call her a Communist or unorthodox, I got an email in response from someone that simply said: “Now do Mama T.”
I hesitated because I’ve recently found a lot of peace in Sr. Josephine Garret’s examen of conscience for those in public ministry. One of the things she warns against is a posture of defensiveness. What, after all, are we defending? For Christ has defeated death.
But loyalty has always been a value of mine. The desire that those I know and love would be known and loved by all, not have their names misspoken about. Or, as my cousin once told me, “I know you’d throw hands in a parking lot for me any day”.
Mother Teresa does not need me to throw hands for her. But I have some reframes I’d like to present to anyone who questions the overall trajectory of Mother Teresa’s legacy that may help you think through it + process the way she changed Kolkata and the world at large. If this is the wrong decision, which it very well could be, I ask for your forgiveness and the mercy of Christ.
Also, this: Mother Tersa is not Jesus.
When I find a saint I love, I tend to elevate them perhaps beyond what they desrve. One thing Catholics are criticized of is the very idea of saints; how could we speak to the dead and pray to people who aren’t Christ? While we don’t actually pray to saints (we ask them to pray for us), I do realize that you need to do frequent heart-checks to make sure you aren’t conflating St. Teresa Benedicta or St. Monica or St. Kateri with God himself. Mother Teresa was not perfect. Her Missionaries of Charity were not perfect. Her methods, clinics, and ideas were not without their flaws.
That being said, girlfriend has some very, very, very misguided haters.
Her clinics weren’t clean, they say. Kolkata wasn’t really that poor. She didn’t offer mental health support to those she ministered to. She was a racist colonizer. She pushed her religion on others. She acted as if suffering were a good thing. She took money from really bad people. She cozied up to politicians. There’s an entire podcast promising to reveal some deep dark secrets about the Missionaries of Charity, but to be frank, I listened to a few episodes and walked away with the feeling that most people just really don’t get what religious vocations are or the basics of convent life.
I’d like to break these critiques into three overarching ones and address them individually: that Mother Teresa’s clinics weren’t healthy or safe places, that she pushed her religion on non-Christians, and that she idolized suffering. Therein, I’ll try to address as many critiques as possible.