Said Pope Francis at the canonization ceremony.
ADDED: From the archive:
She tried her best to believe. Her atheism was not like mine. I can't believe it and I am glad to think that it is not true, that there is a dictator in the heavens. So the fact that there is no evidence for it pleases me. She really wished it was true. She tried to live her life as if it was true. She failed. And she was encouraged by cynical old men to carry on doing so because she was a great marketing tool for her church, and I think that they should answer for what they did to her and what they have been doing to us. I think it has been fraud and exploitation yet again....ALSO: To clarify the previous quote, which is (obviously?) from Christopher Hitchens, here was the news from 2007:
The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."That made me think of:
I'd like to conclude with a passage from 1 John, Chapter 4. You know it? See, most groups I speak to don't know that. But we know it. If you want, we can say it together: "No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us." And that is so true.
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Mother Teresa wrote about suffering from "spiritual dryness." Hitchens twisted that to assert she was an atheist. It was deliberate and it was scummy.
They're counting card tricks as miracles.
Trump quote is gold. For the ages.
Trump's speeches have gotten so much better. The debates will be a complete beat down. That's if Hillary shows up.
Greatest God ever.
Long suffering is a KJV Tyndall translated Christian virtue. Living in Calcutta among the abandoned and rejected dying untouchables surrounded by the Hindi Brahmins hatreds for a lifetime made Theresa into a Saint in God's eyes. She will never lose her eternal reward for that long distance show of mercy.
Of course that also made her the most despised person on earth or in heaven by Hillary's cult of foetus murder for fun and profit.
Christopher Hitchens was not a good commentator on religion. He did not so much as possess the proper vocabulary for discussing religion (what did Hitchens mean when he wrote 'God'?), so, naturally, he wrote about God and religion quite a bit.
Trump's speeches (as they are now written) will surprise you. He's either getting better at speaking off the top of his head, or is hiring better speech writers.
Does he believe what he is saying? I dunno. But I do know that Hillary believes nothing that comes out of her mouth, which means that she's perfectly aligned with me. I don't believe a word she says either.
Cannonization ceremony.
"It’s something very much worth remembering: a world without faith in God wouldn’t be a more rational or more humane place." - Walter Russel Mead
Today there was a quote about this beatification, on NPR of all places, that made sense.
"You don't have to be perfect to be a saint."
NPR loves Mother Theresa because of her hospice care for the terminally ill, which to their minds is just one little skip and a jump away from euthanasia. That NPR does not understand Mother Theresa's life is unsurprising. That they reported on this Catholic Church action at all is.
Saint Trump. He quoted a Bilble passage. Pandering can be done in all sorts of ways.
Christopher Hitchens was not a good commentator on religion. He did not so much as possess the proper vocabulary for discussing religion (what did Hitchens mean when he wrote 'God'?),
I read a bio of *my* pope, John Paul II, by Tad Szulc and it was so flat, totally unlike his glowing bio of Castro. Then I read the JPII bio written by George Weigel - like night and day. Szulc simply did not have the imagination, or vocabulary, as you say, to take on JPII except as an especially ignorant observer.
I guess you don't have to like your subject but it makes the reader feel better about him if you do.
You really should just give it all up, 'Unknown.' Whatever shameless thing Trump has done, you will always find that Hillary has done the same thing, more cynically.
Hillary speaks to a Black Minister:
"You're doing what is the most important thing to do, it's continuing to study and learn what the scripture says and what it means," she said. "I have a preacher friend who sends me scripture and devotionals, sometimes mini-sermons every day."
Hunt told Clinton that you "always learn something when you read it again and inspect it."
"Well, it's alive," Clinton said. "It's the living word."
Note that Hillary does not say that she actually reads the mini-sermons, scripture, and devotionals, only that they are sent to her.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/27/politics/hillary-clinton-2016-election-faith/
Farmer: Mother Teresa wrote about suffering from "spiritual dryness." Hitchens twisted that to assert she was an atheist. It was deliberate and it was scummy.
Hitchens had a run-of-the-ill "sperg atheist" understanding of religious belief. (A phrase like "dictator in the heavens" is a give-away.) So, despite his hostility, I think his interpretation of "spiritual dryness" was probably honest enough, given the limitations of his own understanding.
Mother Teresa was a faithful Catholic who talked fully as a believer: “I don’t claim anything of the work. It’s his work. I’m like a little pencil in his hand. That’s all. He does the thinking. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do it. The pencil has only to be allowed to be used. In human terms, the success of our work should not have happened, no? That is a sign that it’s his work, and that he is using others as instruments – all our Sisters. None of us could produce this. Yet see what he has done.”
Maybe India can be the brightest jewel in the crown once again.
"the pencil has nothing to do with it"
Non nobis Domine
They should market a Mother Theresa Barbie. Give her some sleek, form fitting religious garb and thus encourage our children to be more altruistic. Martel could also us this as an opportunity to market the factory rejects. These could be the cripples that St. Barbie cares for in their sad, last days.
Too bad we atheists don't have an Atheist pope. If we did, I would try to get him/her to un-sanctify, un-beatify Mother Theresa. She'd probably have to do a couple of certified scientific experiments to qualify, of course. After all, she was more atheist than Catholic.
The media would probably take no notice, not even National Proletarian Radio. Still, it's offensive for the Catholic Church to claim one who is not their own. Better than what they did to other atheists like Giordano Bruno and Jon Hus. I'm sure glad they didn't try to beatify Galileo.
Christopher Hitchens was a thoroughly repulsive person.
Thanks for proving that all human culture has a Trump angle
To equate her statement that "she felt no presence of God whatsoever" with unbelief is a misunderstanding. What she describes is a phenomenon well known in Christian mystical literature. St. John of the Cross wrote a book about it in the 16th century, "Dark Night of the Soul."
Teresa's faith wavered but did not break. She withstood secular corruption and the temptation to conflate logical domains.
There are atheists and theists. The scientific domain is stifling, so agnostics are few and far between.
“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child's faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.
What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you fell you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God. ”
- Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being
Was a volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity for a couple of years but only met Mother Teresa once, very briefly; she was a small woman, whose stooped back inflicted by the passage of the years and all her physical hardships made seem even smaller. She spoke a few words I won't forget.
AA quoted: "I'd like to conclude with a passage from 1 John, Chapter 4. You know it? See, most groups I speak to don't know that. But we know it. If you want, we can say it together: "No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us." And that is so true.
Allow me to add: “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “ ..... And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Bill: A faith that just accepts is a child's faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.
I've always said a faith that hasn't been beaten white hot on the anvil of doubt is of literally no use to me.
Roughcoat @ 11:34am : Yep, he sure was.
"Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."
- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (advise from a senior devil to his nephew)
Well said, @Paul Snively.
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