Mother Teresa's mental state

[Lisa Simpson]

I'm not even sure what the point of publishing this was, except to mitigate the disaster of cruelty and inhumanity of her life by blaming depression?

Does the church need to mitigate the cruelty and inhumanity of her life? I think for the vast majority of people (excluding those here) Mother Teresa is synonymous with compassion. Most people don't know the real story.

 

[JoeEllison]

Does the church need to mitigate the cruelty and inhumanity of her life? I think for the vast majority of people (excluding those here) Mother Teresa is synonymous with compassion. Most people don't know the real story.

That's what I don't get either. It seems as though they are tearing her down for some reason. Maybe the new pope is angry that a mere woman is held in higher regard than he is?

 

[Abdul Alhazred]

My understanding is that declaring a saint falls under Papal infallibility ...

Canonization is a quasi-judicial process, though of course any given Pope is in a position to move it along.

 

[Elind]

That's what I don't get either. It seems as though they are tearing her down for some reason. Maybe the new pope is angry that a mere woman is held in higher regard than he is?

Actually, I'm not sure I understood exactly who had all these papers (which must have been in different places), and who collected them and who released them. Did the Pope really have anything to do with that? Did the Vatican?

 

[JoeEllison]

Actually, I'm not sure I understood exactly who had all these papers (which must have been in different places), and who collected them and who released them. Did the Pope really have anything to do with that? Did the Vatican?

The Time article describes the papers as "consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years." So, the papers were mostly held by higher-ups in the Church. As far as the Vatican and Pope having anything to do with it, my understanding is that they run a pretty tight ship over there.

 

[juniper_ann]

Sorry, this is long and rambling, but there were several points brought up that I wanted to discuss.

First of all, Mother Theresa was a nun. She had taken a vow of obedience. It is most likely that she did not forbid the publishing of her works. There is a long tradition of saints asking to be kept from the limelight (out of humility and a sense of unworthiness), and a long tradition of superiors insisting that the saints be shoved back into the limelight so that the world can profit from their influence. It’s intrusive and disrespectful by modern standards, but monastic life in general often seems intrusive and disrespectful by modern standards.

Also, although the letters were between her and her confessor, they were not confession. Confession cannot take place by letter.

So basically, while the publishing of this book may seem unethical to us, it is consistent with the social contract that Mother Theresa willingly entered. If she felt trapped by that social contract later on, then that's a shame, and if she (wittingly or unwittingly) caused harm because of her misery, then that's tragic.

Mother Theresa’s doubts and trials will not necessarily be frowned upon, nor are they unknown within the church. My youth group leader, a brilliant and intellectual Catholic, told me in about 1999 (two years after Mother Theresa died) that Mother Theresa had suffered from “spiritual dryness” (i.e., loss of joy and zeal) for most of her life. The Catholic church does not teach prosperity theology. It teaches that God wants the best possible result for the world in the end, but he’s not afraid to crack a few eggs.

Some reasons given for spiritual dryness among saints are:
1. Spiritual dryness is suffering. Suffering is good because:
a. You can offer it up to God to reduce evil—in your soul, in the world, in the sufferings of the souls in purgatory, etc. Suffering embraced means less total suffering.
b. It’s good for self-discipline.
2. Spiritual favors (e.g., joy in prayer) are a gift from God, and he gives them out as needed. Perhaps this person was strong enough not to need them.
3. The more good you are doing for God and the world, the more the devil wants to trip you up.


Canonizing a saint does not clearly fall under papal infallibility, although I’m not sure where it does fall on the spectrum of “Catholics must believe” to “Catholics may believe if they like.”

I wonder how many saints were really just suffering from mental illnesses. My mother once had a manic episode that, in another time and place, would almost certainly have looked like a visit from God.

http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol8is1/reda.html
This essay makes what appears to be a compelling case that St. Catherine of Sienna suffered from anorexia nervosa.

And all that humility and self-abnegation that saints employ? Oh God, I am not worthy, and all that? It sure looks like depression to me.

 

[JoeEllison]

It teaches that God wants the best possible result for the world in the end, but he’s not afraid to crack a few eggs.

So, maybe that explains why she became a master at "cracking" more "eggs" than anyone could ever have imagined?

 

[Elind]

Some reasons given for spiritual dryness among saints are:
1. Spiritual dryness is suffering. Suffering is good because:
a. You can offer it up to God to reduce evil—in your soul, in the world, in the sufferings of the souls in purgatory, etc. Suffering embraced means less total suffering.
b. It’s good for self-discipline.
2. Spiritual favors (e.g., joy in prayer) are a gift from God, and he gives them out as needed. Perhaps this person was strong enough not to need them.
3. The more good you are doing for God and the world, the more the devil wants to trip you up.

It sure looks like depression to me.

Me too, with lots of self serving spin around it. After all, why would God allow something so mundane as clinical depression afflict a potential saint, when there are so many better explanations?

 

[calebprime]

I'm curious about opinions on the latest article in Time about Mother Teresa.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html

I'm not an expert, nor a fan, nor have I read Hitchens on the Missionary Position, but it struck a very personal chord with me.

I was surprised to read what I thought was eloquent, albeit poetic, prose from her, and the frankness was certainly admirable, if not simply a sign of very human weakness. Not what I would call saintly in my view of the word.

But what really struck me was how exactly her emotional descriptions corresponded with what I had once felt many years ago, although with one or two big differences.

I never had a crush on Jesus, and I never heard voices telling me what to do.

But I did have depression, which she describes to a tee. Substitute Jesus and God, for Meaning of Life and so on, and it's exactly the same thing I once knew.

Our experiences differ however in that she never got rid of her delusions. I realized that better days that I remembered were possible and that they and their stimuli were were the goal to work for. 20 years later those episodes eventually faded.

Mother Teresa instead seems to have coped by justifying her suffering as the will of God, and then continued her task largely on the basis that this was what she HAD to do.

How much more eloquent and admirable all this would have been if her writings had instead told us that what she came to realize was that what she should do is transfer the, inescapably ambiguous by her own words, hots she had for Jesus, to a simple love for her fellow human beings, and given the world its first ever true atheist saint.

I've been there, so I can feel for anyone who suffers depression. Takes the fun of life away and all that. I guess I'm more inclined, knowing this, to take it out on the pious ones who want to make something else of her obvious mental condition in more ways than one.

From the top of Page 5 of Time Magazine's Web presentation:



I have the impression that Mother Teresa experienced this "darkness" as part of her lifelong journey of self abnegation. From a western perspective, it might look like nothing but dissonance in regard to the notion faith, a problem from which one would seek to recover. I think it's likely, however, that Mother Teresa ultimately abandoned all hope of recovery. Yet she kept on doing what she felt she could to help others. Her actions and her letters appear to me to be part of the same orientation of getting closer to selflessness.

She was in India. Her letters exploring issues of self and suffering sound to me like the words of someone who had been influenced by eastern thought.

Does the church need to mitigate the cruelty and inhumanity of her life? I think for the vast majority of people (excluding those here) Mother Teresa is synonymous with compassion. Most people don't know the real story.

And all that humility and self-abnegation that saints employ? Oh God, I am not worthy, and all that? It sure looks like depression to me.

Fascinating discussion. Lifelong atheist here.

I have some questions.

First, I am aware of Hitchens, but I'd never read his book on her. Can someone summarize the case for how MT is bad or has hurt people, image aside? Lisa? JoeEllison?

Second: entirely different question, about where we draw the line on defining something as depression.

When medical people talk about clinical depression, and when one reads a typical checklist, one sees things like:

-changes in sleeping: not sleeping or sleeping too much
-psychomotor agitation or retardation
-loss of interest in activities that used to give pleasure
-changes in appetite: not eating or eating too much
-changes in thought process: confusion, or indecision
-other changes: loss of libido.
-feelings of shame or worthlessness: low self-esteem

-some people describe the world as seeming flat, and losing the vividness of their senses


So, given a description of depression as something like that, does what she describe fit the definition?


I want to preempt certain responses. I'm not entirely naive, people in my family have suffered mental illness, and at one time I thought I might be depressed, because I was in a kind of despair. I've come to conclude that I wasn't depressed, but I see the lines being drawn differently by different people.

btw, the Church's rhetoric around MT's suffering just sounds like the worst sort of rationalization: "Christ is loving you by sharing his suffering. He's loving you by being absent." Bollocks.

so, to summarize, 2 questions:

1) why she bad?
2) why she sad?

 

[MWare]

Well, apparently a Jesuit has decided to step up to her defense. I saw this in the NY Times today but found it online here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/29/opinion/edmartin.php

In time, with the aid of the priest who acted as her spiritual director, Mother Teresa concluded that these painful experiences could help her identify not only with the abandonment that Jesus Christ felt during the crucifixion, but also with the abandonment that the poor faced daily. In this way she hoped to enter, in her words, the "dark holes" of the lives of the people with whom she worked.

Yeah, whatever helps you sleep.

 

[JoeEllison]

First, I am aware of Hitchens, but I'd never read his book on her. Can someone summarize the case for how MT is bad or has hurt people, image aside? Lisa? JoeEllison?

Gotcha. I assume we can also skip the part about how she was associated with the evils of the Catholic Church in general?

She "ministered to the sick and dying". She didn't help the dying, prevent them from dying, provide medicine for the sick, help them get any medical care at all, or even let them leave to go to the hospital. When SHE had a heart attack, she got a pacemaker. When SHE broke her collar bone, she went to the hospital. When SHE had a failing heart, she had surgery for it. So, she didn't mind taking full advantage of modern medicine to prolong her life and ease her own suffering.

For the poor? Maybe an aspirin, and her exhortation that suffering is noble. Other people's suffering, of course, in cheap beds or on cots, while the money she collected was funneled into more convents, and not into aid for the poor and suffering. Hundreds of millions of dollars over the years by some estimates, and nothing done to alleviate any suffering whatsoever.

 

[Elind]

Fascinating discussion. Lifelong atheist here.

I have some questions.

First, I am aware of Hitchens, but I'd never read his book on her. Can someone summarize the case for how MT is bad or has hurt people, image aside? Lisa? JoeEllison?

As stated below, from what I understand second hand, she was primarily interested in saving souls, not lives, although that is not the impression the popular press gave out. Rather they ignored it.

Second: entirely different question, about where we draw the line on defining something as depression.

When medical people talk about clinical depression, and when one reads a typical checklist, one sees things like:

-changes in sleeping: not sleeping or sleeping too much
-psychomotor agitation or retardation
-loss of interest in activities that used to give pleasure
-changes in appetite: not eating or eating too much
-changes in thought process: confusion, or indecision
-other changes: loss of libido.
-feelings of shame or worthlessness: low self-esteem

-some people describe the world as seeming flat, and losing the vividness of their senses


So, given a description of depression as something like that, does what she describe fit the definition?

To a tee in my opinion and personal experience, after reading her plaintive poetry.

I want to preempt certain responses. I'm not entirely naive, people in my family have suffered mental illness, and at one time I thought I might be depressed, because I was in a kind of despair. I've come to conclude that I wasn't depressed, but I see the lines being drawn differently by different people.

It's hard to explain depression to anyone who hasn't experienced it, unless perhaps one is very close to someone suffering and even then it's very hard to avoid just telling someone to get a grip.

btw, the Church's rhetoric around MT's suffering just sounds like the worst sort of rationalization: "Christ is loving you by sharing his suffering. He's loving you by being absent." Bollocks.

It's interesting that not once in 66 years (I assume, since it wasn't mentioned in what I read) was she counseled to seek help for depression. I'll bet any other person confessing to a reasonably intelligent priest would be given that advice.

One has to wonder how her history would have differed with a few bottles of lithium pills.

 

[calebprime]

...

She "ministered to the sick and dying". She didn't help the dying, prevent them from dying, provide medicine for the sick, help them get any medical care at all, or even let them leave to go to the hospital. ...

For the poor? Maybe an aspirin, and her exhortation that suffering is noble. Other people's suffering, of course, in cheap beds or on cots, while the money she collected was funneled into more convents, and not into aid for the poor and suffering. Hundreds of millions of dollars over the years by some estimates, and nothing done to alleviate any suffering whatsoever.

Thank you.

I bolded the most damning part.

And, I'm guessing, she did nothing to support the kind of social change necessary to reduce suffering--such as supporting political candidates who want to change the health-care system, or using the money she collected to build hospitals.

What's the counter-argument? Any supporters here?

 

[JoeEllison]

And, I'm guessing, she did nothing to support the kind of social change necessary to reduce suffering--such as supporting political candidates who want to change the health-care system, or using the money she collected to build hospitals.

Actually, she did the opposite. In exchange for money, she gave her support to the worst sort of dictators, like the Duvalier clan. She also came down on the side of Union Carbide when an accident in their India facility(often described as the world's worst industrial accident) killed thousands and made hundreds of thousands more ill.

 

[shemp]

I suppose next we'll find out that she was a cannibal and feasted on the flesh and blood of the damned.

 

[JoeEllison]

I suppose next we'll find out that she was a cannibal and feasted on the flesh and blood of the damned.

Why make things up, when the truth is bad enough?

 

[Elind]

What's the counter-argument? Any supporters here?

Surely you jest?

 

[sophia8]

Actually, she did the opposite. In exchange for money, she gave her support to the worst sort of dictators, like the Duvalier clan. She also came down on the side of Union Carbide when an accident in their India facility(often described as the world's worst industrial accident) killed thousands and made hundreds of thousands more ill.

From 'The Final Verdict':

Mother Teresa, whose post-Nobel reputation within India was then very high indeed, rushed in to Bhopal like an international dignitary. Her contribution in Bhopal has become a legend: she looked at the carnage, nodded gravely three times and said, 'I say, forgive.' There was a stunned silence in the audience. She took in the incredulity, nodded again, and repeated, 'I say, forgive.' Then she quickly wafted away, like visiting royalty. Her comments would have been somewhat justified if she had sent in her Missionaries of Charity to help in any way. But to come in unannounced, and make an insensitive comment like that so early on, was nothing short of an insult to the dead and suffering. In the wider world however, her image became even more enhanced, as she was seen even more like Jesus Christ, who would turn the other cheek, although in this instance the cheek was not hers. People in Bhopal were not amused; it is said that the only reason Mother escaped being seriously heckled was by dint of being an elderly woman.
Mother Teresa's propaganda machinery handled her Bhopal trip in the following way:
"As she was present to the agony of Calcutta, and that of India's other great cities, so Mother Teresa was present to the anguish of Bhopal, a city four hundred miles to the south of Delhi, when a cloud of smoke enveloped a crowded slum on the night of December 3, 1984. The Missionaries of Charity, who had long been working in Bhopal, escaped being among the victims because the death-bringing gas was blown by the wind in a different direction... Even while the dead were being cremated or buried, Mother Teresa rushed to Bhopal with teams of Missionaries of Charity to work with the Sisters already on the scene. 'We have come to love and care for those who most need it in this terrible tragedy,' said Mother Teresa, as she went from centre to centre, from hospital to hospital visiting afflicted people. "
This is an extremely clever play of words, as 'Mother Teresa was present to the anguish of Bhopal' means literally that; 'teams of Missionaries of Charity' means the couple of nuns who accompanied Mother to Bhopal; but the verb 'work' is employed in a very broad sense. 'The Missionaries of Charity (who) had long been working in Bhopal' is however entirely true, as they have had a small but neat home for destitutes (called Nirmal Hriday, like the one in Calcutta) for many years.
Another of Mother's biographies has a photograph in it with the following caption:'Helping A Survivor of the Chemical Leak at Bhopal, December 1984'8.
The photograph concerned shows Mother daintily offering a marigold flower to a woman moribundly lying in a hospital bed. 'Helping' no doubt, but not in the sole sense that the world would expect of Mother Teresa.

 

[sophia8]

I wonder how many saints were really just suffering from mental illnesses. My mother once had a manic episode that, in another time and place, would almost certainly have looked like a visit from God.

I had an aunt who thought the Virgin Mary was talking to her regularly. If she had lived a couple of centuries earlier, she would almost certainly have become a saint. This being the 20th century however, she was eventually taken to hospital and given electro-shock therapy. If the Virgin Mary spoke to her again after that, my aunt never mentioned it.

 

[Elind]

I wonder how many saints were really just suffering from mental illnesses.

In all seriousness, I would ask how many were not?

At least to the extent that they might have known they were heading in that direction, as opposed to being picked by the Papacy as another convenient catch. M. Teresa certainly would have know that was her destination.