Define 'hypocrisy'

[andystyle]

I don't know where you could have acquired the 'understanding' that I assumed anything, let alone hypocrisy, about Mother Teresa. If you read my post you'll see that I eschewed giving any such indications.

OK, so what exactly were you referring to in the thread title?

What I - er - have a grudging respect for is the ability of believers (i.e. you) to flip things around - she acknowledged that she was suffering from a complete absence of contact with any god and yet she carried on wearing the nun's outfit and contined to act as a believer through and through. There was nothing to prevent her from doffing the nun's habit and continuing to do everything she had been doing previously without the 'Mother Teresa' label. But perhaps she was trapped in the fiction she had created?

Feeling an absence of God doesn't automatically mean you don't believe in God. Nor does it mean you have to abandon the beliefs you held until you felt that absence. There may have been nothing preventing her continuing as a charitable person without being 'Mother Theresa', but maybe she chose to keep believing despite her crisis of faith?

It is said that Mother Teresa was not a particularly pleasant person to work with, and her charitable works were laced with an intolerance for other religions and for humanism. (No doubt you'll want links, I'll try to provide them.) If true, that puts another perspective on her refusal to publicly conform with her inner experiences.

I'll take your word for it - I'm not particularly bothered. All this would demonstrate is that she's human...perhaps not the most tolerant human, but nobody's perfect. I'm not advocating being intolerant towards other religions etc etc, but that doesn't cheapen her good deeds either.

[Aleks]

What I have understood reading the articles was that she believed that Jesus spoke to her and gave her instructions. He then stopped talking to her and she spent the rest of her life hoping (and praying) that he would talk to her again. From her letter it seems that she even asked other people to pray for the return of his voice....

To me at least that doesn't tie in with the definitions of hypocrisy given above.

[straycat]

I don't know where you could have acquired the 'understanding' that I assumed anything, let alone hypocrisy, about Mother Teresa. If you read my post you'll see that I eschewed giving any such indications.

Well - your next paragraph seems to give the indications that your first post carefully eschewed. Given that you seem to think she was only 'acting' as a believer, rather than the more likely explanation that she still had extreme faith in her religious beliefs.

What I - er - have a grudging respect for is the ability of believers (i.e. you) to flip things around - she acknowledged that she was suffering from a complete absence of contact with any god and yet she carried on wearing the nun's outfit and contined to act as a believer through and through. There was nothing to prevent her from doffing the nun's habit and continuing to do everything she had been doing previously without the 'Mother Teresa' label. But perhaps she was trapped in the fiction she had created?

I presume you have read the full Time article quoted in the page you linked to - but on the offchance you haven't, there's a very interesting paragraph in there which gives the context for the main quote:

At the suggestion of a confessor, she wrote the agonized plea that begins this section, in which she explored the theological worst-possible-case implications of her dilemma.

It's not a statement of the state of her belief - it's a deliberate exploration of her worst fears. Sounds quite different if taken out of context though...