Your view on Mother Theresa ????

Mayflower · #1 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 05:02 AM

What is your view on Mother Thresa ?

We know that she did alos of charity work among the lepers and poor of India.

Is she a friend of the Gospel or is she (even though of her charity work) a deceiver because of her RCC teaching ????

I hath a discussion with a friend on RCC church, and he (not being a RCC) sees Mother Theresa a great women of God, bcause of her great work.

Any thoughts or information would be helpfull!!

Staphlobob · #2 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 05:55 AM

When I was in the RC seminary I admired her for her works. I thought she was a living saint. Kind, gentle and selfless.

However, I've since become a believer knowing that she is not to be judged according to the world's standard, but by God's Word alone. Consequently her refusal to recognize the lordship of Christ made her a deceiver. Doing good works for Satan is still satanic.

BTW, I thought it ironic that her death occurred the same day as princess Diana. No one noticed the former, but everyone grieves over the latter. The world's irony.

Daniel Ritchie · #3 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 07:03 AM

She proclaimed another gospel. In my opinion the woman was a fraud, she often did not give people the help they needed because she believed there was something meritorious in people suffering.

There are enough dear saints who did much good social work - CH Spurgeon, Andrew Reed, George Muller, William Wilberforce and a host of others. Let us look to their example instead.

Mayflower · #4 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 08:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daniel Ritchie

She proclaimed another gospel. In my opinion the woman was a fraud, she often did not give people the help they needed because she believed there was something meritorious in people suffering.

There are enough dear saints who did much good social work - CH Spurgeon, Andrew Reed, George Muller, William Wilberforce and a host of others. Let us look to their example instead.

Iam agree with you!

The problem is that many times you heard emotional arguments like;"you have to see how Mother Theresa worked amoung the poorest of the poor and how she took care for the lepers in India, and she only did this through the love of Jesus Christ !!!"

Shane · #5 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 08:34 AM

Gal 2:21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

Gal 5:4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.

Eph 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
Eph 2:9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Rom 5:9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
Rom 5:10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

If we trust in anything else apart from Christ we are lost no matter how wonderful a life we supposedly live.
Therefore if she believed that she would be cleansed in purgatory and not by the cross, she is lost. If she thought she could earn forgiveness, then she is lost.

ChristopherPaul · #6 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 09:27 AM

As my Pastor wisely says, all religions in this world are a corruption of the original one true religion. It is revealing how all religions emphasize works and how prone we are as fallen creatures to look to good works as making exceptions to bad beliefs. Of course this is nothing but pure works-based paganism. Faith and works go hand-in-hand. Many have faith but no works (which proves their faith is not real faith). Then there are those who have works but no faith (which leaves them still as righteous as filthy rags).

The latter is more difficult to discern because the works are all that is visible and the heart is hidden. But we know the mouth is the revealer of the heart. So in this case we note what is said and taught and then we can discern the wolves from the sheep.

Backwoods Presbyterian · #7 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 09:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daniel Ritchie

She proclaimed another gospel. In my opinion the woman was a fraud, she often did not give people the help they needed because she believed there was something meritorious in people suffering.

There are enough dear saints who did much good social work - CH Spurgeon, Andrew Reed, George Muller, William Wilberforce and a host of others. Let us look to their example instead.

christiana · #8 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 09:37 AM

A recent article in Newsweek(or Time?) on her life said she never found inner peace for herself. So sad to consider when she made such efforts and contributions to the well being of the poor.

Only our God who reads hearts knows on what level she related to Him!

Me Died Blue · #9 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 10:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by christiana

A recent article in Newsweek(or Time?) on her life said she never found inner peace for herself. So sad to consider when she made such efforts and contributions to the well being of the poor.

Only our God who reads hearts knows on what level she related to Him!

It was a Time Magazine article, entitled "Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith." Here are some of the most relevant excerpts from the article:

Quote:

[In] a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand."

Quote:

And in fact, that appears to be the case. A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. 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 absence seems to have started at almost precisely the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and — except for a five-week break in 1959 — never abated. Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'" Says the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and the author of My Life with the Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa's doubts: "I've never read a saint's life where the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented." Recalls Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light's editor: "I read one letter to the Sisters [of Teresa's Missionaries of Charity], and their mouths just dropped open. It will give a whole new dimension to the way people understand her."

The book is hardly the work of some antireligious investigative reporter who Dumpster-dived for Teresa's correspondence. Kolodiejchuk, a senior Missionaries of Charity member, is her postulator, responsible for petitioning for her sainthood and collecting the supporting materials. (Thus far she has been beatified; the next step is canonization.) The letters in the book were gathered as part of that process.

We have to remember (also also remind Roman Catholics with whom we discuss the issue) that many explicitly secular humanists have no doubt also spent much of their lives in service to others, yet obviously independent of any relation to Christ. That fact makes it clear that good works and sacrificial service in themselves are no evidence of one's being in Christ; thus, to determine the context and source of people's works and service, only the nature of their faith and their heart can differentiate or interpret that. And sadly, Mother Teresa's own descriptions (above) of those two things in her life seem to speak for themselves.

a mere housewife · #10 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 10:14 AM

Those are heart-breaking quotes -- silence and the emptiness.

holyfool33 · #11 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 04:07 PM

I felt she was a deciver any personwho can express admiration and suppourt for the various dictators she suppourted and pull "trick" baptisms on people is a very diluted person

Mayflower · #12 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by holyfool33

I felt she was a deciver any personwho can express admiration and suppourt for the various dictators she suppourted and pull "trick" baptisms on people is a very diluted person

Can you please explain further what you exactly means ?

Ivanhoe · #13 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 04:31 PM

I know a Bavinck quote that comes to mind, but I won't quote it. I have been infracted for much less.

PuritanCovenanter · #14 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 04:54 PM

I do believe there are RCC members who are regenerate. I believe John Michael Talbot is redeemed. I do believe the Popes are anti-Christs. They will be held accountable for the veil they place over the gospel.

It is a shame that Teresa never found peace with God. Spiritual depression even hits many Reformed folk and theologians but they always have assurance in the propitiating work of Christ. Most have seasons when Christ is found. William Cowper was one who struggled with great doubts.

Teresa was a good woman who did some very significant works for those who Christ would have her do them for. If she was trusting in Mary and the saints for intercession she was lost. If she trusted Christ alone for redemption than she will be seen in heaven. I do remember the thief on the cross who did see light at the end of his life. I hope that is true for her.

a mere housewife · #15 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 05:00 PM

I wish I could thank you twice or three times for that post, Randy.

Galatians220 · #16 (**permalink**) 06-10-2008, 06:38 PM

Some quotes from Mother Teresa:

"I love all religions. ... If people become better Hindus, better Muslims, better Buddhists by our acts of love, then there is something else growing there." [On another occasion, she again demonstrated her false gospel that 'there are many ways to God': "All is God--Buddists, Hindus, Christians, etc., all have access to the same God."]
It should be clear that "Mother" Teresa is anything but an Evangelical Christian. She is a self-sacrificing woman who is following a false religion. Consider some quotes from her speech at the 10/84 Worldwide Retreat for Priests:
"At the word of a priest, that little piece of bread becomes the body of Christ, the Bread of Life."
"Without a priest, without Jesus going with them, our sisters couldn't go anywhere."
"When the priest is there, then can we have our altar and our tabernacle and our Jesus. Only the priest put Jesus there for us. ... Jesus wants to go there, but we cannot bring him unless you first give him to us. This is why I love priests so much. We could never be what we are and do the things we do without you priests who first bring Jesus to us."
"Mary ... is our patroness and our Mother, and she is always leading us to Jesus."

Mother Teresa was a conventional Catholic. She had no assurance because she believed the false Gospel of Rome.

I pray for those billion souls worldwide who are like her, that the Lord would be pleased to and would glorify Himself by bringing them out of that monster that is RCC.

I would also like to just point out that those of you here who were not "cradle Catholics" have a "leg up" on those of us who were as to witnessing to and evangelizing Catholics. To another "cradle Catholic," I'm just a traitor. I have no credibility. We CCs are like Jews who become converted and then try to witness to other Jews that Yeshua HaMashiach was and is the Jewish Messiah. Other Jews have no use for such "traitors;" in fact, sometimes they "sit shiva" for them. Same with Catholics. They have no use for those of us who leave, but they're much more likely to listen to someone who was born into a Reformed or evangelical family and is willing to share the true Gospel with them.

Please, those of you who weren't born and raised Catholic -- please consider witnessing to Catholics you know... The Lord will certainly bless your efforts, as He does each time His Gospel is proclaimed and Christ is exalted.

Margaret

Staphlobob · #17 (**permalink**) 06-11-2008, 06:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Galatians220

To another "cradle Catholic," I'm just a traitor. I have no credibility. We CCs are like Jews who become converted and then try to witness to other Jews that Yeshua HaMashiach was and is the Jewish Messiah. Other Jews have no use for such "traitors;" in fact, sometimes they "sit shiva" for them. Same with Catholics. They have no use for those of us who leave, but they're much more likely to listen to someone who was born into a Reformed or evangelical family and is willing to share the true Gospel with them

Good points Margaret.

I still remember one rabid Romanist unable to comprehend that I'd become a Christian. He continually yelled at me via email, "But you were a priest! You were a priest!" As though that made a difference.

Abd_Yesua_alMasih · #18 (**permalink**) 06-11-2008, 07:37 PM

You were a priest? Now that would make an interesting testimony.

Galatians220 · #19 (**permalink**) 06-11-2008, 08:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Staphlobob

Good points Margaret.

I still remember one rabid Romanist unable to comprehend that I'd become a Christian. He continually yelled at me via email, "But you were a priest! You were a priest!" As though that made a difference.

Amazing - and yet not...

I guess I haven't been paying enough attention: I didn't realize you'd been a priest! Congratulations on the Lord's great gift of grace to you, and I know your reward will be great!!!! Reminds me of that book I think I mentioned in another post, "Night Journey from Rome to the New Jerusalem" by Clark Butterfield.

Quite recently, I had a rather explosive e-mail exchange with a former grade school and junior-high classmate of mine who is now a Jesuit, a faculty member at a *major Catholic university*. (I keep in touch with most old classmates.) The last time I actually saw him was in the 9th grade, when we were slow-dancing at a school dance and he was trying to tell me (over the blaring music) that he was going to enter the seminary. At that point, some nun chaperoning the dance thought we were dancing too close and shoved the "requisite Webster's Dictionary" between us to separate us -- during that conversation!

Anyway, a couple of months ago, he had circulated an e-mail to classmates, including me, from his university address that included the statement that all religions, including Islam, have "inherent dignity." He went on to enumerate the "merits" of Islam, Buddhism, etc.

This infuriated me no end, but I never like to merely sever ties that I've had for that long (who knows to whom the Lord wants me to witness?) and so I decided to call him on that statement, but not in front of the entire list. I replied to him alone and said, "Oh, come on! Cut it out! You know as well as I that that isn't true! Nothing that doesn't exalt Jesus Christ or proclaim Him as the sole means of salvation has ANY inherent dignity! How dare you confuse some befuddled folks who doubt Christ's deity anyway by saying that Islam has 'inherent dignity?' S****, we weren't taught that in [our old Catholic] school; that isn't the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and you know it..." I went on from there - and I did tell finally him (had been reticent with him on this in prior e-mails) that I'd left the church and what I am now. I never heard back from him on the matter. I don't take that to mean that our "friendship" has ended, just that he had no logical comeback to what I said.

After I sent that e-mail, though, I got to thinking: maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that IS the current teaching of the RCC now, that "all roads lead to God, whomever It/She may be."

I don't know, for I've been out of Catholicism for a long time.

If what my old classmate said in his long e-mail is "mainstream Catholic teaching" now, then things are worse than I thought... Much worse.

Margaret

SRoper · #20 (**permalink**) 06-11-2008, 10:48 PM

You need to brush up on your catechism, Margaret.

Quote:

841 The Church's relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1.2.3.9.3