Those who have come to her defense make a more interesting argument (which isn't to say the faith-bashers might not be right), taking the revelations as an occasion to challenge simplistic understandings of faith and its demands. Representative is a piece by the editors of the New York Times, called "A Saint of Darkness," which ends:“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe,” wrote Flannery O’Connor, the Roman Catholic author whose stories traverse the landscape of 20th-century unbelief. “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.”
O’Connor suffered from isolation and debilitating illness, Mother Teresa from decades of spiritual emptiness. But — and here is the exemplary part, inspiring even by the standards of a secular age — they both shut up about it and got on with their work. Mother Teresa, sick with longing for a sense of the divine, kept faith with the sick of Calcutta. And now, dead for 10 years, she is poised to reach those who can at last recognize, in her, something of their own doubting, conflicted selves.
I'm of two minds here. When a faith strong enough to go without food or water keeps someone going as they do something commendable (and much of what Mother Teresa did was certainly commendable) it's one thing. But what about the cases where what they're doing is something else? (Dedicated to the poorest, MT was blind to many others.) You can't reason with people who don't or can't reason with themselves. Mother Teresa's fidelity in extremis might be a consolation for mere mortals experiencing their "dark night of the soul," but it would be unfortunate were it to sanction or even recommend a hairshirt martyrdom like hers. Flannery O'Connor's characters are bracing to read about, but nobody should have to live as one.
