Teresa and Diana: Entwined for eternity?

Oak Lawn (IL) Reporter ^ | 10/23/03 | Michael M. Bates

[mikeb704]

On Sunday, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa, placing her on course for eventual canonization as a saint. An estimated crowd of 300,000 cheered the memory of the tiny nun who spent much of her life serving the poor and the dying.

The ceremony was not without its critics. Some believe that the Vatican may have cut corners to elevate Mother Teresa more quickly. Others have voiced concerns that, in her eagerness to spread her ministry, she accepted contributions from tainted sources such as Charles Keating.

The big problem some people have with the nun from Calcutta is that she truly accepted the precepts of the Church. She was, for example, an unwavering opponent of abortion.

In 1994 she gave a talk in which she said: "Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love one another but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion."

The pro-abortion Clintons and Gores were in attendance. Their reaction was to simply look straight ahead, not applaud, and pretend they hadn’t heard a word.

Mother Teresa’s devotion to the Roman Catholic Church made her an extremist to some. In the on-line magazine Slate this week, Christopher Hitchens has an article titled, "Mommie Dearest: The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud." Did he leave anything out?

I prefer the view of the late John Cardinal O’Connor. If Mother Teresa wasn’t already accorded a place in heaven, he said, the thought of his own death and what will follow really frightens him.

Mother Teresa died less than a week after Princess Diana. The two very different women, who had been linked in life by their compassion for suffering people, appeared to some to be linked in death.

The princess was one of the world’s beautiful people. On the cover of "People" dozens of times, Diana seemed to have what almost all of us want: wealth, fame, luxury and ready access to other beautiful people.

It was only after her death that it became evident what an insecure, isolated, and unhappy young woman she really was. Despite all the worldly gifts she had, much of her life was empty and sad.

Mother Teresa didn’t have much in the way of possessions. The Pope once gave her a car. She raffled it off, using the money for a leper colony. No one ever asserted that the nun was one of the world’s beautiful people.

As her diaries and letters have shown, Mother Teresa’s life was hardly one of pacific contentment. She experienced a crisis of faith. She questioned her worthiness, God’s love, even His existence. "My smile is a great cloak that hides a multitude of pains," she wrote.

The old nun and the young princess had far more in common than we realized. We should have.

They were mere, imperfect humans. We all share the weaknesses, vulnerabilities and fears. Even the saints among us.

Perhaps it was coincidence, or perhaps not, when the day after Mother Teresa was beatified, Princess Diana made the news once again.

A letter has surfaced, one purportedly written by Diana less than a year before her death in a car accident. In it, she identifies a person who "is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry."

The name of the person has been withheld for, surprise, legal reasons. Conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this latest morsel.

What I found fascinating was that, within 24 hours, the two women both were in the news again. One for moving toward sainthood, and the other for more speculation about her death.

Perhaps it was coincidence, or perhaps not.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Diana seemed to have what almost all of us want: wealth, fame, luxury and ready access to other beautiful people.

"almost all of us want"??? Oh barf!

[Mears]

I'm with you. Access to the beautiful people has never been one of my priorities.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

I can do without wealth, fame, and luxury also.

[AFPhys]

"entwined for eternity ? " ... LOL ... some maroons will try to sell us anything.

[ffusco]

The adulation of that adulterous clothes horse made me sick, and when Mother Thersa passed away-hardly a peep. For shame.

[MHT]

Diane's life was about "self" (her moods, her clothes, her children, her marriage, her body) whereas Mother Theresa's life was about "self-LESS-ness". Diane's concern for others came with a guarantee of media coverage and was manipulated, by her, for maximum impact. Mother Theresa didn't need the press watching her to do good works. Diane was about trying to control situations--Mother Theresa was about submission to the will of God. Diane favored psychics; Mother Theresa believed in Jesus and the power of prayer. Diane embraced the world, the more the better. Mother Theresa shunned the world. Diane was a lost soul. Mother Theresa had found something that can't be bought and ministered to people who were so destitute, all they had left were their souls. Other than living during the same time frame and both speaking English, they have nothing in common.

[Tax-chick]

A letter has surfaced, one purportedly written by Diana less than a year before her death in a car accident. In it, she identifies a person who "is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry."

Oh, yeah, and I bet the microwave radiation broadcast controlled her brain (sic) so she couldn't put her seatbelt on. (cue Twilight Zone music).

It's incredible how stupid these people think the public is ... no, I guess it's incredible how stupid the public IS ...

[Wright is right!]

"The Pope once gave her a car. She raffled it off, using the money for a leper colony."

At the risk of ignonomy, I'm going to posit that it might have been entirely possible that the vehicle MIGHT have been a tool that could have helped her cause far more than the dollars from the raffle. Although I would never impugn Blessed Mother Teresa's motives, there ARE times when the truly selfless nonetheless do things to SEEM truly selfless. The truly selfless don't make a show of being selfless. They just are. I'll never be a Blessed Mother Teresa, but if I were in her position, I'd have found a really good use for that car.

Michael

[Brian Allen]

<< Mother Teresa died less than a week after ... Diana Spencer. The two very different women, who had been linked in life by their compassion for suffering people, appeared to some to be linked in death. >>

What absolute bullshit.

To compare these two women is to compare bank robbers and bank guards on the basis that both carry guns.

The dissolute Spencer substituted symbolism for duty, carefully staged photo shoots for any actual effort and pursued her own self-will-run-riot to its inevitable consequence: her own ignominious end at the hands of the moronic cocaine-trafficing Sonny-like son of an Egyptian of very dubious morality.

Mother Theresa's humility was such that she took the phrase "death with dignity" to mean that she was required to bend down and to pick up from the gutters of Hindu India's putrid cities the human beings whose condemnation to life and death without any dignity whatsoever is so conveniently rationalized and justified by Hindu India's obscenely superimposed "caste system."

[Tax-chick]

I don't think there's one right answer to this. Mother Teresa sometimes did things on principle that seem contrary to common sense. Perhaps she was thinking that the need for gas, insurance, maintenance, storage, etc., for the car would make it a burden, or that driving instead of walking or using public transportation would distance the sisters from the poor. There are lots of possibilities.

She refused a large annual donation from the Knights of Columbus, because she said the expectation of a large sum regularly could lead them away from total reliance on God to meet their needs. She asked instead for the Knights to do even more volunteer work for the poor.

St. Francis of Assisi used similar reasoning regarding material gifts. It doesn't mean it would have been wrong to use the car, or to accept the Knights' money, but that the charism of their order required a different way.

[AFPhys]

thank you for your illustrations, and ... - well said -

(including your tag line)

[shaggy eel]

,,, brilliantly said Brian! Princess Diana jumped on the Bob Geldoff bandwagon of professional glamour carers to boost her own appeal to the masses. She manipulated the media with her Bambi in peril routine and couldn't hold a candle to Mother Teresa. A dignified death after a long and hard road of service to her fellow man in the most squalid conditions in Calcutta can't compare to death in a Benz 600 after gargling Champagne in a luxury hotel. You can fool some of the people all of the time, but this article won't do it.

[Bigg Red]

The two very different women, who had been linked in life by their compassion for suffering people, appeared to some to be linked in death.
****

Wrong! In Diana's case the "compassion" was a fake, an opportunity for photo ops. Do you think she ever actually got down and did anything for anyone? No, she showed up at this or that charity ball and smiled for the cameras. Big deal!

[Bigg Red]

adulterous clothes horse

***
Succinct and exact!

[freedumb2003]

Wrong! In Diana's case the "compassion" was a fake, an opportunity for photo ops.

Spot on! The linkage between Mother Theresa, who lived it, and Diana, who faked it, is the same as I have between the two: we all walked the earth at the same time for a while. Other than that there is zero linkage between them. None. And it is insulting to Theresa to even put the suggest one.

[mikeb704]

Wrong! In Diana's case the "compassion" was a fake. . .

Apparently you disagree with Mother Teresa on this point. She was quoted as saying: "She (Diana) was very concerned for the poor. She was very anxious to do something for them. That is why she was close to me."

[ladyinred]

Kind of odd that all of the posters who are lauding MT, as they should, have nothing nice to say about DIANA, yet MT really adored Diana, and thought she was doing great work for the poor and infirm.

[mikeb704]

I think some of the posters misinterpreted the statement that some people see a link between the two women as an assertion that they indeed had a great deal in common and that Diana's contributions were equivalent to those of MT.

[Brian Allen]

<< [Mother Theresa] "really adored" [Ms Spencer] >>

According to Ms Spencer's publicist, that is and to those too stupid to know they're being lied to.

In reality, if she ever thought of her at all, Mother Theresa believed Ms Spencer to be a wastrel, an ingrate and a lazy, phony, self-willed, publicity-hounding, serially-adulterous, dissolute slattern and to be [Both literally and advisedly] a scumbag.*

But she loved her and prayed she would turn back from her ever-accelerating spiral into the depravity that eventually afforded her the dignity of the consequences of her own actions.

*SCUMBAG
Function: noun
1 slang : USED CONDOM
2 slang : a dirty or unpleasant person