I Pity the Fool

How do you solve a problem like Teresa? To call her an atheist, as Hitchens does, is reductivist and absurd. She did not "feel" the presence of god. So what? Nor do most believers, despite protestations to the contrary. The idea that the presence of god or grace is a sort physical, endocrine actuality within the human body is largely the belief of crackpot (which is not to say unpopular) protestantism in any case. Clearly Teresa believed there to be a god of some sort or other. To feel "forsaken" is inherently to grant existence to some remembering entity.

But the depth and duration of her doubt clearly undercut the argument that she was a believing saint living through a night of Augustinian doubt. It's fairly clear now that though she credited something or other with forgetting her, she was pretty certain that the whole Jesus racket was exactly that: a racket. And yet she was intimately a part of it, and no matter how deeply she came to suspect that the father, son, and holy ghost were at most colorful characters in a popular tale, she was not about to start telling the dalits that prayer was not the answer.

In the Post, Michael Gerson continues this month's tradition of misunderstanding Graham Greene, but quoting one of the famous lines from the unfamous Brighton Rock. Interestingly, the line was spoken not to a saint, but to a little murderer. For what that's worth. How it applies to Teresa remains a question. Greene's priest is talking about forgiveness for crimes of thought and action. Is Gerson implying that Teresa's disbelief was like murder? Perhaps. Who ever knows what he's trying to say.

In the end, Teresa woke up to this, at least. Jesus does not speak to us aloud in Wilts and Thous. But like many of us who wake in the middle of the night, she just kept her eyes closed, figuring that it was close enough at least to slumber. When she woke, she'd be a bit more rested than if she stayed up thinkin'. Given her dedication to the poor, it is difficult to say that her public dishonesty caused any particular harm, but given her PR value to the Church, it's hard to say she did much good either. Her life, like so many, ended in a wash, valuable only as a lesson that the price of unexamined doubt is unhappiness. No one who does so much small good for so many should die feeling herself to be a failure. That she did is a testament to something appalling all right, but it's not the mercy of god.