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Nahar
Guest
Do they have any refutation or counter argument? Or do they simply plug in their ears and chant: “La, la! I can’t hear you!!!”
Accusations against Saint Teresa?
- Thread starter Willing_Spirit
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Willing_Spirit
Active member
I simply don’t believe any suffering is gratuitous. Thus, your premise is a false dilemma. Even if I can not understand a given circumstance, my wisdom is limited while God’s is infinite. The broad topic of suffering has been talked about many times by Catholic apologists and theologians, and in many threads on these forums.
Perhaps you could start a new thread if you are looking for potential reasons for the specific case of teething. Perhaps one is that it gives parents the opportunity to alleviate that suffering and strengthen a loving bond of trust with their babies.
Perhaps you could start a new thread if you are looking for potential reasons for the specific case of teething. Perhaps one is that it gives parents the opportunity to alleviate that suffering and strengthen a loving bond of trust with their babies.
Willing_Spirit
Active member
That is obviously a misrepresentation of my view, given that I mentioned in my reply that the purpose of some suffering could be the benefit gained in the practice of alleviating it. There is no debate to be had if my replies are going to either be left unread or twisted, which is just more evidence of earlier accusations that a degree of trolling is occurring. No doubt the arguments of apologists and theologians remain unconvincing because they have not been given adequate attention and consideration. Many listen only for a word to respond to rather than to understand. This has also gotten pretty off topic, so I don’t think I can reply again.
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goout
Guest
I don’t know about that.goout:
Thank you. So it’s not just me. Frankly, I know very few Catholics who think deeply enough about their faith to even think about any connection between virtue and suffering.
I think Catholics, and most other people for that matter, think about this all the time. Because suffering is unavoidable, and everyone tries to find meaning in it. It’s the standard premise people use to reject God.
Whether we actually pursue virtue in the midst of suffering is another story. Because virtues are not hypothetical, they are incarnate. And that is more difficult than merely considering it.
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goout
Guest
What the heck is gratuitous suffering?
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goout
Guest
For the sake of finding an end point, let’s accept your premise that Mother Teresa accepted stolen money and failed to return it. For whatever reason.
Now what? Where would you like to go?
Now what? Where would you like to go?
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Asinner
Guest
When atheists talk about “gratuitous” or “unnecessary” suffering, I usually find that they are talking about any suffering that could be solved by murdering someone.
“Why are you against abortion/euthanasia/suicide/mercy killing/population control? You’re just prolonging unnnecessary suffering” they will say.
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Nahar
Guest
Even ONE instance of unnecessary suffering refutes the concept of God’s benevolence.
There has never been a good argument for the problem of evil. If you disagree, submit a link to one you believe is sufficient.
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on_the_hill
Guest
It seems there were things Mother Theresa could’ve done better, and it seems that, for whatever reason, she chose not to.
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Poet
Guest
It’s easy to mistake tone via internet of course, but it seems to me that you’re challenging someone to give an argument sufficient for you to agree. It sounds to me like you’ve made up your mind already and any link will be dismissed as ‘insufficient’ when in reality it may be insufficient for you which doesn’t prove or disprove its truth.
I personally find the problem of evil very sufficiently explained 1. in Satan’s rebellion and the resulting fallen world; 2. in God’s choice to give us free will. When we understand that genuine love is impossible without free will, the need for a benevolent God to give us free will makes sense.
Sin entered the world through free will and that causes suffering.
To me that is completely sufficient. I understand that others want a God who just fixes everything for us and won’t find that sufficient. But in the end, we each have our own journey and it’s not my job to scramble until I can convince someone, especially knowing that some people are very hurt by the pain in their lives and don’t want, or can’t, be convinced right now.
And that’s not a criticism. It’s a very hard thing to come to terms with the pain we all suffer in this life.
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Poet
Guest
It seems there were things
Joe down the street
my brother
the priest
the pilot
my first grade teacher
…
every person who ever lived
…
you
I
could have done better.
For whatever reason, they/we all chose not to.
Or is it possible, as has been said so often in this thread, nobody is perfect. Even those who try the hardest may sometimes make a decision that wasn’t as good as it could have been.
I hope that everyone criticizing Mother Teresa as ‘could’ve done better’ has never once in their lives made any decision that anyone else, anywhere in the world, could find fault with. Because that seems to be the standard.
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on_the_hill
Guest
I get your point, but there’s a difference between “I could’ve done better on that writing assignment” and “I should’ve used clean needles,” or “You should’ve kept up with your credit card payments,” and “You should’ve dispensed the medications people donated.”
There’s such a rush to win one for our side to spite the critics that we’re not taking the time to discern the whole situation.
There’s such a rush to win one for our side to spite the critics that we’re not taking the time to discern the whole situation.
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TheLittleLady
Guest
In this country one cannot dispense prescription pain meds unless they are a licenced medical professional. Nuns cannot have “a stash of Vicodin or Oxy”. There are even laws about giving out aspirin that can be seen as practicing medicine without a license.
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TheLittleLady
Guest
Like the link I gave you above?
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VanitasVanitatum
Guest
What you say isn’t objective and can therefore be dismissed at will.
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Poet
Guest
I’m glad you get the point. And I think it’s incredibly easy to sit in judgment, while not in the trenches and with the luxury of hindsight–not to mention not knowing the full situation.
What is there to discern? That she picked up thousands of people who would have otherwise died alone in gutters and cared for them? That maybe all of us should get off the internet, quit criticizing those who are out there doing and start doing more ourselves instead of throwing stones at those doing the dirty work?
That’s what I discern from this.
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Poet
Guest
Thank you for pointing this out. It goes to what I was saying about washing machines – that there are often things the layman doesn’t know about a situation. How do the machines really affect the clothes and what does it cost to maintain and use them and was the money there for that?
In my life I have at times wondered where certain professionals got off charging $100 or more per hour for their service. Then someone I knew got involved in the field and I started learning about the cost of travel, the equipment used, the time put into preparing for that ‘one hour’ of service they were giving you. And I began to realize that these people were actually not making very much per hour at all when you accounted for their expenses and the time they actually put into the service–not just the face time with clients officially charged for.
It’s the same here. People criticizing a woman who sacrificed her whole life to serve others–when 1. they aren’t doing a tenth of a percent as much themselves, and 2. they really don’t know all the facts and ins and outs of law and bureaucracy and a great deal more.
I only hope that when I face God I will have ‘failed’ as spectacularly as Mother Teresa. So far, I’m nowhere near that.
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Roguish
Guest
Teresa was a saint alright, but not for the reasons that many modern Catholics would like to think. Teresa wasn’t particularly interested in changing the plight of the poor. She wanted to spend time with them so as to be part of them, so that she herself might suffer God’s Penance to the fullest possible extent. In this sense, she had little in common with social workers, and much in common with the Teresa that she had named herself after: the one from Lisieux. As for the money, it all went into Rome’s coffers of course. What of it?
From the (very useful) article linked by OP:
From the (very useful) article linked by OP:
I can confirm this is still the situation for at least the original Calcutta branch of Teresa’s charity organization, the branch where Teresa herself lived and worked. It exists for the benefit of the donors (who benefit by the very act of donating) and the nuns (who benefit by living in poverty). The actual benefit to the poor of Calcutta is very limited, but as I see it that doesn’t diminish Teresa’s holiness in the least. (Besides, take my word for it when I say that the poor of India aren’t particularly interested in being turned into middle-class bourgeois. They themselves are entirely committed to enduring their fate of poverty as part of their own penance. That’s Hinduism for you, and may God bless them for seeing things that way.)
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HarryStotle
Guest
Perhaps learn to tolerate a bit of pain so as not to grow up to become a snowflake that gets upset when things don’t go precisely as expected or when they are inconvenienced by someone else?TheLittleLady:
I can hardly wait to see an infant suffering from teething to offer up her very considerable pain and suffering and what “good” does it do for others.
Accepting pain as a normal aspect of life is a life lesson. Even teething pain can lead to a proper acceptance of pain and a proper habit of response to it.
I am not clear that teething pain is “very considerable pain and suffering.”
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VanitasVanitatum
Guest
One of these is not like the others.
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