Expert: Griff Ruby - 10/29/2008

Question
Hi, I am doing a research paper on Mother Teresa. I am suppose to interview an expert! In just a few sentences could you tell me your thoughts on her? Also, I've read some things that said she questioned her faith towards the end of her life, do you think that's true? Thank you so much! God Bless!

Answer
My apologies for the delay.
My perspective on her is no doubt a bit unusual, for I know of her best and most from a friend of hers who was also a friend of mine (before he passed away), Dr. Coomaraswamy who had worked alongside with her in India providing medical help to those she was helping, and also providing for her personal medical needs as well and those of her order.  After he moved to New York they maintained a friendly correspondence for many years, and as far as I know his wife and Mother Teresa were friends to the end.
But in the 1960's and 1970's, there was a total overthrow of the Church, and while Dr. Coomaraswamy remained faithfully Catholic, Mother Teresa threw in with the usurpers, even trying to defend their new religion against the Catholic Faith.  In the end she came to believe and preach that all anyone needs to do is be "better" at whatever false religion they have, e. g. all a Hindu needs to do to be saved is be a "better" Hindu, and so forth.  This sort of patently anti-Catholic position of hers, pertinaciously embraced even against the wise advice of her faithful friend Dr. Coomaraswamy (and others) is what alienated her from God.
A recent book about her which I read, and which was based on her private diaries, indicates that she "suffered much" from not gaining any sense of God or that God approved of her or loved her.  But rather than return to God she preferred her suffering and her alienation from God, for reasons that simply do not ever come out at any point.  And there it laid until the end of her life.
In her early days as a nun, in the 1940's and 1950's, her love of God was indisputable, and she also could tell that God loved her, but as things went to the new religion, she followed that new religion away from God, and thereafter heard nothing from God.  Her case can only be described as most tragic as she worked so much, sacrificed so much, and suffered so much for - - I admit I am at a loss of how to put it - - something false.
I have read some of her correspondence, both as published in a book about her, and also to Dr. Coomaraswamy.  The two fit together like cause and effect.