In My Own Words

By Mother Theresa

Catholic-ometer: 4.5 of 5

Enjoyability: 4.5 of 5

Reviewing a book of quotes by Mother Theresa puts me under a lot of pressure, because I know that giving it a less than perfect score will earn me some scorn, just because of who the author is.  Defending the score I gave it will require some work, but I am prepared to defend it.

Mother Theresa was still alive when I was young, and I caught some glimpses of the work she did, and have since studied her life through various biographies and such, and I will reccomend this approach to anyone else who wants to learn about her too.  It's certainly one of the best ways to understand this wonderful and saintly woman; studying her life, and what she did out of charity for the poor.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, which means that a person's life must be worth billions of them, and many, if not most of the holy men and woman throughout history are best learned from by studying the way in which they lived.  In my opinion, Mother Theresa is a prime example of this.  I also saw her as a woman who spoke infrequently, and took action very often, and I think I may understand part of the reason for this as well.  Mother Theresa was good to others, and loving; almost to a fault.  I won't say anything against these qualities that she possessed in such abundance.

However, she was not a theologian, and she never actually wrote any books.  This book is just a compilation of quotes that she allegedly spoke over the course of her life.  Therefore, when she claims that there is no such thing as a just war, simply because all wars involve killing, I'm willing to give her something of a pass for the most part, simply because she may not have known any better.

Now, paragraph 2309 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church outlines the criteria for a just war quite cleanly.  It would be one thing if she'd been responding to a politician's claim or something, but the concept of the "just war" is official church teaching.  The same church whose doctrine is protected infallibly from all falsehood by the Holy Spirit.  Doctrine of the church are not up for review, and I think that Mother Theresa would be the first to admit that the Holy Spirit knows better than she does about such matters.

I'm not slamming Mother Theresa in any way by saying this.  I'm merely pointing out that on this subject, in this one instance, she was wrong.  Then again, we've all been there, and it didn't really bug me that much to read such quotes, since she speaks them with such humility.

On this point, I also feel the need to draw one more comparison to a previous book that I read.  I read "The God Who Loves You," gave it a far lower grade, and was considerably angrier when I put it down, despite similar theological missteps.  However, the reason for this is that the writer of that book was Peter Kreeft.  I'm not being harder on him because he's less famous.  I'm being harder on him because he seemed to have such a firm grasp of theology otherwise, and really should have known better.  I can't say the same for Mother Theresa, whose work was in helping the poor, not in theology.

Is this book enjoyable to the right audience?  Naturally.  Did I enjoy it?  Large parts of it; yes.  Would I reccomend it to others?  Well...  Yes, with reservations.  You can read it if you want to, but if you really want to get to know Mother Theresa, your best bet would be to spend time sacrificing and helping the poor instead.  Her real strength was in her actions; not her words, and this book's weakness, I'm afraid, is more a weakness of the written word, than of the incredible person being written about.