Who gives a hoot what Christopher Hitchens thinks about Mother Teresa’s dark confessions? He’s only venting reference to them to justify his atheism in tandem with sadistic pleasure in lambasting the Catholic Church in having allowed Teresa to continue on with her overly “enthusiastic” good will works while it knew that she was but creating maddening busy work to offset and to spite her loss in faith.

From Peter’s thrice denial, Judas’ treachery and Jesus utterance of being forsaken by his father to those in working daily in homicide, coal miners trapped, Red Cross workers, and our troops in Iraq have all questioned negatively their god. Only artists of self-deception would not face up to doubt, like Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell, the Pope, and Billy Graham, all of whom had little if any on the scene duration of poverty and conflict, are blessedly pure in their unshakable faith.

Missionaries of integrity are a unique breed and miles apart from the normal us who are too busily engaged in the secular whirlwind along the highway to abundance. These dedicated persons take a vow of poverty and commensurate sufferings as it would be grossly unseemly to do otherwise in the midst of others’ trying desperately to stay alive with minimal comfort or to die in peace, though seldom achieved. This is normal for “saintly” do-gooders who feel they must do more to diminish the lack of regard by God. This is somewhat akin to keeping busy after having lost a loved one. What human coming from a world of plenty while immersed in the brutality of want of healthcare, food and housing, not to mention numerous natural disasters, and most of all humanity’s indifference to millions in dire need would not say to God, “Where art Thou?”

That Hitchens the atheist is against Teresa’ canonization is a laughable tautology. Granted, in looking over the sea of clean, healthy faces of the Nobel audience in sharp contrast to a lifetime of daily living in destitution, she uttered the conceit that abortion threatened world peace. However, ludicrous to many, it was her icon for commitment to life apart from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: “The horror, the horror.”