Thomas has an excellent riposte to some of the truly insipid things being said about Mother Teresa in light of some recently publicized letters that make it clear that she (like many, many other saints) struggled with doubt and a feeling of God’s absence.

Of course, this won’t be news to anyone who read Carol Zaleski’s “The Dark Night of Mother Teresa,” published in that notorious skeptic rag First Things over four years ago. What is surprising is that some atheists have such a shallow understanding of religious faith that they can’t fathom how it can coexist with doubt. Indeed, you might think that someone who could persist in the kind of ministry Mother Teresa was engaged in, even in the absence of the kind of experiential awareness of God she had experienced earlier, was displaying even greater faith.