Do I think more or less of Mother Teresa after the publication of her diaries? Answer: I think the same (which is quite highly), though in a different category. I think less of those who use her experience of the absence of God as proof for the non-existence of God.The two have nothing to do with each other. I welcome her honesty, her eloquence, the passion of her soul-searching, and regard the disclosures as signs of pathos: how sad the she, who sought so hard, did not find, or receive.
If and as she proceeds to sainthood--on a track that does not concern us non-Roman Catholics--she can still be a model with whom many will identify. The absence of the experience of God or the experience of God is a classic theme with which many can identify. I once wrote a whole book, "A Cry of Absence," taking off from writing by perhaps the most noted theologian in 20th century Catholicism. He wanted us to concentrate on a "wintry sort of spirituality," and not just market summery, sunny, everything-solved spirituality. Such wintry sorts are all over the Bible and the pages of Christian history.
One example: I wrote a biography of Martin Luther for a broad public, and was instructed to and chose to avoid untranslated terms from the German and the Latin. I made ONE exception, the word Anfechtungen, which are bone-deep, soul-searcing, long-term voids, temptations (which Luther thought came not from the devil but from God), inexplicable mysteries with which Luther often lived. He said that he was not an exemplar of strong faith as made out by others, and sensed in the writings of the apostle Paul struggles with faith and doubt.
I don't think we can find a single formula for dealing with this: doubt seems to be the fuel on which faith feeds. Doubtlessly, some can breeze through life doubtlessly. Others have agonies like Mother Teresa's. I do think that we have to leave room for a very wide range of Christian experiences. I wish there could have been mere shadows and thus some sunshine in Teresa's soul, but she grasped gifts other than those that come with sunny spirituality, and put to work spiritual energies many who do not have her problem also do not have.
So I don't get to vote with Rome on her sainthood or not. I do vote for her to be seen as a profoundly interested person who kept agonies to herself until her work was done, after which the revelation of the agonies could serve spiritual purposes without distracting her from her healing work.
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