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Not Without Controversy, Mother Teresa Festivities Culminate with Beautiful Stamp

By Joshua Mercer 

You can now purchase Mother Teresa stamps at your local post office or online. The beautiful stamp, which went on sale nationwide Sept. 7, is a perfect crescendo to the worldwide celebrations of this holy nun, timed around the 100th anniversary of her birth last month.

The stamp was not without its detractors, however.

No one is surprised anymore that people would object to a religious figure on a stamp because of misguided interpretations of the First Amendment’s prohibition of the establishment of religion.

But the opposition to the Mother Teresa stamp was considerably darker than just constitutional arguments over establishment of a national church. In fact, the Freedom from Religion Foundation actually described Mother Teresa as having a “dark side.”

The atheist organization’s intentions were clear, as they ranted first and foremost against Mother Teresa because she opposed abortion. “During her Nobel acceptance, the nun delivered a gratuitous tirade against abortion,” the Foundation said, going on to describe her acceptance speech as “a disturbing, befogged religious rant.” (“Befogged,” by the way, means “drunken”).

My organization, CatholicVote.org, fought back by organizing a petition (www.stampoutbigotry.com) in favor of the stamp and against such hateful attacks on Mother Teresa. The petition gathered over 146,000 signatures.

The controversy even spilled into popular culture, when the stamp was featured on the popular (but irreverent) comedy program, The Daily Show. But to my surprise, instead of attacking Mother Teresa, the Daily Show comedians lampooned the atheists.

In the “news” segment, comedian Jason Jones interviewed Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation and simply pointed to a picture of the stamp.

“Just to be clear: This is the fight that you’re picking,” he said.

And of course, even the largely secular audience in the TV studio laughed at the absurdity of it all.

It is true that the Postal Service has a policy against stamps that “honor religious institutions or individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings or beliefs.”  But this does not prevent the Postal Service from issuing stamps honoring religious figures well known for their contributions to the world.

In fact, Mother Teresa is not the first religious person to receive such an honor. Previous religious figures honored with a stamp include World War II’s famous “Four Chaplains” in 1948 and 1950; John Witherspoon in 1976; Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1979 and 1999; St. Francis of Assisi in 1982; Martin Luther in 1983; and Father Edward Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town, in 1986.

It is obvious that Mother Teresa was proudly Roman Catholic, and her religious faith clearly inspired her charity.  But it’s also clear that her service to the world is universally recognized as worthy of acclaim. 

Mother Teresa was not afraid to criticize America when our country did not live up to ideals found in our Declaration of Independence. In 1994, she wrote the following to the U.S. Supreme Court:

America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters.

And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.

But Americans did not condemn this holy woman for criticizing our country’s shortcomings. In fact, we rewarded her.

President Ronald Reagan gave Mother Teresa the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985, and Congress awarded her honorary citizenship in 1996, a year before she died. And in 2010, we have placed her on a stamp.

“Often, stamps are referred to as a nation’s ‘calling cards’ because they reach a national, and even an international audience,” said Postmaster General John Potter at the stamp’s dedication. “They focus attention on subjects our country regards with respect and affection, and that is certainly true of Mother Teresa, who believed so deeply in the innate worth and dignity of humankind and worked tirelessly on behalf of the poor, sick, orphaned and dying. That’s why today I am so very proud that our country, after making her an honorary citizen in 1996, is honoring Mother Teresa with such a lasting memorial.”

Potter also noted that while Mother Teresa was physically small in height, she was a “towering humanitarian figure.”

The Postal Service is right to recognize that Mother Teresa’s Catholic faith and her title as a nun should not disqualify her from receiving honors such as this. To do so would constitute a gross form of religious discrimination.

Likewise, not only did the Postal Service not back down against protests, it also broke its “Never on Sunday” rule in order to unveil the stamp on Sept. 5, 2010, exactly 13 years from Mother Teresa’s death. And the Postal Service recognized that debuting the stamp at the National Shrine to the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., does not mean that the federal government has established Catholicism as our national religion.

CatholicVote.org is now calling for a “BUY-cott” of the stamp, the opposite of a boycott. We want people to buy this wonderful stamp. We’re calling on Americans to storm their local post office this week and use the Mother Teresa stamp as a symbol of love every time we send a letter in the mail.

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The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.