Why does a good God allow suffering?

In an email I received just today, a non-Catholic friend of mine reported, “A very good friend of mine, her dad’s a rancher, & he fell off a flatbed truck & broke his neck & is mostly paralyzed now & in terrible pain constantly now, next week moving from rehab to the VA. It’s heartbreaking. Very hard on my friend. What can prayer do for that, huh?”

Before you get huffy, let me tell you that the question wasn’t meant to be sarcastic. I don’t know, and won’t presume to guess, where she is on her spiritual journey. But she is respectful of other religions, even as she struggles with the tough questions … as do we all, if we possess sufficient reflection.

The problem of suffering is one such question: “How can a benevolent God allow people to suffer?” In fact, if you equate suffering with evil, you can see it ties into the logical problem of evil. At some point, every philosophical and religious system must directly deal with suffering and give some answer to it; otherwise, it’s not worth holding.

What shall we do with the bishops?

What’s the point in having a “church”?

Well, part of it is to enable community worship of God. But only part. The other part is fully expressed in Jesus’ words to the Eleven: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations …, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19-20) ….

That’s “teaching them”, not “telling them to figure it out for themselves”. Jesus taught one gospel message, not six or seven billion.

Right from the Pentecost, the followers of “the Way” split into two separate groups: disciples and apostles. “Disciple” comes from the Latin for “student”; the student’s role is to learn. To execute that role faithfully, the disciple learns what is taught … not what he wants to learn, not what he thinks the teaching ought to be.

“Apostle” comes from the Greek for “one who is sent forth as a messenger”; the messenger’s role is to pass on the message. To execute that role faithfully, the messenger must transmit the message sent … not what he thinks it ought to be, not what suits the audience’s preferences.

Hoping without reason

Officially, Lent doesn’t begin this year until March 9. But for Catholics in America, especially in Philadelphia, it’s already started.

The release on Thursday of the grand jury’s findings in re the investigation into the handling of sexually abusive priests has the usual gang of idiots shouting the usual irrelevant “solutions”: end celibacy, throw away the Novus Ordo Mass, ordain married/women/gay priests, jettison Vatican II … yadda, yadda, yadda. No doubt that ambulance chaser Jeff Anderson and his journalistic sock puppet Laurie Goodstein will reveal that Pope Benedict XVI was behind the whole thing, their conspiracy theory based on some innocuous letter that mentions him in passing. We also have the über-Evangelicals crying that the whole mess proves the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, atheists chortling over another bit of evidence towards religious hypocrisy, the professional victims of SNAP spending more time venting their righteous rage than actually helping anyone recover … in sum, a lot of people talking to hear their heads roar, as my father (God rest his soul) used to say.

Meanwhile, the decent, churchgoing faithful in the City of Brotherly Love stumble around, frightened, fearful, anguished, angry—betrayed. Dear God, please wrap them in Your loving embrace, and give them healing with Your Spirit.

I’m angry, too. Again. I’m especially disappointed at Cdl. Justin Rigali, whom I had thought was one of the new breed of bishops we’ve needed for so many years, but who placed too much trust in a Secretary of the Clergy who was too damned dumb to realize the game has changed. (+Rigali turns seventy-five this year, and will be required to submit his resignation as Archbishop … just one more bishop leaving under a cloud.)

Dear Lord, forgive my impatience; for in railing against fools, I become a fool myself.

On time mismanagement

If you’re between the ages of eighteen and forty, the chances are that you haven’t gotten your priorities straight. Why? Because you think you still have time.

Yes, I know that in general we’re living much longer today. I know that researchers have hopes of turning off the “aging gene” so we can look at eighty the same as we do at eighteen. (Of course, this will be an option only for the rich … assuming we’ll still have the research dollars to make this a reality after this year.)

But there’s no turning off the mortality gene. For you, tomorrow may never come; you may be shot to death in a convenience store robbery, or killed in an auto accident, or be the one in X percent of cancer patients for whom chemotherapy fails. That we’re living into our late seventies is not even the beginning of a promise that you’ll get to thirty-nine. This very night, your soul may be required of you (Lk 12:20).

In consideration of the day—St. Valentine’s—I direct this specifically to young singles “playing the field”. You think you’re actively looking for Mr./Ms. Right; the fact is, you’re distractedly browsing the racks while idly dreaming of the tailor-made mate. You think there’s plenty of time to settle down, get married and have a family … but you don’t really know that for a fact. And so you’re frittering away the ages best suited for parenthood in order to do—what?

A house divided

Are we ramping up towards another civil war?

In the last three weeks, the pro-life movement has been handed gifts, first in the revelation of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his little shop of horrors, then in the most recent undercover videos released by LiveAction, which in turn has prompted several state governments to begin inquiries into Planned Barrenhood’s activities. We’ve also learned that Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) plans to call HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius to testify before the House on taxpayer funding of Planned Barrenhood in light of the videos … not to mention a $1.3 billion dollar discrepancy between public funds received and spent.

All this has taken place as HR 358, the Protect Life Act, makes its move to a full committee vote. PLA is part of a package of House bills aimed at the abortion industry and the pro-aborts’ efforts to frog-march the rest of America into participation. Naturally, the pro-aborts are feeling the pressure and are promising to fight back … in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s words, “make this issue too hot to handle”.

But Pelosi has said other things that should give us pause for consideration:

Of dragons, unicorns and boggart-Gods

Image source: clipartpanda.com.

Your next door neighbor appears in your doorway. His clothes are burnt to a crisp, his eyebrows and eyelashes are singed off, his hair and face are carbonized, and he is oddly enough close to hysterical panic. “There’s an invisible dragon in my garage!”

No. There can’t be. Dragons don’t exist. But he’s clearly not himself, so you say soothingly, “What did it look like? How tall was it?”

“It was invisible,” he reminds you.

“Then how do you know it was a dragon?” you persist reasonably.

He rolls his eyes. “Take a look at me. Does this look like a cat scratch?”

You try again: “But you must realize what this looks like to me. For all I know, you could have been playing with a stick of dynamite, or fooling around with your blowtorch, or you could have tripped and fallen face-first into a fire ….”

He interrupts you shortly. “But I wasn’t playing with dynamite; I don’t have a blowtorch or a fireplace; there were no F-16s backed tailpipe-first into my garage or any other dumb thing you want to drag in. I was attacked by a fire-breathing dragon.”

 You try one more time. “But if you didn’t see the wretched thing, how do you know it was an invisible dragon?”

“He told me.”

So you try to keep him calm while you try to figure out a way to call the men in white. He’s obviously delusional because it’s so unlike him to play such an elaborate practical joke; of course, he must have somehow set himself on fire, then convinced himself that he heard and spoke to ….

Your mind yammers a thousand different explanations for your neighbor’s extraordinary behavior. But how would you respond if he suddenly demanded of you, “How do you know there’s no such thing as an invisible dragon?”

Spirits in the material world

There’s been a couple of nights this last year that I’ve had the creepiest experience ever: At the end of a dream, I’ve felt the presence of an Evil One, just over my shoulder and chuckling in my ear. Both times I woke up praying the Hail Mary, and sat on the edge of my bed smoking a cigarette to calm my nerves because the experience scared the bejabers out of me.

Anxiety dream? Perhaps; I wouldn’t rule it out.

“Hell … [is] as much a fact of the universe as is Heaven.” So Scripture attests;[1] so the Church Fathers taught;[2] so the Catholic Church maintains.[3] “… [T]he evidence we have is beyond the reach of the empiriometric sciences,” because: 1) by definition and design, the natural sciences study the material universe, and therefore have tools that only work within the scope of materiality; and 2) because the bulk of natural scientists rule out the immaterial a priori, and therefore aren’t willing to spend time, effort and resources trying to make it detectable, far less measurable.

Demons are real, too. Father Dwight Longenecker has posted a fascinating reflection on possession and exorcism, beginning with the story of his first — and to date, only — experience of a possession. I also recommend to you An Exorcist Tells His Story by Fr. Gabriele Amorth, who was for many years the chief exorcist of the Diocese of Rome. I tell you this, not to convince you that I’ve been demon-haunted — heck, I’m not even convinced — but to underscore the fact that for many people the immaterial is not only real but a living, waking nightmare.

Our Heavenly Grandfather and the BK Theory of Christianity

The National Catholic Reporter, that haven of mostly-dissident Catholics (with the saving exception of John L. Allen, Jr.), has a regular section called “Eco Catholic”. The most recent installment—a hysterical screed against the doctrine of hell—shows that writer Carol Meyer has trouble distinguishing conservation from nature worship.

I’m writing about hell because it is an unthinkable, horrible, destructive concept that can’t possibly be true. I frankly can’t even imagine how anyone came up with something so horrific. Could any wrong merit the terrible pain of burning in fire, while fully conscious, for a week or a year, much less eternity? What kind of a monster would inflict that on anyone? How could such cruelty and sadism be consistent with a God of love? I don’t buy it for a minute.

I don’t care if scripture mentions hell or Jesus talked about it, if saints had visions of it, or if it’s a time-honored Catholic teaching. It simply can’t be justified on any level. [Emphasis mine.—TL]

Sic volo, sic iubeo: the perpetual chant of what Kate of Australia Incognita calls “the Magisterium of Me”. So Martin Luther said when asked to justify throwing out certain epistles from the New Testament: “Thus I will have it, thus I order it, my will is reason enough. … Doctor Luther will have it so, and … he is a Doctor above all Doctors in the whole of Popery.”[1] We can call it the Burger King Theory of Christianity, where you can “have it your way”.

Another day, another revelation ..

I just got done saying yesterday that faithful witness to Christ means suffering for those who fail to live up to the demands of Christian discipleship. And now here we are again, with a 1984 letter from the Congregation for the Clergy, this one to the late Bishop Manuel Duran Moreno of Tucson, advising him to turn over personnel files to civil lawyers “under no circumstances”.

To give then-prefect Cdl. Silvio Oddi his due, he remonstrated with +Moreno that the unnamed priest “should have [been] removed from his pastorate immediately upon completion of the process outlined in n. 20 of the motu proprio Ecclesiae Sanctae, of 1966. The signed testimonies about his drunkenness, outrageous language, liberties with women, etc., are too numerous and convincingly articulate to leave any [doubt] that Father’s ministry is both harmful and inefficacious and should therefore have been terminated long ago.”[1]

The cost of witness to Christ—UPDATED

In a prison cell in Kabul, a man named Sayed Mussa awaits trial for apostasy, as he has for nine months. Mussa was arrested after videotapes showed him among other Afghans praying at a private Christian baptism. At a previous jail cell, Mussa had been beaten with sticks by a guard, and assaulted and raped by two inmates at the encouragement of Taliban prisoners.

Afghanistan's new US-sponsored constitution is supposed to protect freedom of religion. However, a loophole allows judges to apply Shariah, Islamic law, in cases of conversion; under a fundamentalist interpretation, that can mean death by hanging for Mussa. But even if he's released to rejoin his wife and children, who fled to Pakistan for their safety, he is still a martyr.