Trying to remain faithful to a loving God

The Newtown tragedy raises a series of questions, the least important of which (for me) is the question of gun control. Other questions that arise include the social impact of undiagnosed/untreated mental health issues; what constitutes public safety in public buildings and, of course, what is the obligation of the bystander to prevent mayhem? The most important question for me is also a deeply Catholic one - how to reconcile the problem of evil with a belief in a loving God? Philosophers and theologians since the time of Saint Thomas Aquinas have been grappling with this conundrum for generations. The Catholic answer rests in our understanding of the gift of free will, which God has bestowed upon us. The Church teaches that God created us to love Him and each other; but for love to exist, we have to be able to choose it. Choice implies that there is an opposing view: namely that we can choose to be evil as readily as we can choose to be good (and hence, loving).

When faced with the specific evil of Newtown, scholastic debates regarding the problem of evil, free will and choice can appear to be beside the point. Just ask the First Responders who entered those classrooms containing the bullet-riddled bodies of six and seven year old children. These tough, “seen-it-all” men and women collapsed into each other’s arms after they had completed their awful responsibility to determine if there were any survivors among these “Holy Innocents.” Already, some of them have begun treatment for PTSD. Or ask those noble teachers who either got in the way of the bullets or exercised yeoman effort to hide the children entrusted to their care. After the horror of a parent learning of the death of a child, I can think of no worse horror than that of the teacher who does not know how to keep students safe in the face of implacable and unexplainable evil. This is the challenge inherent in any effort to reconcile the problem of evil with a loving God - it is always intellectually credible and often emotionally unsustainable - especially in the face of tragedy. This is particularly frustrating in situations such as Newtown where the assailant commits suicide, robbing us of the now unanswerable question “Why?” We are left with our emotions to make sense of the matter. And, in the absence of answers, we seek solutions which arise out of our emotional reactions.

This is certainly true with respect to the debate around gun control. Both sides of the issue often adopt extreme positions out of fear that a compromise solution will erode into a “slippery slope” of accommodation. For example one left-of-center Blog asserted this claim:

The bottom line is that a gun is a lethal weapon and its only function is to kill; the fewer people have it, the better it is.

While this is an emotionally satisfying argument for those who support greater measures to control gun ownership, its assumption that legislation predicated upon an arbitrary goal of reducing the number of people who own guns runs afoul of the Second Amendment. To pass judicial muster, any limitation on the scope of the Bill of Rights must demonstrate a compelling argument in favor of the general welfare. The First Amendment right to free speech, for example, was famously constrained by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s opinion in Schenck v. US in which he argued that no one has the right to “yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” So gun control legislation must address the danger posed to the general welfare, for example, of an “assault weapon.” It is equally misleading - though no less emotionally satisfying - to argue as National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre has that:

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

Yet there were no less than two armed security personnel on the scene at Columbine in 1999. Both took shots at Harris, one of two assailants, and both missed. Parenthetically, including Newtown, there have been an additional 31 school shootings since Columbine.The point is this: emotional solutions to controversial issues are never easy and certainly never simple. As Professor Evan Getz, at Houston Baptist University, observed: “There is no way to make sure that nothing like the Sandy Hook murders ever happen again.” He is right; which brings us back to the problem of evil. If we cannot prevent evil from intruding into our lives in highly visible and dramatic ways, what can we do?
        An “unsung hero” of the Sandy Hook shootings is Msgr. Robert Weiss, Pastor of Saint Rose of Lima Church, where ten of the 26 victims were parishioners. When asked how the people of Newtown should deal with the celebration of Christmas, he had this to say: “I believe that we celebrate it in its truest sense, putting aside all the secularity and simply sitting in silence and praying that the hope, healing and peace promised to us by Christ will be given to us in abundance.” It is a little too easy to dismiss Msgr. Weiss’ words as more pious than realistic. But, at the end of the day, are not all believers called to trust in the loving God who (apparently) allows evil to enter into our world? For those of us who doubt this proposition (myself included), here is the evidence Msgr. Weiss used to support his take on the problem of evil and the existence of a loving God:

The moment the first responder broke through the doors we knew good always overcomes evil.

For now, that is good enough for this believer.