The Gospel today mentions two events which shocked the contemporaries of Jesus. The first was the execution of a group of Galileans by Pontius Pilate. Perhaps they had been opposed to the Roman occupation and had been summarily arrested on a religious trip to Jerusalem, but Pilate had added to his cruelty by mixing their blood with the blood of the sacrifices they had offered to God, thereby defiling the altar. The second event was the collapse of an ancient tower in the city, killing eighteen people. In each case people seemed to be asking Jesus whether the deaths were a punishment for sinfulness.

In fact, the events illustrate two different kinds of evil. Pilate’s order of execution is an example of moral evil, evil chosen by a human. Unfortunately there are many such examples: acts of terrorism, murder, rape, bullying and the crucifixion of Jesus – another of Pilate’s acts. In general we accept that these things happen because God has given us the freedom to choose between right and wrong; wrong choices are the price of freedom. However, the people killed by the tower falling on them is not an evil caused by humans (except perhaps indirectly by incompetent builders). Rather we would call it natural evil, an event not caused by the misuse of free-will but by chance or natural disaster. The terrible earthquake in Haiti is foremost in our minds at the moment, and it was another great earthquake which set many great minds thinking about the problem of explaining evil. The Great Lisbon Earthquake took place on 1 November 1755, at around 10:24 in the morning. The earthquake was followed by a tsunami and fires, which caused near-total destruction of Lisbon in the Kingdom of Portugal and ended the aspirations of the Portuguese to become a major world power. It was All Saints Day: the faithful were in church and were crushed in the ruins; those who had missed Mass and were out drinking in the squares were saved. It was a real test of faith and people inevitably asked why God would allow the innocent to suffer. Almost every day we hear of people hurt by floods, hurricanes and mudslides, and we all have to face the ever-present natural evil of disease.

We Christians therefore have a problem, classically stated in this way:

Either God cannot abolish evil or He will not.
If He cannot, then He is not all-powerful.
If He will not, then He is not all-good.

In each of the cases mentioned in the Gospel Jesus refuses to say that the evil events were punishments. God does not work that way. Jesus insists that those who suffered were no guiltier than anyone else, and so he encourages his hearers to repent of their own sins and goes on to speak of God’s patience with us. However, Jesus does not give a comprehensive explanation of evil and we cannot find one anywhere in the New Testament. It’s taken Christian philosophers two millennia to find answers to the torturing question of why a good God allows evil. If you want to know what some of those answers are, you’ll have to come to the next Lent talk: Monday March 8th at 7 p.m. in the church.

Fr. Augustine

UPDATE on Our Catholic Appeal:

Last Sunday we had the third annual “Our Catholic Appeal” collection for the expenses of the Diocese. We have now reached $90,457.00 in pledges and payments towards our goal of $137,690. That means we have collected 66% of our goal, but with 34% still to be found – another $47,233.00. Once again, a big thank you to all those who have pledged and an appeal to those who have not yet made a decision – in this particularly hard year