Why Do we Suffer?

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Susan Kehoe

Too often the problem is a deal breaker for people searching for God. Peter Kreeft, one of the few real Catholic professors at Boston University, dissects the problem of  evil (H/T Deacon Greg Kandra):

There are four parts to the solution to the problem of evil. First, evil is not a thing, an entity, a being. All beings are either the Creator or creatures created by the Creator. But every thing God created is good, according to Genesis. We naturally tend to picture evil as a thing—a black cloud, or a dangerous storm, or a grimacing face, or dirt. But these pictures mislead us. If God is the Creator of all things and evil is a thing, then God is the Creator of evil, and he is to blame for its existence. No, evil is not a thing but a wrong choice, or the damage done by a wrong choice. Evil is no more a positive thing than blindness is. But it is just as real. It is not a thing, but it is not an illusion..

Second, the origin of evil is not the Creator but the creature’s freely choosing sin and selfishness. Take away all sin and selfishness and you would have heaven on earth. Even the remaining physical evils would no longer rankle and embitter us. Saints endure and even embrace suffering and death as lovers embrace heroic challenges. But they do not embrace sin.

Furthermore, the cause of physical evil is spiritual evil. The cause of suffering is sin. After Genesis tells the story of the good God creating a good world, it next answers the obvious question “Where did evil come from then?”  By the story of the fall of mankind.  How are we to understand this? How can spiritual evil (sin) cause physical evil (suffering and death)?

God is the source of all life and joy. Therefore, when the human soul rebels against God, it loses its life and joy. Now a human being is body as well as soul. We are single creatures, not double: we are not even body and soul as much as we are embodied soul, or ensouled body. So the body must share in the soul’s inevitable punishment—a punishment as natural and unavoidable as broken bones from jumping off a cliff or a sick stomach from eating rotten food rather than a punishment as artificial and external as a grade for a course or a slap on the hands for taking the cookies.

Whether this consequence of sin was a physical change in the world or only a spiritual change in human consciousness—whether the “ thorns and thistles” grew in the garden only after the fall or whether they were always there but were only felt as painful by the newly fallen consclousness-is another question. But in either case the connection between spiritual evil and physical evil has to be as close as the connection between the two things they affect, the human soul and the human body.

If the origin of evil is free will, and God is the origin of free will, isn’t God then the origin of evil? Only as parents are the origin of the misdeeds their children commit by being the origin of their children. The all-powerful God gave us a share in his power to choose freely. Would we prefer he had not and had made us robots rather than human beings?

A third part of the solution to the problem of evil is the most important part: how to resolve the problem in practice, not just in theory; in life, not just in thought. Although evil is a serious problem for thought (for it seems to disprove the existence of God), it is even more of a problem in life (for it is the real exclusion of God). But even if you think the solution in thought is obscure and uncertain, the solution in practice is as strong and clear as the sun: it is the Son. God’s solution to the problem of evil is his Son Jesus Christ. The Father `s love sent his Son to die for us to defeat the power of evil in human nature: that’s the heart of the Christian story. We do not worship a deistic God, an absentee landlord who ignores his slum; we worship a garbageman God who came right down into our worst garbage to clean it up. How do we get God off the hook for allowing evil? God is not off the hook; God is the hook. That’s the point of a crucifix.

The Cross is God’s part of the practical solution to evil. Our part, according to the same Gospel, is to repent, to believe, and to work with God in fighting evil by the power of love. The King has invaded; we are finishing the mop-up operation.

Finally, what about the philosophical problem? It is not logically contradictory to say an all-powerful and all-loving God tolerates so much evil when he could eradicate it? Why do bad things happen to good people? The question makes three questionable assumptions.

Read the whole article here.

Posted in Suffering | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Mark Shea on Catholic Radio in Des Moines

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Susan Kehoe

Mark Shea, one of my favorite Catholic Bloggers, is going to be on KWKY tonight   (7-8 PM).

I urge you to tune in!

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Calling All Prayer Warriors Update

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Susan Kehoe

Earlier this week I posted on a young woman who has scheduled an abortion. Well it is scheduled for today. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of many pro life people including a friend and frequent commenter of this blog, it seems that the woman in question is determined to go through with the abortion.

Please pray for this poor young woman and her baby.

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Calling all Pro Lifers in Des Moines UPDATE

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Susan Kehoe

Tom Quiner of the blog Quiners diner is asking all pro lifers to join him at the Planed Parenthood abortion clinic on Army Post Road to pray for an end to abortion.Thursday is abortion day at the facility.  Tom will be there at 4pm. Please join him.

Tom is a gifted musician, writer of musicals and opinion writer. He is also one of the nicest people I have ever met.  His blog is always interesting. The only reason why I don’t link to him is because his blog is political as well as religion focused.  The deacons wife is simply Catholic.

Get thou to his post and to the clinic if you can.

UPDATE: Tom has a post up on the pray in at Planned Parenthood yesterday. Wow. Prayer really is powerful:

At one point, a security guard drove up and approached us. “Who’s in charge here?” he asked. “We all are” said one of our group. The man seemed somewhat conflicted to have to say what he was about to say. “You know your protest is being photographed.”

“We’re not protesting, we’re praying” I said with partial disingenuousness.

The guard responded, “Now, I’m not the bad guy here, but you’re going to end up with a $180 ticket if the camera records you parking in Planned Parenthood’s parking lot.”

Posted in Abortion, Pro life | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Children are Not Widgets

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Susan Kehoe

Many Catholics do not understand why the Church considers IVF to be a moral evil. It is because children are gifts and NOT products As I wrote in this post the Church believes:

Human beings bear the image and likeness of God. They are to be reverenced as sacred. Never are they to be used as a means to an end, not even to satisfy the deepest wishes of an infertile couple. Husbands and wives “make love,” they do not “make babies.” They give expression to their love for one another, and a child may or may not be engendered by that act of love. The marital act is not a manufacturing process, and children are not products. Like the Son of God himself, we are the kind of beings who are “begotten, not made” and, therefore, of equal status and dignity with our parents  (Begotten Not Made: A Catholic View of Reproductive Technology (USCCB).

Marcel at Aggie Catholics has a story from Canada about the problems that occur with surrogate pregnancies.

When a B.C. couple discovered that the fetus their surrogate mother was carrying was likely to be born with Down syndrome, they wanted an abortion. The surrogate, however, was determined to take the pregnancy to term, sparking a disagreement that has raised thorny questions about the increasingly common arrangements.

Under the agreement the trio signed, the surrogate’s choice would mean absolving the couple of any responsibility for raising the child, the treating doctor told a recent fertility-medicine conference.

Dr. Ken Seethram, revealing the unusual situation for the first time, said it raises questions about whether government oversight of contracts between mothers and “commissioning” parents is needed.

A bioethicist who has studied the issue extensively argues that contract law should not apply to the transaction, unless human life is to be treated like widgets in a factory.

“Should the rules of commerce apply to the creation of children? No, because children get hurt,” said Juliet Guichon of the University of Calgary. “It’s kind of like stopping the production line: ‘Oh, oh, there’s a flaw.’ It makes sense in a production scenario, but in reproduction it’s a lot more problematic.”
Continue Reading.

There is a hopeful sign in this situation. There are actual people in the sciences and in academia who actually think that  it might be wrong to treat humans as products. Who woulda thought!

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Raised Catholic but

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Susan Kehoe

When you have been lurking around the web for a while, you begin to identify certain opening salvos that are red flags to red meat Catholics:

“I was raised Catholic”

“I used to be an altar server”

“I am an ex Catholic”

“I am a devout Catholic”

You can bet a winning mega lottery jack pot, that the writer or speaker is going to attack the Church’s teaching on just about everything. Your winnings will remain safe in the bank.

They are almost always my age or older.

A recent guest opinion writer in our local news paper, The Des Moines Register, has the genre down pat. He writes, in an ever so cloying and condescending tone, that the big bad ole Catholic Bishops of Iowa is endangering families.

Here is how Thomas J. Jochum begins his article:

As the lobbyist for One Iowa – whose mission is advocating for the gay and lesbian community – I have been working for over three years to keep discriminatory language out of the Iowa Constitution. My counterpart and my friend with the Catholic Conference, Tom Chapman, has been trying to get the Legislature to ban same-sex marriage.”

“I was raised Catholic. I had to learn Latin in order to be an altar boy at Sacred Heart Church in Dubuque. Even though I no longer practice, I still consider myself a Catholic. I continue to defend the right of the church to add its voice to the debate over public policy. I believe the church has every right to declare certain things sinful, but it oversteps its authority when it seeks to prohibit private matters or to deny equal protection under the law.”

What Jochum is addressing is the latest push to have a Constitutional Convention in order to ban same sex marriage in Iowa.

Background:  Iowa law defines marriage as between one man and one woman. But in 2009 The Iowa Supreme court ruled that Iowa’s ban on same sex marriage treats same sex couples unfairly.

Most Iowans, however, are against same sex marriage. The very liberal legislature, however, refuses to address the issue.

There is, therefore, a growing movement to call a Constitutional Convention to address the issue.  Jochum argues that such a convention might not only be unfair to same sex couples, but other unforeseen amendments might hurt families. He writes:

“The American Catholic Church has a rich history of standing up for social justice. Church leaders need to understand that a convention that would offer Iowa voters an anti-marriage equality amendment (that might pass), would likely pass amendments enshrining in our constitution amendments denying health care and education to the children of undocumented workers – and polls show a majority of Iowans would ratify them.”

His arguments are weak and show his ignorance of Catholic Social Teaching. He claims, for example, that “ the Church supports progressive taxes”.  The Church supports no such thing.  She does maintain that citizens have the duty to pay taxes and that they should be used for the common good. It does not advocate for a particular type of tax.  She only states that “ Jesus does not consider it unjust to pay taxes” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church #379) .

While it is true, as Jochum asserts, that the Church calls for a living wage for all workers, the Church does not address an amount. Since most low level Church workers in the US are paid the minimum wage, I have to assume that the Bishops think that the current minimum wage is a living wage.

In addition, while Mr. Used to be Catholic, is correct that the Church supports some kind of universal health care, it does not mean that we have to support the recently passed health care legislation. In fact the US bishops have some grave reservations about  this particular bill. But it is important to note that Catholics are free to disagree on a particular legislation.

I am pleased that the otherwise progressive lobbyist does realize that there is such a thing as sin, “Amendments that would have the effect of denying some children and families basic necessities would be a sin. I ask the leaders of the Catholic Church, is it worth it?”

Too bad, though, that he does not recognize that homosexual acts are grave sins.

So this deacons wife thinks that it is worth it. As Catholics we can never advocate evil even if the result is a good. The end can never justify the means.

Posted in Catholic Church, Politics, Sin, Social Teachings | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

On false gods, druids, and human sacrifice

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Susan Kehoe

Did you hear the latest news out of the United Kingdom? Well those long oppressed  Druids have finally been recognized as a “real” religion. Mark Shea provides the snark so I don’t have to:

What passes for Druidry today is basically a fake reconstruction cooked up over the past few decades and largely driven by modern neo-pagan romanticizing about nature, reaction to Christianity, and reading too much Tolkien while remaining in ignorance of his Catholic faith. It’s a kluge of junk compounded of sexual revolution BS dressed up in archaic English, Gaia worship, and twaddle about the goddess. The UK can pretend it’s a serious religion. We are, after all, talking about the land where all religions are equally superior to the Catholic faith. But you have to be daft to take this stuff seriously.

The irony is that while they are not real Druids, they are real pagans, because being a pagan is as easy as pie. All you need do is what Paul describes all pagans as doing: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles.” (Romans 1:22-23) The goal here is to abandon the worship of the Creator for the creature. Much of the West is currently engaged in that project. Whether you do it by exactly mimicking the rites of Dionysius or just make up crap in pseudo-Olde English matters not a jot. It’s the thought that counts.

What Mark doesn’t mention is that according to Roman accounts, from Julius Caesar for example, is that the original Druids engaged in human sacrifice. Here is an excerpt from a 2009 National Geographic special:

“In 55 B.C., said the native Celts “believe that the gods delight in the slaughter of prisoners and criminals, and when the supply of captives runs short, they sacrifice even the innocent.” First-century historian Pliny the Elder went further, suggesting the Celts practiced ritual cannibalism, eating their enemies’ flesh as a source of spiritual and physical strength. But with only the Romans’ word to go on—the ancient Celts left no written record of their own—it’s been easy for historians to dismiss such tales as wartime propaganda. Until now, that is.”  Read more here.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Druids, posted with vodpod
Posted in Religion News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Calling all Prayer Warriors

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Susan Kehoe

This poor woman really needs our heart felt compassion and prayers (H/T Erin  Manning):

“I’m getting an abortion next Friday and I haven’t told anyone about my decision, mainly because all of my friends are gossipy and close-knit, and word would get around quickly. My family is extremely conservative, and would probably disown me if they knew I was even having sex. The guy is my on/off long-distance boyfriend who broke up with me last time I had a pregnancy scare because he couldn’t “go back to normal after that drama” and it took weeks for him to calm down. If he knew I was actually pregnant and getting an abortion, he’d flip out and leave again, and I can’t handle that right now.

Also, I’m 20 and in college studying to be an engineer. We do use protection, but the condoms must have failed.

I’m 17 weeks into the pregnancy, and the doctor says it’ll have to be a 2-day procedure. The clinic is 20 min away (an hour by bus, which is how I’m getting there) and because I don’t have anyone coming with me, I won’t be asleep/sedated during the procedure. They’ll just be using a local anesthetic.

I’m really scared of the procedure, and how much it’ll hurt, and feeling really alone right now and after the procedure. I just wish I could talk to someone about it, and have someone there with me, but that’s not an option.

I guess the point of this post is looking for support and people to talk to, and if anyone has had an abortion. Please don’t tell me not to do it – I can’t raise a child, nor bring it to term. I’ve been sick most of the pregnancy, and it keeps getting worse.”

We live in a very fallen and broken world. This poor woman needs God’s loving mercy and grace. Let us pray to our Mother in Heaven, that she will be open to the Holy Spirit and spare her pre born child from death. She has been taken in by a culture that does not consider a child in the womb a person worthy of life. She has been taken in by a boyfriend who uses her and refuses to man up. Yet she claims that he is a good guy because she loves him.

Yep. The so called sexual revolution has been so liberating for women. Not.


Posted in Abortion, Culture of Death | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Gardian Angels to Protect and Serve

Posted on October 2, 2010 by Susan Kehoe

Today is the memorial of the Guardian angels. We all have one. Several years ago, I was making a left turn into our Church parking lot, very early in the morning, and I was side swiped. It was, ironically, the memorial of the Guardian Angels. And I was on my way to adoration. I wondered if my angel was asleep on the job.

But the accident was my fault. Guardian Angels do not protect us from our own stupidity.

Anyway read about our Guardian Angels here.

Posted in Angels | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Messengers of God

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Susan Kehoe

Today is the feast day of the three arch Angels that are named in Holy Scripture: St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and St. Raphael.  Contrary to popular belief, they are not sweet sentimental cherubs. In scripture one of the first things an angels says when appearing to some one is Fear Not. That is because they reflect the glory and holiness of God. Holiness inspires fear, or awe.

Several years back, I greatly disappointed several of the girls in an 8th grade confirmation class by telling them that angels were pure spirit. Sorry. No wings.

Monsignor Pope has the A-Z on Angels. Get thou there!

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