Feelings must not be the first thing when praying for it is only fleeting. Praying doesn't mean only the times when you engage in long vocal prayer but also in mental prayer and short ejaculatory prayers. As humans we are both body and soul so we also need a prayerful physical environment to pray most of the time.

Fatherhood, Beauty, and Discipline
This is a speech I gave at IHM School’s recent graduation.

Besides being the auspicious occasion of Juliana’s graduation from IHM School, today is also Father’s Day. This is a secular observance that, here in the United States, began in the early twentieth century. But if we consult that vast database of online information, Wikipedia, we learn, this: “In Catholic Europe, it [Father’s Day] has been celebrated on March 19 (St. Joseph’s Day) since the Middle Ages. This celebration was brought by the Spanish and Portuguese to Latin America, where March 19 is often still used for it… .” Given the absence of Saint Joseph from their lives, when American Protestants wanted a day to honor Fatherhood, they chose a random Sunday in June for its observance. But for all its secular character, we Catholics should still honor the day because we honor the institution that it commemorates.

Given modern trends and movements, which enshrine the aberrant and exult the abnormal, it is no surprise that occasional articles and other journalistic diatribes against the celebration come out this time of year. Way back in 1974, before she was a Supreme Court Justice, then Columbia University Law School professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-authored a report which claimed: “Replacing ‘Mother’s Day’ and ‘Father’s Day’ with a ‘Parent’s Day’ should be considered, as an observance more consistent with a policy of minimizing traditional sex-based differences in parental roles.” There is also at least one offering on YouTube explaining how we might celebrate Father’s Day as part of June’s other observance: “Pride Month.” (And you probably thought it was the Month of the Sacred Heart!)

We honor earthly fathers as images of the Eternal Father: Saint Paul writes to the Ephesians, “I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named…” (Eph. 3:14-15).

In a happy concurrence with the observance of Father’s Day, today’s short Epistle reading from Romans 8 speaks of our divine adoption as God’s children no less than three times: “For the expectation of the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God.” He speaks of creation itself being “delivered from the servitude of corruption, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God,” and that we ourselves wait for the “for the adoption of the sons of God.”

This is what the Catholic life is all about: our supernatural adoption in Christ and by the Holy Spirit as God’s sons and daughters, as partakers of the very divine nature itself — being made, as we are, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, by which we have title to a heavenly inheritance in the Kingdom of our Father.

This is the great truth of our lives; this is our summum bonum (our “highest good”); this is the greatest beauty that is, for it unites us to that “beauty ever ancient and ever new” that is God, in the words of Saint Augustine.

But we too often forget the supernatural purpose of our lives as children of the Eternal Father. So, for the rest of this little talk, I’d like to try to impress on our lovely graduate how she might remember what she is and what is her destiny.

I begin that by citing Saint Paul, from Hebrews 12:1-3:

And therefore we also having so great a cloud of witnesses over our head, laying aside every weight and sin which surrounds us, let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us: Looking on Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who having joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God. For think diligently upon him that endured such opposition from sinners against himself; that you be not wearied, fainting in your minds.
Saint Paul tells us to look upon Jesus, whom he calls elsewhere “The image (ikon) of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). Our Lord Himself tells Saint Philip, “he that seeth me seeth the Father also” (John 14:9).

“Looking on Jesus” does at least two things for us: First, it makes us to see the Father because Our Lord is the perfect and living Image of the Father. Second, it also makes us to see what we are supposed to be: the children of that same Father, because that it what Jesus is — the Eternal Child in the Trinity.

Every virtue and perfection that Our Lord displays in all the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries of His life reflects some eternal perfection that He received from His Father. Therefore, Jesus is kind as the Father is kind, loving as the Father is loving, merciful as the Father is merciful, tender as the Father is tender, and so forth. In considering these virtues and perfections of Christ in the mysteries of the Rosary, we are seeing the Father, at the same time we see how it is that a Child of God is supposed to live.

So, Juliana, pray and meditate your daily Rosary as one way of keeping vital contact with the Father in Christ and through the Holy Ghost. And take that advice of the great spiritual writer, Father Mary Eugene Boylan, who said, “Every soul who wishes to advance should try to look God in the face, in all reverence, at least once every day.”

And why would we not want to contemplate that Face — that beautiful Holy Face!

I know that Juliana understands what I’m saying, because I know she can appreciate good art. She doesn’t just like to see a pretty picture and move on, but to relish a work of art, to read it and try to get into the mind of the artist. When, just over a week ago, the Upper School went on a field trip to the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, Massachusetts, Juliana was one of the elite few who were not bored out of their minds by the experience. I could see that she actually relished it. At one point, she became positively ebullient while explaining to some of us the meaning behind one painting we saw. Mind you, it was not an icon, but a painting by a modern Russian painter. After staring at it for some time, she breathlessly narrated to us a meaning that I would never have seen in it. And she was probably right.

The appreciation of good art is itself a contemplative experience; Juliana well knows this because she read a book I lent her on the subject by the German Catholic Philosopher, Dr. Josef Pieper.

A minute ago, I referred to God in Saint Augustine’s famous words as the “beauty ever ancient and ever new.” Given the disparate temperaments, talents, and aptitudes that make us all so different, people have varying approaches to God — and I don’t mean the different religions, I mean the different ways to the one true God that may be traversed by the orthodox faithful. Some approach Him primarily as Truth; others, as Goodness, and others as Beauty — all of which He is.

Those who appreciate good art are lovers of beauty, because beauty is the good to be pursued in art. For such people, the words of the great Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, have great meaning: “beauty will save the world.” (These words are from Dostoevsky’s novel, The Idiot, where they are put on the lips of the main character, Prince Myshkin, who is an epileptic, and who, like Dostoevsky himself, experiences brief ecstatic bursts of contemplative insight into reality just before the onset of an epileptic seizure. For Dostoevsky, all the pain and terror of the seizure was amply compensated by this experience of less than a second.)

Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2009 “Meeting with Artists” in the Sistine Chapel, quoted Dostoevsky in another passage on beauty, this one from his novel, Demons. The Holy Father said:

Dostoevsky’s words that I am about to quote are bold and paradoxical, but they invite reflection. He says this: “Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would no longer be anything to do to the world. The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here.”
Pope Francis, in his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, also cites Dostoevsky:

In Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Prince Myshkin sees a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger depicting Christ dead in the tomb and says: “Looking at that painting might cause one to lose his faith.” The painting is a gruesome portrayal of the destructive effects of death on Christ’s body. Yet it is precisely in contemplating Jesus’ death that faith grows stronger and receives a dazzling light; then it is revealed as faith in Christ’s steadfast love for us, a love capable of embracing death to bring us salvation. This love, which did not recoil before death in order to show its depth, is something I can believe in; Christ’s total self-gift overcomes every suspicion and enables me to entrust myself to him completely (§16).
Here we see that the contemplation of beauty is the contemplation of truth, and also of goodness, because the Triune God is all three.

Let me conclude by returning to the theme of Father’s Day. If they are good fathers, it is their job to lay down the law, and to enforce it in the home. This is usually not their favorite thing to do. But it must be remembered that, in this, they are called to resemble God the Father, of whom King David says in Psalm 24, “The Lord is sweet and righteous: therefore he will give a law to sinners in the way.” That law that the Father gives us is good, and He give it because He loves us. The indulgent father, who gives no law, no discipline to his child, shows no love. It is no wonder that we call such a child “spoiled” — the same word we use for things when they have been harmed or gone bad.

If our pursuit of beauty is to lead us to the right place, and not to mere worldly astheticism, we need to regulate it by this law of God that our Good Father has given us. And that is why the Church, our good Mother, teaches us this law, that we might find ourselves safely at home in Our Father’s House, and contemplate Beauty Himself in the Face.

In the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

Not sure under which parish jurisdiction but nearest would be St Anne's Chapel in UPM and Guadalupe Puchong. Make an appointment with your pastor.

Science, Technology, and God

One of the two major reasons that people become atheists is that secondary causality is, so they think, sufficient to explain all that exists without any reference to God. This and the existence of evil are the two objections to God’s existence that Saint Thomas posits and replies to in his Summa Theologiae.

It is the error clung to with tenacity by the post-Enlightenment votary of scientism, empiricism, or positivism, those errors which embrace the scientific method and empirical proofs as the only sure norm for human certitude. While not every empiricist is an atheist, many of them are. Others are agnostics or simply indifferent to God and religion because they are so preoccupied by the creature that they fail to elevate their mind to the Creator — and that, even when creation itself testifies to Him, as Saint Paul ironically puts it: “For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable” (Rom. 1:20).

Science. In the daily lexicon of the contemporary denizen of former Christendom, the word itself has come to mean exclusively the empirical sciences. If its object is not made of matter, and if it does not study that matter prescinding from origins and ultimate purposes, it is not a science. This is one of the many fashionable bigotries of our day. But it was not always so, for the natural sciences did not formerly exhaust the notion of science. A science, from the Latin word scientia (“knowledge,” from scire, “to know,” as in, to know facts), is an ordered body of knowledge. For Aristotle, science is “a sure and evident knowledge obtained from demonstrations”; for Saint Thomas, it is “the knowledge of things from their causes” (Catholic Encyclopedia). By these definitions, theology, which is also called “the Science of Faith,” is most certainly a true science, as is its handmaid, philosophy.

The empirical sciences have advanced to an impressive level. Nobody can reasonably argue against that fact. There is much that men now know about the created universe, and there are many ways that we can technologically manipulate creation in order to produce marvelous results (marvelous, even if not all good, as in, e.g., being able to blow entire continents off the map by splitting the atom very skillfully).

Just as the profiteering, technocratic “military industrial complex” has done much harm to our nation’s prosperity and the world’s prospects of peace, many scientific and technological advances have brought with them similar dangers — to human life, to public morals, to genuine civilization and culture.

In general, we have become highly advanced barbarians.

That last concept might seem oxymoronic to some reading these lines, but consider: If the words “highly advanced” exclusively imply advances in the empirical sciences and the technologies that these sciences make possible, then we are indeed highly advanced. Barbarism connotes a lack of civilization, which itself embraces much more than science and technology; civilization includes art and architecture, taste and manners, a well regulated legal system that maintains high standards of justice, altruism and the will to sacrifice for the common good, love of virtue and strong social bonds based upon the common pursuit of what is truly good. Those social bonds, of course, begin with the family, a divine institution that our civilization is busy deconstructing at the moment.

We Americans tend to measure civilization mostly by technological metrics. This is no doubt an inheritance from the English Protestant industrial capitalist outlook on the word. If we were to behold a nation that had a less advanced power grid than our own, fewer cars per capita, and a sparse network of highways, but instead had intense religious devotion among its populace, a replacement level birth rate, a healthy traditional diet sourced from family-owned farms, skilled craftsmen making quality goods purchased by their neighbors, leisurely activities like good poetry, literature, and music, and crowded taverns serving locally made brews, vintages, or spirits, we would look down on that nation as inferior. No broadband Internet and frequent power outages in the more remote districts would make most of us conclude that these people are comparatively “uncivilized,” as would the fact that the entertainment was mostly self-made or comprised of live local talent — not five-hundred channels of cable idiocy plus Netflix.

Yet such a people would be more civilized than most modern Americans.

That’s what I mean when I say that we have become civilized barbarians. Our profusion of blue-tooth devices and our massive nuclear arsenal do not and cannot supplement for our genuine cultural impoverishment. And as for our moral impoverishment, that makes our advanced technology all the more dangerous.

Anticipating objections to these thoughts, let me plainly stat that I am no Luddite, as I am obviously using advanced technology to transmit these very thoughts to my readers. This is all a question of proportionality, as well as of intention, i.e., the all-important matter of purpose. The Middle Ages were times of great technological advancement — really! But there was an accompanying sense of proportion, and technology was not a fetish for the denizens of Medieval Christendom. Moreover, it was the Gospel and not mere technological progress as such that gave men their ideals. Modern materialism and secularism have changed all that.

Poor Ireland was long made to feel inferior to the rest of the Anglosphere, especially its British neighbors. After decades of gradually jettisoning its Catholic identity, it was made materially prosperous and more “advanced” in recent times, especially by the Celtic Tiger, but it has also gradually become barbaric because, among other things, barbarous sodomy, barbarous onanism, and barbarous infanticide are now welcomed as “progress” in the Emerald Isle. Soon the sons and daughters of Saint Patrick will be reaping hefty doses of the social ills that come in the wake of these sins that cry to heaven for vengeance. And if the social ills are not enough, there are the eschatological downsides.

Returning again to the subject I began with, I shall quote from Brother Francis’ Challenge of Faith regarding certain advantages, limits, and ideological dangers attached to the empirical sciences. The following words, with which I will close these lines, exemplify the contemplative approach Brother took to all questions of major moment:

All things contribute to the glory of God, even science, the marvel of the modern age.
When we contemplate what scientists have done and are doing, we gaze at an astounding aspect of God’s most wonderful creature, and we praise God. Yet so many scientists do not contemplate and do not praise.
Certainly the very reality of the sciences and the inventions of science are a striking testimony of the mastery of mind over matter, and an emphatic assertion of the reality of the spiritual; yet so many scientists use their most spiritual power (their intellect) to deny the reality of the spiritual.
It is the tragedy of the modern age that scientists on the whole have not been as grateful to their Creator as they might have been. The coldness of this generation is at least partly due to that.
By their very method and approach, most scientists commit themselves to a restricted view of the material aspect of things, to a utilitarian approach which stifles the contemplative interest.
How could the scientists decide for or against the revealed account of creation? Creation involves a free act of an omnipotent power. By the nature of the case, [the act of] creation is not a phenomenon that can be controlled, measured, or repeated. The scientists must assume (as scientists) that things always happened in the manner of the phenomena before their eyes.
God uses miracles in order to authenticate the supernatural order, and intelligent but simple men have always learned the lesson intended by miracles. But the scientist can only relegate miracles to the class of things “we do not yet understand.”
Human intelligence has always, and almost unanimously, concluded to the existence of God, from the consideration of the universe which we all experience in common. Some reach this conclusion simply and swiftly in the manner of a child, and some methodically and cautiously in the manner of the philosopher.
Holy Scripture teaches us that man is reprehensible when he cannot reach even without the assistance of divine revelation a knowledge of God, of “His eternal power and divinity” (Rom. 1:20).
The Christian missionary is not sent to preach the existence of God. He should be able to take that for granted. The apostle is to bring the good news of God-become-man, and the consequences of that great event upon our human destiny.
But the scientist, chained to his ideology and to his method, can be, and often is, indefinitely distracted from ever finding God. In place of the primacy of the First Cause he can be lost in an infinity of secondary causes, and instead of reaching the fullness of Eternal Being he is left with the emptiness of an indefinitely long duration of time.

In the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

1Unto the end, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had sinned with Bethsabee. Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy. And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity.

2Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

3For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me.

4To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee: that thou mayst be justified in thy words and mayst overcome when thou art judged.

5For behold I was conceived in iniquities; and in sins did my mother conceive me.

- The Word of God against the false teachers on the other thread. Ps 51 from the Septuagint (Ps 50 in the Hebrew Bible)

Because not everyone is motivated by the carrot. Some people need to be motivated by the cane...lol. Anyway, don't forget that in the New Testament, Our Lord spoke about Hell more frequently than any other topic.

This post has been edited by yeeck: Jul 18 2018, 10:44 AM

• everlasting fire
• everlasting punishment
• eternal condemnation
• the fire that shall never be quenched
• their worm does not die
• unquenchable fire
• weeping and gnashing of teeth

This post has been edited by yeeck: Jul 18 2018, 02:23 PM

Where was it proven that Lourdes was a fraud?

Response to the Problem of Evil and Suffering
Evil and suffering is clearly seen in the world today and deeply affects all people. Whether it be natural disasters, war or increasing ailment ,suffering affects us all. The existence of evil and suffering also provides a strong challenge for the classical theist, in trying to reconcile the existence of an all good God with the natural disasters that cause suffering to humans and the atrocities humans cause to each other.image

The question of evil and suffering in the world is both painful and mysterious. Some theists struggle with the question “if God is omnipotent and provident, why then does evil exist?”[1] And also with the related question “why does God permit evil?”[2] A theist by definition is one who believes in the existence of a god or gods[3] and “evil can be defined as that which opposes, or is the antithesis of, what is good”[4]

Only some theists have a problem with the question of evil and suffering. The argument, which is first put forward by Epicurus, goes as follows:

God is all powerful(omnipotent), and all good (Omni benevolent)
Evil and suffering are incompatible with the existence of God
Evil and suffering exist
Therefore God does not exist.
This argument is of the form of modus tollens or indirect reasoning, where p (God is Omni benevolent and omnipotent) implies q (Evil and suffering are compatible with the existence of God). If q is not true (Evil and suffering are incompatible with the existence of God) then p is not true either (God does not exist).

The reason certain theists do not have this problem is because they reject all of or certain parts of the first premise, such as saying that God is limited (process theology), not omnipotent and/or omniscient (all knowing), or by saying that there is one God who is good and there is another who is evil and the evil god accounts for the evil in the world, these two supreme beings are locked in cosmic dualism, this can be seen in the religion of Zoroastrianism. Also in relation to the first premise would be that God is all knowing (omniscient) and exists everywhere (omnipresent)

However the God of classical theism (Christianity. Judaism, Islam) is true to the first premise. It is only this branch of theism that the problem of the existence of evil concerns. A theodicy is a defence of God’s goodness and omnipotence in the face of evil. Most theodicies would aim to disprove the second premise, which is that evil and suffering are incompatible with the existence of God. Such theodicies were developed by St. Irenaeus, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas; another major theodicy is the Free Will Defence.

There are two different kinds of evil and they must be clearly separated, they are natural (or physical) evil and moral evil.

Natural evil is clearly represented by such events as natural disasters (earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis, etc.), sickness (which is not due to moral evil) and psychological ills, sorrow and anxiety. These are not intrinsically (in and of themselves) evil in fact, one could argue they are not evil at all, as they are only following natural laws. What is generally considered evil about such atrocities is the suffering that such events produce and as far as human welfare is concerned, evil “is what ought not to exist”[5]

Moral evil is well defined in the 1909 Catholic encyclopedia as “the deviation of human volition [will] from the prescriptions of the moral order and the action which results from that deviation”[6].Here we can see that for the problem of evil (moral evil) to exist another condition is in place, and that is the view that God is the supreme law giver, and that He has implanted a moral order within the hearts of all men (Natural Law[7]). This view of God as supreme law giver is also common among the three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). Some examples of moral evil are: murder, theft, torture, rape, property destruction, etc.

Suffering and evil are very much interrelated, as Pope John Paul II said in his apostolic letter on the Christian meaning of human suffering “man suffers whenever he experiences any kind of evil”[8]

Certain explanations for evil and suffering in the Scriptures are Divine punishment for sin, tests of faith, Divine warnings, and Divine discipline and as a means of expiation or atonement for sin. In the New Testament suffering takes on a redemptive value with Christ’s suffering and death on the cross.

St. Augustine (354-430 AD) would argue that the fall of Adam and Eve initiated natural evil, this argument is supported by the account in Genesis where God says to Eve “I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children”[9] and He says to Adam “cursed is the earth in thy work: with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.”[10] This particular account would suggest that at least some natural evil is Divine punishment for sin.

St. Thomas Aquinas would argue that at least certain natural evils are not in fact evil as when God created the world He “saw that it was good.”[11] However, “God is in no way, directly or indirectly the cause of moral evil”[12] this view is supported by the Sacred Scriptures which state “Almighty God does not do evil”[13] “Free creatures, both human and angelic, are the source of much evil.”[14]

God permits evil, however because he respects the free will of His creation; this is one of the central tenets of the Free Will Defence (FWD). For genuine free will people must choose to follow their ultimate purpose, to live in eternal harmony and rest with God or to disobey God and His commands. This however is not an easy task, especially due to the original sin of Adam and Eve. Peter Vardy puts it this way “the reward for responding to God will be the opposition, persecution, rejection and suffering- but also, if the path is truly followed to the end, a peace and a joy that can be found nowhere else”[15].

St Irenaeus (130-202 AD) held that evil serves a purpose, and that evil is a result of human free will. John Hick, in recent years has contributed to St. Irenaeus’ theodicy. Much of this argument goes back to original sin, where Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God, however, they strayed away from His likeness when, they disobeyed His commands. St. Irenaeus says:

“For it was necessary, at first, that nature should be exhibited; then, after that, that what was mortal should be conquered and swallowed up by immortality, and the corruptible by incorruptibility, and that man should be made after the image and likeness of God, having received the knowledge of good and evil.”[16]

Here he makes the point that after the fall, when man received the knowledge of good and evil, that there is a need to return back to the likeness of God after initially being created in His likeness. St. Irenaeus’ theodicy (also known as the soul building defence) is based around the fact that suffering has a redemptive purpose, and after original sin, suffering is needed to attain eternal life as “nothing that is impure will enter the city[Heaven]”[17]

Father William Most explains this well by saying that “Suffering is needed to help us rise above the weakness that is found in our nature as a result of original sin.”[18]

It must be understood that God’s ways are inconceivable to man as St. Paul writes “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways!”[19] and that God uses evil for good as St. Augustine said “For almighty God, because he is supremely good, would never allow evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself”[20] This explanation is supported by the Scriptures and the life of Joseph in the Old Testament :“You thought evil against me: but God turned it into good, that he might exalt me, as at present you see, and might save many people.”[21] Also in light of this understanding we can see that suffering is also necessary to help facilitate spiritual growth.

Some may say that this explanation while being intellectually sound does not do justice to human experience, St. Faustina writes in her diaries “Oh, if only the suffering soul knew how it is loved by God, it would die of happiness! Some day, we will know the value of suffering, but then we will no longer be able to suffer. The present moment is ours”[22]

Overall, evil and suffering provide a challenge for classical theists, as to reconcile God’s existence with the existence of evil. The major theodicies are that of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Irenaeus and the Free Will Defence. Each result in the conclusion that God does not do moral evil, however permits moral evil because He respects our genuine free will to obey or disobey His commands. God also allows natural evil for many reasons and these can be seen in the scriptures. However, God’s omnipotence rules supreme as to bring good even out of the evil. “And we know that to them that love God all things work together unto good: to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints.”[23]

[1] Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church 57

[2] Ibid. 58

[3] WordNet Search-3.0 <http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=theist>

[4] New Catholic Encyclopedia 2nd Edition, Thomson Gale, 2003, vol.5 p.487

[5] Sharpe, Alfred. “Evil”. The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol.5. New York: Robert Appleton Company,

1909. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05649a.htm>[Viewed on August 11 2009]

[6] Id

[7] This is also supported by the Sacred Scriptures, as Romans 2:15 says “What the law requires is

written on their hearts”.

[8] Pope John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris § 7,1984

[9] Genesis 3:16- Douay-Rheims Version 1899 (DRV)

[10] Genesis 3:17-18 (DRV)

[11] Genesis 1:10 (DRV)image

[12] Catechism of the Catholic Church §312 (With reference to St. Augustine De libero arbitrio and St.

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae I-II,79,1.)

[13] Job 34:12 (Good News Bible [GNB])

[14] New Catholic Encyclopedia Loc. cit.

[15] Peter Vardy The Puzzle of Evil, Harper Collins, 1997 (p.199)

[16] St. Irenaeus Against Heresies, IV.38 <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103438.htm>.

[17] Revelation 31:27 (GNB)

[18] Fr. William Most Suffering <http://www.ewtn.com/library/SCRIPTUR/SFRING.TXT>

[19] Romans 11:33 (DRV)

[20] Catechism of Catholic Church §311 (Quoting St. Augustine, Enchiridion 3,11)

[21] Genesis 50:20 (DRV)

[22] The Diary of St. Faustina- Divine Mercy in my soul 963

[23] Romans 8:28 (DRV)

Is Epicurus Neither Able nor Willing to Understand Evil and the Mercy of God? Then Why Give Him the Time of Day?
October 12, 2017 Rob Slane

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Thus spake Epicurus, the Greek philosopher who lived from 341-270 BC. The riddle is undoubtedly a clever one, and yet it turns out to be loaded with a couple of erroneous presuppositions: firstly, a flawed presupposition, and secondly, a really flawed presupposition.

So what is the flawed presupposition? In a nutshell, it is the idea that to deal with evil, God must do so in exactly the way we think he ought to, and if he doesn’t, we’re going to get all uppity and tell him that he doesn’t exist. In our wisdom, we know that he ought to deal with evil, and we also know just how he ought to do it. Yet the problem we have is that any of the ways we can come up with to deal with evil end up destroying not just evil, but humanity itself. Let me explain.

Take the simplest example of the kind of evil that Epicurus might have envisaged: Cain and Abel. “Okay,” says Epicurus, “so if God is good, willing and omnipotent, why did he allow Cain to kill his brother?” Now how could God have prevented it? There are only really three options: he could have simply prevented Cain from doing it either by natural or miraculous means; he could have destroyed Cain either before or after he did his deed; or he could have “reprogrammed” Cain so that he never again had such a thought in his head.

But with each of these “solutions” there is an insurmountable difficulty. The problem with the first option – preventing Cain doing the deed – is that Cain’s heart remains unchanged, and he will simply look for another opportunity to carry out his crime. The problem with the second – destroying Cain – is that not only must Cain be destroyed but Abel too, because he is also a guilty sinner before God. And the problem with the third – reprogramming Cain – is that Cain loses one of the characteristics that make him to differ from the beasts.

With the first option, sin is harboured within Cain’s heart to be brought out into the open on another day. With the second, all humanity is wiped off the face of the earth, because all – not just the Cains and the Hitlers of this world – are guilty before God. And with the third, Cain is no longer made in the image of God. None of these options deals with evil in a satisfactory way, and if God were to choose any of them, humanity dies.

Now in his riddle, Epicurus castigates God for not doing something about Cain, but for choosing another option instead, which was “do nothing.” Here is exactly where the presupposition is flawed. Epicurus assumes that God must deal with Cain in one of the first three ways, and if he doesn’t, this is evidence of his inability, unwillingness or malevolence. Yet God does choose another way, but rather than it being “do nothing”, it is something that not only deals with the evil, but which does so in a way that overcomes all the other problems as well.

So how can this be done? Well God’s method, which may well sound like foolishness to the likes of Epicurus, is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the only method which not only deals with the problem of evil, but does so at the same time as overcoming the three problems mentioned above. It deals with evil by God taking evil upon himself. It deals with the heart problem by drawing men to God through the Cross, changing their hearts and bringing them into a right relationship with God. It deals with the problem of destroying humanity by offering hope of salvation to sinful humanity. And it deals with the reprogramming problem by restoring men to righteousness, so that they learn to choose the good and forsake evil. Whether Epicurus can accept the “folly” of this method is another matter entirely.

So much for the flawed presupposition, what of the really flawed presupposition? Well if Epicurus happened to be around today, the one question I would want to put to him would be this: “Mr Epicurus, your famous riddle about evil and the impotence of God has wowed many an atheist with its cleverness, and no doubt stumped many a Christian with its difficulties, but what I am really keen to know is this: what do you actually mean by evil.”

At this point it wouldn’t come as a surprise to see Epicurus’ face contorting in barely concealed contempt, implying that I am some sort of a dimwit for not knowing what evil is. Have I never heard of murders and wars and rapes and thefts and that sort of thing? Well yes I have, but contorted faces notwithstanding, that still doesn’t answer my question: what do you mean by evil? Is it just a bunch of actions such as those you have mentioned, or is it something far deeper than that? What actually is it?

The problem with Epicurus’ riddle is that it never gets around to telling us what this “evil” is that God ought to be stopping, and so it seems a pretty safe bet that Epicurus had in mind a bunch of things “out there”. But since his riddle assumes the existence of God before apparently going on to disprove him it follows that the riddle really ought to allow God to define evil, rather than leaving it to Epicurus to assume that his half-baked definition will suffice.

If God is God, then evil is not defined merely as a bunch of bad actions “out there”, but rather as “anything and everything which is opposite of God.” Now if this is the case, then what this means – amongst many other things – is that Epicurus’ riddle itself falls into the category of evil. I doubt very much whether this possibility actually crossed his mind when he wrote it, but if evil is defined by God as being that which is opposite to him, then Epicurus is guilty of that very thing in even proposing his conundrum. In which case, his only legitimate questions would be these: why doesn’t God come and strike me down for even daring to state such a thing? Why doesn’t he come and deal with my evil?

The answer, once again, is the mercy of God. Epicurus had an evil heart, just like the rest of us. He was opposed to God, just like the rest of us are by nature. He calls on God to come and deal with evil, but does he include his own in this? Is he really prepared for God to come and deal with his evil? If he really does desire this, is he prepared for God to leave his heart unchanged, or to strike him dead or to reprogram him? Does he really want God to deal with it in that way? Or will he not rather hope that God can deal with it in such a way that changes his heart for good, leaves him alive, and doesn’t turn him into a machine?

The good news is that this is exactly what God does. It took some thorns, some nails and the death of the Light of the World to achieve it. But it is finished. The grave is empty and the throne is filled. So come, Epicurus, God has found a way to deal with evil and he invites you to join him. Now are you willing to accept?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes_Medical_Bureau

https://www.basicincome.com/bp/itmayseemtough.htm

Just like how you asked me to read Richard Dawkins? Amazing how one-sided it is....

Actually if you have read that, it's already explained early on that the riddle was based on false premises. Oh boy...sounds like an atheist version of Sylar we have here.

I saw it, and it wasn't convincing. Unlike you who didn't bother to read, so there.

Is that the best you've got? LOL

Erroneous. The origin of the differences is due to the fall.

To begin to address these questions, one must consider what is meant by the word 'evil' here? Most people have a general idea of what evil is but what are some specific things that are evil? Is murder evil? Most would agree that it is. What about stealing? What about lying? What about “little” things like viewing pornography, drinking, gambling, or smoking? When we start identifying things as evil, we begin to realize that we are evil. The Bible says there are none that does good (Psalm 14:3). If we want God to do “something” about evil, we must realize that we are asking Him to deal with each one of us personally.

What exactly then do we want God to do about evil? Should He immediately remove anyone that commits an evil act? That might have sounded appealing a few minutes ago but if each of us were to be included, then it suddenly doesn't sound so appealing anymore.

Of course, there are those people who excuse their own vices as “not so bad” and only want God to deal with the “really bad” things. I guess that means that something like telling “white lies” is OK but the “bold faced” liars get zapped. This is a sort of special pleading by some people who want some degree of evil to be acceptable – just enough for them to get by. They want God to deal with evil but not their evil. They are saying, “Zap everyone else, God, just don't zap me!” You can see how this doesn't really solve anything because everyone wants to excuse their own sin. The Bible says that everyone is right in his own eyes but the Lord ponders the heart (Proverbs 21:2).

If anyone wants God to deal with evil by removing it, it's an all or nothing proposition.

A second alternative is to restrain people from doing evil. That is, God should simply not allow anyone to do evil. The problem with this is that evil is a free will issue. If we were to use the 10 Commandments as a standard of understanding what is right and wrong, there are some points everyone would agree on. “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), for example, would be one of those things that most people would agree is wrong. We wouldn't have a problem if God took away our desire or ability to kill. But what about the commandment that says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3)? Would the critic be agreeable if God forced everyone to worship Him? Somehow I think he wouldn't like this option. It's a similar dilemma to the one above where we want God to deal with the evil in everyone else, but we want God to let us continue in our own evil.

To be fair to the critic, though, I wouldn't like this option too much either. If God eliminates our ability to do evil, He also eliminates our ability to choose to do good. I want to worship God. I don't want to be a robot who only performs a task because that what it's programmed to do and it doesn't know anything else. Perhaps God too doesn't want this because He has obviously decided not to deal with evil this way.

A third option is this: give people the free will to decide to do good or evil. Everyone chooses to do evil, of course, and the unrepentant will reap the just punishment for their actions. However, God could make a way of forgiveness available to those who repent of their evil. This is the option that God has chosen. God made this option available at a great personal cost to Himself. In doing so, He has demonstrated that He is both able and willing to do something about evil. He has also demonstrated another characteristic that Epicurus did not mention in his riddle; besides being omnipotent and merciful, God is also just.

https://rkbentley.blogspot.com/2011/07/epic...em-of-evil.html

The suposed riddle is based on false premises in the first place. What is evil? To Greeks like Epicurus, perhaps infanticide is not evil.

Human nature is a creation of God, and God cannot create anything evil - therefore human nature is inherently good. However, due to original sin we have a fallen nature, which is inclined toward evil. We call this concupiscence.