The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1916-08-05
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49,

Pain is never unbearable save in the
anguished mind of the watcher at the
bedside. Let us not, then, in our
speculations lose sight of this neceB-
sary fact.
The problem of evil, as we have
said, is the oldest problem in the
world. It's consideration has surely
entered into the heart of every human
being without exception 1t has been
revived in our day by the circum-
stances of the great war. Briefly, 1t
may be thus stated: If God has
providence over His creatures, why
does He permit such evils to be? 1t is
idle to say that these evils are the
result of the malice of man. Conced-
ing that to be true, it is none the less
true that whatever happens is, in the
last resort, caused by God, the First
Cause of all. And even admitting that
the wickedness of men has brought
about the terrible conditions of Eu-
rope, it must be remembered that
they who are, in the supposition, the
authors of this evil are not the same
who suffer from it. The statesmen
and the rulers, the philosophers and
the leaders of thought-these are the
men who have prccipitated the war;
but the humble peasants who had no
hand in the preparation of this calam-
ity are the innocent sufferers.
What, then, becomes of the theory
of Divine Providence, of God Who
watches over even the tiniest and
least significant of His creatures?
The answer of the Deists is that there
is no providence, that God created
man and the world and leaves all
creation to care for itself. The an
cient Manichaeans, like the Christian
Scientists of the present day, postu-
lated two principles-one good and
one bad, from which proceeded all
that is good and bad in the world.
This last theory has assumed various
forms with various PHILOSOPHERS, but
at bottom the principle of the two
gods, or authors of all things, is the
same.
1t can be seen how easily a Chris
tian can slip into sheer atheism
from the doubling of Divine Provi-
dence. According to the Christian
teaching, Gods essence is His good
ness. Impute all evil to God as it's
cause and you place evil in the es
sence of God, or the cause is as the
effect, evil if evil and good if good
Hence, we can understand how Chris
tians will abandon all belief after
some great sorrow has entered into
their life-a sorrow which they begged
God to ward off, which they firmly
believed that He could avert, and
which, in their narrowmindedness
they believed that He should avert
In spite of their supplication, the evil
came upon them. To them, in their
great sorrow, it looked like sheer and
total. evil (for strong grief, even more
than other passions, concentrates the
powers of the soul upon one narrow
thought to the exclusion of all other
considerations. God, according to
their wrong opinion, is the Author of
all things. He is the Author of this
evil and, hence, evil in Himself.
Their practical conclusion is simple.
Either evil exists in God and He is
unworthy of my allegiance; or God is
incapable of warding off evil and
hence impotent and again unworthy
of my allegiance.
OF course, such a process of reason
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place because it assumes that God is
the cause of evil as He is the cause
of good. We do not care to enter
in an article of this kind into con-
sideration of the metaphysical nature
of evil. Suffice to mention that evil
is not anything positive but rather
the negation of some positive attri-
butte. Evil has been compared by
the great st. Augustine to the pauses
in musical melody. The pause, in
itself, is sheer nothing and no one is
the cause or author of it. Placed
properly in the musical theme it par
takes of another quality-of absence
or privation. God is the author of all
that is positive or real and hence,
good. Neither He, nor anyone else,
is the author of evil in the same sense
that one is the author of good. But
the prevention of good may be caused
and evil will result
Now God may withhold good when
ever He will. After all, is not He the
Master and does He owe us anything?
Is God our debtor? Shall the clay
say to the potter, why hast thou
made me so?" If we insist upon our
own privilege of acting or not as we
will, shall we refuse the same pre-
rogative to God?
We say that God exerts a provi-
dence over all. Does that mean that
God has equal care of all? Not at
all, God has providence over all His
creatures; but we dare not say that
He shows the same care for all with
out variation. In the order of nature
as of grace, there are certain privi-
legged ones of God. In this is God
unjust? No, providing that He shows
sufficient watchfulness over all. This
He does. His providence over all is
sufficient for all but not necessarily
equal for all.
But now let us turn our considera-
ton for moment to suffering itself.
1t is usually assumed that physical
suffering is an evil. 1t is an evil if