MAKING SENSE OF SUFFERING - II
who has written 27 books on theology and political theory. Fr. Schall is one of the rare
Jesuits with a public profile who is "conservative" rather than liberal-progressive. His
bibliography and numerous articles are available on his website www.morec.com/schall/
This interview was conducted by writer Ken Masugi for the Claremont Institute and posted
12/20/05 at http://www.claremont.org/writings/051220masugic.html
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Masugi:
Natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and the Asian tsunami raise both theological and political questions. Do you have a way of relating these two questions to the natural disasters we faced this past year?
Schall: Natural disasters from Vesuvius to the Black Plague to Krakatoa to the recent Southern hurricanes and floods, followed by a much more lethal earthquake in Pakistan, in themselves are relatively regular events in human history. No generation of mankind has altogether escaped blizzards, tidal waves, lightning strikes, volcanoes blowing up, droughts, floods, tornados, and other "natural" disasters like plagues and bugs. The word "natural" means that the disaster is not and, except by some weird stretch of the imagination, cannot be caused by human agency.
It is perhaps the most outlandish of modern temptations to conceive natural disasters to be results of human irresponsibility so that we can "blame" someone for them. This tendency may be an indirect but logical result of understanding nature solely in human terms, as if we cannot allow an agency outside of ourselves. In a broader sense, it is a human claim that it itself is the divinity.
As a race of beings on this planet,
we are simply subject to these devastating happenings on a more or less recurrent and often anticipated basis. The annual number of hurricanes occurring in the Caribbean over the past couple of centuries, for instance, is relatively stable. If a hurricane, like a meteor, hits a populated area, we hear about it. If it does not, we do not. One of the reasons recent hurricanes cause more damage than earlier ones is that we insist on our "right" to build on the same shores and beaches, which, when earlier hurricanes struck, were relatively empty.
This recurrence of natural disasters is the nature of the planet on which we live. To wish such things out of existence is simply blind. Like forest fires, these disasters normally serve their own purposes so that without them, other natural things go wrong. So long as our race exists on this Earth, such things will happen. We might be able to "predict" them within a limited range of probability or fortify ourselves against them with, say, earthquake fortified buildings. But a great percentage of them will happen where or when we do not expect. And if government or insurance pays us to rebuild in hurricane alley, the subsequent disaster will indeed be less than natural.
Masugi:
Yes, but what do they say about theological issues?
Schall: What particularly calls our attention to such disasters, as I mentioned, is their happening in populated areas, where they cause much damage and death. In the New Testament, an incident is reported in which a wall fell on some people killing them. The witnesses did not ask "whose fault was it that that badly constructed wall fell?" But they did ask Christ whose fault, parents or ancestors, this accident was that it killed these particular people? Why were these particular people killed and not others? The plot of Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, incidentally, falls into this broad area of consideration, with the added notion that
such things may happen at a time in our lives when we are most ready for them.
Christ answered this question about whose fault it was. He said that it was not either the fault of the ones who were killed nor of their parents. That is, no moral or religious conclusion can be drawn from a natural or accidental disaster, though a providential one may be. Someone, no doubt, will write a novel about the Swedes killed in the Asian tidal wave after the manner of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. No accident falls outside the range of providence.
The fact that some people die as a result of natural disasters is only an aspect of the fact that all men die. The total number of people who die each year from cancer or heart failure or auto accidents is as much a natural disaster as a hurricane's death toll.
We live currently in an age in which we like to think that natural disasters are both predictable and avoidable. In addition, we think that the damage they cause should be repaired immediately, and at the cost of the rest of the society, by the government or insurance companies. If you give most governments an excuse to think they are divine providence, they will accept it. But great damage is done when we seek to assign human causes for natural disasters.
Natural disasters are not humanly culpable, though some aspects of them might have been foreseen, provided for, or repaired sooner. I find something frightening about a mentality that insists that all natural disasters are reducible to human disasters.
These past years in which we have had so many natural disasters of various kinds have reminded many of the apocalyptic descriptions in Scripture about the end times and the catastrophes said to be endemic to this time. Obviously, I am most reluctant to suggest that these natural disasters we have recently witnessed are a sign of God's anger at the way we live. God may be angry at the way we live and still not send floods and earthquakes. Or, He, as we read in Job, may be delighted with the way we live and still bring on tornados and volcano eruptions. Both the guilty and the innocent suffer. The rain falls on the just and the unjust.
Josef Pieper, however, has remarked that in the end, Scripture seems definitely to hold that certain natural disasters, indicated therein for the end of mankind, are not mere events of chance but are connected with the moral condition of humanity. Pieper wrote: "
It will be we ourselves who bring about the end of history, that the catastrophe will not be visited upon us from outside, but will arise out of the historical process itself" (Josef Pieper: An Anthology, 229).
It is evident that natural disasters, even being chance events, do serve to bring forth the general character of the people who suffer them, as well as the character of those who do or do not help them in their needs. A headline in the Washington Times (Dec. 2) reported that the actual victims of the Southern floods thought that the churches offered the best practical assistance to those in need during this period. This would seem to suggest that something more than politics is needed in natural disasters where separation of church and state seems positively unseemly, especially when the city and the state perform so poorly.
Masugi:
"What do these events, whether we take them as part of a created, contingent, or random universe, tell us about our character as a people and the nature of the universe?"
Schall: Several years ago, I heard of a hurricane in Florida, one that caused considerable damage. After the hurricane, frequent looting and disorder took place in the area. The National Guard had to be called out. Meanwhile, during that same period, there were widespread floods along the Missouri/Mississippi River. In the latter area, evidently, there was little if any looting. It seems quite clear that the character of the people formed before the crisis was of crucial importance. We note that after 9/11, the heros, in retrospect, were the New York Fire and Police Departments, with the governor and mayor showing considerable courage and leadership, as a result of which many lives were saved or cared for.
In New Orleans, it was evidently these key institutions in their human representatives that failed. It reinforces the old Platonic principle, that
the City writ large is the individual citizen writ Small; that is, the virtue of the people needs to be in place before the disaster strikes. An un-virtuous city lives at its own peril. The military in the Southern disaster actually performed very well, even though this was not the mission it was trained for. The reason seems to be that our military still has a sense of discipline and service that can operate in an effective way in any sort of disaster.
What do these events tell us about "the character of our people" and "about the nature of the universe?" The fact is that wherever and whenever a natural disaster has happened anywhere in the world, it is generally the case that the Americans have been in the forefront of providing aid, material, and help. During the tidal waves in South Asia, there was considerable discussion about why Muslim nations with all their oil riches were not the first to offer aid and help. At least part of the answer was theological and the other part practical, the one having to do with responsibility and other with know-how. We are a society in which more than government is capable of acting. Much of the aid and help in the South arose from individuals and communities acting in a generous and charitable manner. The governments of nearby states, especially Texas, were also effective.
In the beginning, there was a certain fame in providing help. Though other nations offered some help, it is clear that not everyone thinks it incumbent on them to provide help to others in need. The notion that they do, I suspect, is largely a theological idea, now often secularized.
Nothing defines the character of a people better than how they, both individually and as governments, deal with natural disasters. One could make a case for the fact that most important thing revealed in the New Orleans disaster was the character of both the people and especially the rulers. Other Southern States fared far better under similar conditions.
When a people goes to vote, one of the things that they might more carefully wonder about is how their elected leaders might act in a similar disaster. Indeed, they might ask how they themselves might act.
The scenes of looting, helplessness, and failure to act, of blaming others and individual opportunism, were more mindful of scenes in Thucydides' description of the plague and the civil way on Corcyra than anything else. One of the reasons we read such books is precisely to see what is in human nature and what we might expect of it in certain circumstances. In any case, I am under the impression that, in the end, the federal government acted in a far more effective and efficient manner than we are willing to give it credit for. Its problems were themselves conditioned on the question of the moral virtues and judgment, or lack thereof, of those who were immediately on the scene.
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[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/01/2006 19.45]