Tsunami Disaster in Asia

Many people writing to newspaper columns and calling chat shows are asking for a “cogent explanation” of God precise relationship with the catastrophe, yet in all the attempts to offer explanation, there is a curious omission of one dimension – indeed, the central dimension. I would like to explore it in the following reflection.

The CATACHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH says, “Man must respect the particular goodness of every creature to avoid the disordered use of things which would be in contempt of the Creator and would bring disastrous consequences for human beings and their environment.” (339)

The teaching of the Church says it all!

This, it seems to me, prompts us to acknowledge that as “stewards of God’s creation” we have a responsibility to do more than safeguard and share the resources of the earth. We are obliged most especially to “respect” the master piece of God’s entire creation, namely the human person created in His image and as is rarely acknowledged at the present time, to go further again in avoiding “contempt” for the Creator, who constantly sustains all that exists.

The above statement seems to indicate that an order of interdependence exists at three levels, the Creator, humanity and the creation if we are to “avoid disastrous consequences for human beings and the environment.”  Accepting the reasonableness of such a three-fold order, need we be surprised that disastrous consequences overtake us?  We certainly need no reminding that this interdependence has been progressively shattered in society until, right now.  It virtually hangs in tatters.  News reports analyses these very days abound with evidence that both the prescription of “respect for every creature” and avoidance of “contempt of the Creator” are currently more honoured in the breach than the observance. “Contempt of the Creator” is more and more expressed in widespread resentment at any mention of his rights or his law.  He is increasingly viewed as an intruder in the human domain – except perhaps when blame has to be meted out… And as for “respect for the particular goodness of every creature”, who will calculate the millions of the little ones systematically killed in abortion, trafficked for abuse and yet voiceless throughout our world?  No cameras follow them to tell their story.  Laudable stands are rightly taken once in a while in defense of foxes, seals and bog land but what about the flow of pollutants – the increasing immoral omissions corroding the values of our youth that go unchallenged and unopposed?  We watch them descend deeper as they are claimed by the quagmire daubed “the culture of death and despair” or “escape” into the carpe diem climate of binge drinking and permissive living.  A priest who was recently interviewed following an apparent double youth suicide in his parish observed, “modern culture doesn’t allow us to condemn anything and it doesn’t take criticism easily.”  The powerful inventions of information technology and media are so often laden with the toxic waste of pornography, poisoning what residual virtues as have been permitted to endure.  Global resolutions to correct ecological mismanagement are put in place while the moral pollutants fumigate the earth… In His teaching on cleanliness and purification, Jesus emphatically declared that only when due order is restored within the individual and only as conscience is corrected by Truth, will true order prevail in society (Mk 7: 14-23).  The very scriptures carry a strange word from the lips of Jesus Himself in defense of the youth who followed him, to the effect that if the voices of the children are prevented from giving Him their praise, then nature herself will cry out…(Cf. Lk 19:40, Mt 21:15). Surely God is not to be blamed for this.

The key concept of how precisely humanity and creation inter-relate in God’s plan is elsewhere elucidated more precisely in the Catechism. “The ‘mastery’ over the world that God offered ‘humanity’ was to be realized above all within man himself: mastery of self.”  The CATHECHISM then invokes the triple form of lust mentioned in a letter of St. John which subjugates individuals: greed, self-assertion and pleasures of the senses which we must constantly struggle to control with God’s help if (self-) mastery is to be gained. When this struggle is abandoned – as the prevailing culture so enjoins – the individual lapses into moral degeneracy.  With the erosion of conscience, “the new morality” becomes political correctness. When human beings placed in charge of the entire created order and intended to realize their highest potential in “offering all back to their creator”, use their determinations to frustrate His purpose, “do their own thing” and effectively wreck the right order intended by God – then right order is destroyed and “disaster” ensues.  In the thought of St. Augustine, God permits us in our freedom to do evil but if this happens He works to bring a greater good from the consequences.  But how can God be thereby blameworthy?

Neither can He be detached.  The understanding given directly to Christina as to why there has to be justice as well as mercy on the part of God goes as follows.  The Father owes it to the enormity of the victory of Jesus in His passion, death and resurrection to redeem souls that He intervene when the greatness of the victory is degraded and lowered beneath the level of the animal. We forget that our bodies are a sacred vessel containing the union of His Spirit in our souls through the redemption. Through our union thereby in His Son’s mystical body we humiliate Him as we lower ourselves in behaviour sometimes beneath the level of the animal in what is carried out in the world.  It is understandable that such a father would yearn to make our souls aware of the reality of His existence (one of the merciful consequences which can be drawn from the justice of God, according to the outline of St. Augustine) so as to save us from the mire of our own sin – a sin which permits the evil one to promote the abnormalities increasing in our world.  The Father might thereby prevent what Jesus called the greatest catastrophe of all, surpassing in gravity any that can possibly occur in this life – despite their inexpressible sorrow – the eternal loss of a person’s soul (Mt 10:28).

Of course, it is always a comfort of our faith to know that those taken in innocence in such tragedies as sin does bring upon our world, unite with the innocence of Christ and become thereby a means of saving the guilty in the mysterious action of God’s redeeming work.

It is a cause of great sorrow that the reality of the tsunami disaster and the means of protection against it were, with many other events – some already fulfilled as in the destruction of the Twin Towers and others approaching the world – conveyed many years ago to Christina who constantly struggled to fulfill the duty laid upon her to prepare people without sensation through all the means at her disposal, though her attempts to do so have met with constant rejection and even ridicule.  In respect of this fact also, we certainly cannot blame God.

Fr. GERARD MCGINNITY, Ph.D. P.P.

The above letter, submitted to a leading daily newspaper in Ireland, was not published. Any vindication of the rights of God is, it seems, no longer “politically correct” and makes for uncomfortable reading.  This in itself surely a further proof of the point argued in the letter that consideration of God is becoming more and more resented, except when He is to be “blamed.”

It also bears out the prophecy of Jesus to Christina in 1992 and mentioned in her biography published back then.  She remarked,

“At first people will try to explain everything away as ‘natural calamities’ or just ‘weird happenings.’  They will look to science to offer explanations.  They will describe the storms etc. as ‘freak.’  They will not want to accept that the sins of the world are bringing all this upon us.” Christina saw a growing fear in people as the events will escalate beyond anything previously experienced.  They will then know that it is not “natural.”  However, they will not automatically convert by means of the increased suffering.  Not all will turn to God for help at that point.  Wars and trouble will give rise to atheism and disbelief as well.  Despair will follow from these.  So the disasters will cause some, instead of converting, to curse God.  It is also in preparation for this development that Jesus told Christina,

“Those who believe should pray for those who do not.”