The Problem of Evil
1. In his second letter to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul speaks of the Anti-Christ, “the man of sin… the son of perdition, who opposes and is exalted above all that is called God…” “Already,” he says, “the mystery of iniquity is at work.” (Cf. 2 Thess. 2:3-7) From the beginning of the Church’s history until the present time it has always been the same.
There always have been and always will be men who do evil not from human weakness, but from motives of malice so diabolical as to present something of a mystery to us. These can be called Anti-Christ because they seem to be incarnations of the devil, the spirit of iniquity. They delight in spreading error, in corrupting minds, and in persecuting the Church. They are steeped in all kinds of baseness and nothing pleases them better than to succeed in inducing the young and the innocent to follow them in their sinful ways. For this purpose they employ all the advantages which modern technical progress has to offer – the press, the cinema, the radio, and television. In short, they use God’s gifts in their commercialisation of sin in order to draw souls away from Him.
The realisation of this terrifying fact provokes two questions. (1) How can such evil be permitted by God, Who made man for Himself and redeemed him with the Blood of His only-begotten Son? (2) What steps can we take to control this alarming and universal deluge of evil?
2. St. Augustine answers the first question by pointing out that the infinite and good God created us without any assistance from ourselves, but does not will to save us without our cooperation since He has endowed us with the gift of liberty. Moreover, He prefers to draw good from evil rather than to prevent the evil itself. We must answer the second question ourselves, remembering that we have a serious obligation to combat evil in ourselves and in our fellow-men. What have we done up to now and what do we propose to do in the future?
3. According to St. Augustine, great good can come from the evil which God permits. In the first place, God displays His infinite goodness and mercy. Even though He permits us to offend Him out of respect for our human liberty, He is always ready to forgive us, even as He forgave the penitent thief. In the second place, by permitting evil God gives the good an opportunity of practicing virtue, especially the virtue of patience. If there were no persecutors, there would be no martyrs and the Church would be deprived of the glory which makes her most like her founder, Jesus Christ. Finally, each of us has a particular duty to fulfil in resisting the onslaught of evil. As followers and soldiers of Christ, we cannot remain passive. The invasion by the forces of evil demands a counter-attack by the forces of good in defense of the faith and of the Church. As Christians, we are the sons of martyrs. We must not refuse, therefore, to make our lives a continuous martyrdom for the triumph of goodness in ourselves and in others. The faithful exercise of virtue and of the apostolate is often a form of martyrdom.
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