What Christianity teaches about tragedy
By by Tom Jensen religion columnist | Apr. 16, 2013In his first homily as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis remarked, “When we do not profess Jesus Christ, we profess the worldliness of the devil, a demonic worldliness.” He wasn’t just talking about some abstract notion of the evil in humankind. He was referring to Satan, a recognized figure in Christian scriptures and a facet of theology since the beginning of the Catholic Church. Pope Paul VI remarked in a 1972 address, “The devil is the enemy number one, the source of all temptation… He is the sophistical perverter of man’s moral equipoise, the malicious seducer.” The church recognizes there is evil in the world. It attributes some of it to fallen human nature: to misguided, misinformed or downright malicious mortals. But it also attributes some evil to Satan, a spiritual and diabolical force who has it out for humans. If we look at Monday’s tragedy in Boston, we can see that yes, indeed, there is evil out there. This article is not intended to allege that the bombing was the direct work of Satan. Rather, I think we can learn a few lessons from Roman Catholic theology about the war between good and evil.
