I am posting this reflection on the recent story from Brazil, written by Patrick Clark, who is a doctoral candidiate in moral philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, (which is also the scene of a recent controversy on abortion and a commencement speaker).
I admit, first, it's a very difficult story to read about in the first place, and second, while Touchstone editors are united on the life issue, not all would share the same approach to theodicy, which has proven itself to be a nettlesome topic over the centuries. (My own unlearned take on it is that evil ultimately, or eschatologicly, has no place in God's world. It has no future, in a sense, and I am hard pressed to make statements about it that are based on the logos of the world itself, although that is likely due to my lack of philosophical training. But I am not sure how successfully others have addressed this thorny issue anyway.)
Clark, by the way, is the author of "The Cup of the Lord: Reflection on the Difference Between Martyrdom & Suicide Thirty Years After Jonestown" in the March 2009 issue of Touchstone.
Abortion & Theodicy
There is a palpable sense of outrage in Latin America and around the world in the wake of the Catholic Church’s public denunciation and excommunication of those who performed and facilitated an abortion on a 9-year-old Brazilian girl who was pregnant with 4-month-old twins conceived through rape at the hands of her 23-year-old stepfather. For many Catholics, including myself, this case has touched a nerve. It hardly seems a coincidence that this case, which Time magazine has called “a public relations nightmare for the Vatican” should arise during Lent, the time when Christians across the world are preparing themselves to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus by prayer, fasting and works of mercy.
It seems like every year about this time some “public relations nightmare” arises for the Church:
There is a palpable sense of outrage in Latin America and around the world in the wake of the Catholic Church’s public denunciation and excommunication of those who performed and facilitated an abortion on a 9-year-old Brazilian girl who was pregnant with 4-month-old twins conceived through rape at the hands of her 23-year-old stepfather. For many Catholics, including myself, this case has touched a nerve. It hardly seems a coincidence that this case, which Time magazine has called “a public relations nightmare for the Vatican” should arise during Lent, the time when Christians across the world are preparing themselves to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus by prayer, fasting and works of mercy.
It seems like every year about this time some “public relations nightmare” arises for the Church:
whether it be clergy scandals, bestselling conspiracy novels or
potentially devastating archaeological discoveries. I will not venture
to speculate why this is the case, but the pattern is unmistakable.
All the same, this year’s “nightmare” seems different. It feels rawer,
its shock value is a little higher. It is true that the Brazilian
Church’s fierce reaction to this case has further embittered an already
bitter cultural clash over abortion in the West. But there is more to
it than that; for many, the tragedy pierces even deeper. And I can’t
help but wonder whether all the public uproar has led us to ask the
right sorts of questions about it. The familiar polemic refrains are
being thrown around as always, but are they channeling our anger and
incredulity in the proper direction?
It remains a sad fact that this tragedy is far from unique in our contemporary world. This Brazilian girl is not the first innocent child of God to be physically exploited and psychologically shattered for the sake of the fleeting pleasure afforded to those stronger than her. And while I hope and pray that she will be the last 9-year-old to be raped and impregnated, it is surely an unlikely prospect. The public backlash against the Church’s untimely public censure is completely understandable, but at the same time it appears to me to be very much misplaced, and woefully inadequate. For it aims far too low. Shouldn’t we be really angry at God for allowing evils such as this to happen every day? What kind of God allows children to be raped? What kind of God consoles a raped child by implanting an expanding time-bomb in her belly? Isn’t God the real culprit here, to create things of such priceless value in the world only to leave them vulnerable to this kind of hideous and violent desecration?
There is no “usefulness,” no instrumental value in such tragedies. And yet I still think that it is no coincidence that the gaze of the world is presented with this violated 9-year-old and her two “terminated” children at this particular moment, during Lent. So what is the proper response to this nightmare? What do we as Christians say to the world about such evils? What do we say to ourselves? I realize it is not my place to speak for the Church, but let me only suggest that the term “excommunicate” not be in the title line of such a response. Perhaps a simply cry—STOP!—is a response we could all agree upon. But how do we stop what has already been done? How do we render justice? How can we ever repair what has been broken? To these questions the Church’s message is as simple and powerful as ever: evil cannot remedy evil. Murder does not make injustice—the evil that has been done—go away. You cannot defeat the devil with his own tools. So what is God’s proposed alternative? Where is God’s “STOP”? Is God silent once again?
For Christians, God has indeed spoken: for this girl, and for all the countless millions of oppressed and exploited children throughout the ages. Our God does not stand by and watch: He came and lived among the poor and fed the hungry and himself suffered exploitation, betrayal and death by torture. He knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of the reasoning that says, “it is fitting that one person should die for the sake of the greater good.” On a Roman cross he stared into evil’s darkest depths and—though even he asked “why?”—he was not overcome by it. He did not attempt to solve injustice and violence by force. Instead, he put the world’s rage to shame by stretching out his arms and receiving the nails. “As a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” His response to evil was neither words nor wars (cultural or otherwise) but wounds. “And by his wounds we are healed—” even the most shattered among us. Our best response as Christians to all this public shock and uproar is the same as it always was: the cross, fully embodied in our lives. For if the cross is not our justice, what is? If the cross is not our hope, what is?
In this case, we see an image of the crucified one in this suffering child. We rightly feel the impulse to help her escape from this situation, and to bring those responsible for her suffering to justice. What the Church has failed to articulate in its juridical talk about excommunications is that this urgent rush to “help” has in fact betrayed and crucified her once again, by continuing to make her body a locus of violence. At some point, those twins may indeed have threatened her life; they may not have survived the premature caesarean they doubtless would have required. But we will never know. Instead, once again the self-proclaimed champions of compassion looked at the works of evil and refused to believe any good could be resurrected from them. It was better to attempt to make it go away, to make it look as is they never happened. Once again, it was better these little ones should die.
--Patrick Mahaney Clark
It remains a sad fact that this tragedy is far from unique in our contemporary world. This Brazilian girl is not the first innocent child of God to be physically exploited and psychologically shattered for the sake of the fleeting pleasure afforded to those stronger than her. And while I hope and pray that she will be the last 9-year-old to be raped and impregnated, it is surely an unlikely prospect. The public backlash against the Church’s untimely public censure is completely understandable, but at the same time it appears to me to be very much misplaced, and woefully inadequate. For it aims far too low. Shouldn’t we be really angry at God for allowing evils such as this to happen every day? What kind of God allows children to be raped? What kind of God consoles a raped child by implanting an expanding time-bomb in her belly? Isn’t God the real culprit here, to create things of such priceless value in the world only to leave them vulnerable to this kind of hideous and violent desecration?
There is no “usefulness,” no instrumental value in such tragedies. And yet I still think that it is no coincidence that the gaze of the world is presented with this violated 9-year-old and her two “terminated” children at this particular moment, during Lent. So what is the proper response to this nightmare? What do we as Christians say to the world about such evils? What do we say to ourselves? I realize it is not my place to speak for the Church, but let me only suggest that the term “excommunicate” not be in the title line of such a response. Perhaps a simply cry—STOP!—is a response we could all agree upon. But how do we stop what has already been done? How do we render justice? How can we ever repair what has been broken? To these questions the Church’s message is as simple and powerful as ever: evil cannot remedy evil. Murder does not make injustice—the evil that has been done—go away. You cannot defeat the devil with his own tools. So what is God’s proposed alternative? Where is God’s “STOP”? Is God silent once again?
For Christians, God has indeed spoken: for this girl, and for all the countless millions of oppressed and exploited children throughout the ages. Our God does not stand by and watch: He came and lived among the poor and fed the hungry and himself suffered exploitation, betrayal and death by torture. He knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of the reasoning that says, “it is fitting that one person should die for the sake of the greater good.” On a Roman cross he stared into evil’s darkest depths and—though even he asked “why?”—he was not overcome by it. He did not attempt to solve injustice and violence by force. Instead, he put the world’s rage to shame by stretching out his arms and receiving the nails. “As a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” His response to evil was neither words nor wars (cultural or otherwise) but wounds. “And by his wounds we are healed—” even the most shattered among us. Our best response as Christians to all this public shock and uproar is the same as it always was: the cross, fully embodied in our lives. For if the cross is not our justice, what is? If the cross is not our hope, what is?
In this case, we see an image of the crucified one in this suffering child. We rightly feel the impulse to help her escape from this situation, and to bring those responsible for her suffering to justice. What the Church has failed to articulate in its juridical talk about excommunications is that this urgent rush to “help” has in fact betrayed and crucified her once again, by continuing to make her body a locus of violence. At some point, those twins may indeed have threatened her life; they may not have survived the premature caesarean they doubtless would have required. But we will never know. Instead, once again the self-proclaimed champions of compassion looked at the works of evil and refused to believe any good could be resurrected from them. It was better to attempt to make it go away, to make it look as is they never happened. Once again, it was better these little ones should die.
--Patrick Mahaney Clark
See also Carolyn Moynihan's penetrating account of this case at MercatorNet.com:
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/and_then_there_was_one/
Posted by: Patrick Clark | March 25, 2009 at 01:19 PM
Joshua Trevino also unpacks the myths in the maelstrom of media coverage surrounding the case at First Things today: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1348
Posted by: Sally Thomas | March 25, 2009 at 02:00 PM
“And by his wounds we are healed—”
When?
Hint: this is the part where most wimp out and start mouthing useless platitudes about it being a process and not a destination.
Posted by: Doug Sirman | March 29, 2009 at 03:53 PM
Well, I think we really don't know, do we? Maybe not in this life at all. I guess this is where I start mouthing platitudes about its being a destination, not a process. However, I think they're useful, rather than otherwise.
Posted by: Sally Thomas | March 29, 2009 at 06:46 PM
>>“And by his wounds we are healed—”
When?
Hint: this is the part where most wimp out and start mouthing useless platitudes about it being a process and not a destination.
<<
Give us a little context here. Are you waiting to be healed?
Posted by: Bobby Winters | March 29, 2009 at 07:16 PM
It doesn't say "will be healed" it says "are healed".
Posted by: Doug Sirman | March 30, 2009 at 06:58 AM
>>It doesn't say "will be healed" it says "are healed".<<
Granted what the words say. What they mean is another question. My question to you, is whether you are waiting to be healed and what would be different about you if you were?
Posted by: Bobby Winters | March 30, 2009 at 12:50 PM
Hm. Well, you can say, for example, that ibuprofen relieves the symptoms of a headache, but we don't understand the results to be instantaneous: they occur within the framework of the nature and workings of ibuprofen. It's a sort of condition of the nature of ibuprofen which is generally understood to be true.
I don't need you to say, "Ibuprofen *will* heal headaches," to make me understand that it will, in its own time, heal mine. I avail myself of it now, because I have a headache to be healed, on the strength of the promise that that is what it *does.*
Posted by: Sally Thomas | March 30, 2009 at 02:26 PM
Unlike ibuprofen, however, whose nature and workings tend strictly towards reducing inflammation, it's in the nature and workings of Jesus to heal things you didn't think you were asking to be healed. You go to him because you're paralyzed, and he forgives your sins.
Posted by: Sally Thomas | March 30, 2009 at 02:33 PM
No, I'm not waiting to be healed; I personally think ending up on God's side without being healed is where all the glory is. And besides, I've be abused by that game before: someone asks what I need to be healed, I tell them, and they blow it off and say that that's not what God wants, like they know what they're talking about. Mebbe that's not you, but I have no desire to be used as a punchline in someone's lie about "faith." I've heard radio priests talk.
However, quoting the oft-abused "by his stripes" line indisputably begs the question: A nine year old is repeatedly raped and impregnated. We pause to ponder, the author invokes "we are healed" and I ask a simple "when?"
Let's assume no one's going to engage in the pathetic, bait-and-switch tactics, so what does healing for this girl mean? Are we REALLY hoping for some pissant, worthless evasion? Some pathetic (and above ALL NON-falsifiable) sidestep about this nine year old's sins? As far as we can tell, God doesn't make something unhappen, but we're told "we ARE healed." So, I'd just like to know, when? And what's that healing going to look like? Or, does everyone think this is just another someday promise from Milord Eventually but they don't want to admit it?
You tell me: What's your faith allowing you to hope for, for her?
Posted by: Doug Sirman | March 30, 2009 at 08:02 PM
Well, for one thing, my faith allows me to hope that she won't be destroyed by all this, and that the rest of her life will not mean walking around with a big sign nailed to her soul that says, "Victim." It allows me to hope that some worse fate for her has been turned aside, somehow. It allows me to hope that she might not be eaten up with hatred and bitterness for the man who did this unspeakable thing to her, and that the entire universe for her will not be molded around the wound of this experience, and that she might find happiness, health, and rest in her life here, and in her life hereafter.
It also allows me to think that not aborting her babies might have had a healing effect, rather than otherwise, because certainly her hurts weren't erased by the abortion.
In mentioning sin in my previous post, I didn't mean to speculate on what this particular child's sins might be -- we all have them. We all need forgiveness more than we need any other kind of healing. But I don't think that that means that no other healing is possible, any more than Jesus let the paralytic remain paralyzed.
And why on earth would there be any glory in not being healed, if you could be? I'm just asking.
Posted by: Sally Thomas | March 30, 2009 at 08:31 PM
Further questions, because I'm waiting for the bread to finish baking for lunch, and meanwhile I am curious:
If the passage alluded to here is "oft-abused," as I presume you're suggesting that it is in this instance, what then is its proper use?
To what "pathetic bait-and-switch tactics" and "pissant, worthless evasions" do you refer? In what way are these tactics pathetic, evasive, pissant, or worthless?
And again, how exactly do you presume to end up on God's side without accepting whatever healing He might have to offer -- of which, as I said before, we are all in need in one way or another?
You've happened to throw all these things out on the table, so I'm presuming that they're issues you want to talk about.
Posted by: Sally Thomas | March 31, 2009 at 11:25 AM
>>However, quoting the oft-abused "by his stripes" line indisputably begs the question: A nine year old is repeatedly raped and impregnated. We pause to ponder, the author invokes "we are healed" and I ask a simple "when?" <<
For some that is the only hope that they will find that healing after death. Without Christ, there is none.
Posted by: Bobby Winters | March 31, 2009 at 07:48 PM