Freebird wrote:
"The evil has slowly crept into the money making world of the sick and old."

Worshiping money and rampant materialism are indeed one of the biggest evils or ignorance's in our society and is definitely prevalent in our medical system. Let's pray that this next generation of future nursing home administrators which our society has made obese with school soda and candy machines and materialistic with clever advertising will have a spiritual awakening before we are the elderly patients suffering in a nursing home.

I wonder if Catholic theology attempts to explain some of the natural phenomena in the cosmos by the influence of Satan? Some horrible diseases or genetic disabilities, for example. Or tornados and earthquakes - are they made by God? Are they caused by original sin (hard to imagine that an act of human will could cause so much trouble in the physical world...)?
J.R.R. Tolkien in his own fiction version of creation describes a cosmic battle that took place between Melkor (the fallen Ainu) and the faithful Ainur - Melkor tried to spoil original beauty of the cosmic order, while the good Ainur tried to cure evil he did and repare it. So the actual order of the world, according to Tolkien, was the outcome of this battle - it was different from the original intent, but not spoiled altogether. I think it might have been Tolkien's own understanding of the actual creation, and I wonder if Catholic theology leaves room for such an understanding. Then Satan would be responsible for much of the suffering in the natural world, while sin would contribute only to the evil that takes place in the human world, between humans.

Wow, I'd forgotten about this discussion! Thanks for dusting it off, Mt.

Angels are very powerful beings, capable of exerting tremendous influences regarding whatever God moves them (or allows them) to do. My general default position is that the universe runs according to its own natural laws (yes, yes - modernism!), and that would include phenomena like volcanos, earthquakes, tornados, etc. None of these are particularly evil in their own right; they're just expressions of nature's forces, working themselves out. If we get in their way, well, it's easy to consider them evil. But, as I say, I don't usually throw in to the "natural evil" crowd, and that includes pestilences and the like.

Don't know what to make of Tolkein's ideas on this matter. I once dialogued with Jospeh Provenzano, whose book on "The Philosophy of Conscious Energy" is actually very good, except for the part at the end where he muses that the Big Bang was a consequence of the fall of Lucifer and his minions, and that creation is moving toward higher consciousness as they grope their way back toward spiritual existence. I couldn't go along with that as it overly sullies the creation with evil, almost in a gnostic sense.

I found this quote in setting up Daily Seed for this week:

Genuine outrage is not just a permissible reaction to the hard-pressed Christian; God himself feels it, and so should the Christian in the presence of pain, cruelty, violence, and injustice. God, who is the Father of Jesus Christ, is neither impersonal nor beyond good and evil. By the absolute immutability of His character, He is implacably opposed to evil and outraged by it.
... Os Guinness, The Dust of Death

That's an "image of God" that I think even many Christians would struggle with -- would seem too "anthropomorphic." Yet I think the holiness and justice of God almost requires it -- that God loathes evil. What say?

I always struggle to understand how we should approach the "negative" emotions. I can understand (in a small part) how God can get Angry, jealous or outraged in the face of evil. What I struggle with is how we should approach our own anger, jealousy and outrage. Whenever I feel angry for example I tend to feel justified at first but soon after I realise that I do not have the mind of God and that while I may feel justified in my anger I probably missed a great deal of how the object of my anger is misrepresented in my own mind. I then realise that I am not innocent and this leads me to try to still my anger. I often worry that I am repressing my anger, but whenever I try to express it I simply end up feeling self righteous.

Jacques:

I can certainly relate to your description. It has been helpful for me to understand how expression and repression aren't the only choices. Of course, in the heat of the moment, we may do best to repress, as in some cases where we feel we may do harm. But afterwards, isn't there a linguering sense of more being needed in our response to how this emotional pain lives inside us? There may be sadness, or something else, lurking underneath the anger, which takes more time to process.

There may also be a limited degree of usefulness in a primarily verbal approach to an experience of anger that isn't simply situational.

If the response is disporportionate to the situation, then that, for me, is a red flag. Something inside is wanting attention, and there may be conflicting parts which make it difficult to give attention internally to the wound. There can be the part that is angry, the part that wants to resist the anger, and my limited ability to see and be with both. I can pray for the increased ability to be with both of these parts, rather than collapsing into the fury of anger or the guilt-ridden condemnation of it. This doesn't mean I'm not guilty for hurting somebody, but if I'm completely identified with that guilt I'll probably end up feeling shame for the hurt that goes along with the anger as a simple feeling which isn't a sin. And then the hurt goes further under ground, ready to activate in the form of anger when another situational trigger presents itself.

Ann Weiser Cornell's "The Power of Focusing" is quite helpful here.

Thanks w.c. I find your words helpful, especially about trying to be with both parts rather than one or the other. Perhaps in that way the extremes may be held in union and if something important does need to be expressed it won't feel condemned if it does.