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The
Asian Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina: "Nature's Vengeance"?
by Luis Sergio Solimeo
It has been a year since the
catastrophic tsunami that swept the coastlines of nations
on the Indian Ocean. More recently, Americans are still reeling
from a series of hurricanes that devastated the southern U.S.
and particularly New Orleans. In the wake of these events,
the polemic continues unabated between those who see such
catastrophes as punishments and those who deny it.
Having previously written articles
on how God usually acts in history through secondary causes
(such as natural disasters1 ),
I now wish to deal with objections by those who do not wish
to considering these events from the prism of Divine punishment.
The first point is that no one
can deny that these disasters leave a sinister wake of destruction,
death, untold human suffering and huge economic loss. Indeed,
they do have all the appearances of a chastisement.
This is so true that even those
who try to deny Divine intervention and hence a design from
on high that explains these catastrophes, cannot avoid admitting
a sense of punishment. Thus, they replace Divine intention
with nature's whims. Frequently they will employ expressions
(taken from actual articles on hurricane Katrina) such as:
"nature's vengeance," "nature's fury," "wrath of nature,"
or "Neptune's vengeance." 2
Of course, one can only speak
about nature's "vengeance," "wrath" or "fury" in a metaphorical
sense. Attributing God's characteristics to nature leads one
to fall into pantheism.
Thus, behind the metaphor, and
avoiding pantheism, we can see that no matter how hard one
tries, one cannot avoid the perception of Divine chastisement
when looking at these catastrophes.
As emphasized in previous articles,
even when God rewards or punishes men using extraordinary
interventions in history, He usually avoids acting in such
a way as to make His own action unmistakable in the eyes of
man. He does this so that man can gain merits by believing
through an act of his will which itself is illuminated by
his intellect under the action of Divine grace, rather than
being struck by obvious, unmistakable and undeniable evidence
of His action.
Thus, only in very exceptional
situations such as the opening of the Red Sea for the Jews
to flee the troops of Pharaoh, or the miracle of the Sun at
Fatima, is God's intervention in events crystal clear.
Why did God punish the Indian
Ocean region with the tsunami rather than other, perhaps more
sinful, areas of the earth? Why did hurricane Katrina devastate
the city of New Orleans but leave the sinful French Quarter
nearly unscathed?
Given our limited intellect,
we cannot answer these questions with all certainty. However,
we must conform to what the book of Ecclesiastes says:
And I understood that man can
find no reason of all those works of God that are done under
the sun: and the more he shall labor to seek, so much the
less shall he find: yea, though the wise man shall say, that
he knoweth it, he shall not be able to find it. 3
What really matters is not determining
the ultimate reasons why God punishes some and spares others,
but to understand that there is no injustice at all on His
part.
In today's profoundly interrelated
world, great catastrophes have a global impact. Images are
quickly broadcast everywhere. One event can affect many other
nations politically and economically.
Sin undeniably deserves punishment,
be it in this life or the next. Likewise virtue deserves reward.
The fact that God punishes or rewards some people already
on earth and for others reserves His reward or punishment
for the next life does nothing to alter His justice.
Therefore, one cannot claim
that since the more sinful parts of the world were spared
from the tsunami, or since the most sinful quarter of New
Orleans was spared , then, there was positively no Divine
interference.
As Saint Paul teaches, the just
man lives from faith.4 Faith obliges
us to believe in Divine Providence and in God's intervention
in history. 5 It is not a dogma
of faith that tsunamis or hurricanes like Katrina are God's
punishments on a humanity immersed into sin. However, prudence
calls on us to consider this hypothesis very carefully as
it helps us to better understand Divine justice and the malice
of sin.
Notes
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Fatima’s
miracle of the sun
Since Our Lady had promised to do a miracle,
so that the world would believe her, a large crowd had gathered
at Fatima for the sixth and last apparition, on October 13,
1917.
Two of Portugal’s largest newspapers
at the time – both known for their anti-clerical, secularist
ties – also had reporters there. They were confident
their story was going to be on how the promised miracle did
not happen, how the “apparitions” were just another
lie of the Church.
This is part of the news account written
by Avelino de Almeida, the reporter from O Século:
“From beside the parked carriages
and where many thousands stood, afraid to descend into the
muddy soil of the Cova da Iria, we saw the immense crowd turn
toward the sun at its highest, free of all clouds. The sun
seemed to us like a plate of dull silver. It could be seen
without the least effort. It did not blind or burn. It seemed
as though an eclipse were taking place. All of a sudden a
tremendous shout burst forth, ‘Miracle, miracle!’
“Before the astonished eyes of the people, whose attitude
carried us back to Biblical times, and who, white with terror,
heads uncovered, gazed at the sun which trembled and made
brusque and unheard of movements beyond all cosmic laws, the
sun seemed literally to dance in the sky.
“Immediately afterward the
people asked each other if they saw anything and what they
had seen. The greatest number avowed that they saw the sun
trembling and dancing; others declared they saw the smiling
face of the Blessed Virgin herself. They swore that the sun
turned around on itself as if it were a wheel of fireworks
and had fallen almost to the point of burning the earth with
its rays. Some said they saw it change colors successively
(John M. Haffert, Meet the Witnesses [Washington,
N.J.: Ave Maria Institute, 1961], p. 107).
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