When disaster strikes, people ask: Why does God allow suffering?

Published: 2005-01-07

OTTAWA (CNS) -- If God is all-powerful and all-good, why does he permit suffering on the scale of the tsunamis that devastated South and Southeast Asia? Any time tragedy strikes, theological questions arise about how one can defend the goodness and sovereignty of God, a branch of theology called theodicy. In the news media and on Internet blogs, or Web logs, theologians and journalists are weighing in with their arguments and explanations after the Dec. 26 Indian Ocean disaster. Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, England, created controversy with a column published in the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph. The headline was: "Of course this makes us doubt God's existence." Archbishop Williams later objected to the headline, but he wrote in his column: "Every single random, accidental death is something that should upset a faith bound up with comfort and ready answers. Faced with the paralyzing magnitude of a disaster like this, we naturally feel more deeply outraged -- and also more deeply helpless. "The question 'How can you believe in a God who permits suffering on this scale?' is therefore very much around at the moment, and it would be surprising if it weren't -- indeed it would be wrong if it weren't," he wrote.

Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .