Students grapple with faith questions raised after catastrophes hit

Published: 2005-12-12

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In the aftermath of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, the questions that remain long after the cleanup are often related to faith. Franciscan Sister Meg Guider, an associate professor of missiology at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass., anticipates these types of questions and trains those in pastoral ministry to be ready to answer them. This year she taught a new course she designed to specifically address the impact of disasters. The course, "Evil and Deliverance: Christian Responses to Social Catastrophe," got started in late September, just as Hurricane Rita was bearing down on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast, followed closely by an earthquake in Pakistan, northern India and Afghanistan, and Hurricane Stan's damage to Central America. Within the semester, she hoped to help her students, all training for work in pastoral ministry, to hone in on spiritual responses to terrorism, natural disasters and evil. She never imagined the class would have so much day-to-day material on the natural disaster side from which it could draw.

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