The Catholic Book Club discussion

What is the relation between silence and evil? Why is God able to remain silent in the face of sorrowful events?
How can God be struck by evil?
How did Christ confront evil? How did Mary respond to evil? How did the Mother of God react when she saw the disfigured face of her Son on the Cross?
Might there be an alternative: Either rebellion or the silence of prayer?
How does one keep silence in the face of injustice? How can one not cry out in incomprehension and rebellion?
Faced with so many crimes, why is God so silent? Why this deafening silence when children are pitilessly massacred in conflicts?
Why do men not manage to understand that God never wills evil?
How can one find silence when confronted with the suffering of death?

In part 4, paragraph 310, Sarah writes the following:

How can we not be scandalized and horrified by the action of American and Western governments in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Syria? Countries and peoples are destroyed, heads of state are assassinated, for the sake of purely economic interests.

Such as this paragraph is, I disagree with it. It mixes quite different situations:

a) The first war of Iraq, in 1990-91, was a defensive war, launched by Saddam Hussein when he invaded and annexed Kuwait.

b) The war of Afghanistan was not started by Western countries, but by the attack by Al Qaeda on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. When the US requested Afghanistan to deliver Bin Laden, the taliban government protected him, and therefore gave a just cause for the succeeding war. Not even anti-American countries dared to critizise.

c) The start of the second war of Iraq was apparently based on a lie, the assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed forbidden chemical weapons, which were never found. In this case, I wouldn't discuss Sarah's critical assertion.

d) The Libyan case is more complicated. It is true that several Western countries supported some of the insurgents, and that this brought the country to its present state of anarchy, but, as in the Syrian case, the fact that the Islamic State and Al Qaeda took part in a war of all against all, was the real reason for the anarchy. Western countries can be accused of having been naive when they believed that the Arab Spring would bring democracy to those countries, but they should not be accused of being the only cause of those wars.

e) About the phrase "heads of state are assassinated," I suppose he means Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi. While Gaddafi was probably assassinated, he was killed by the Misrata militia, not by the Western countries. Saddam Hussein was made prisoner by the US army, delivered to an Iraqi court, convicted and sentenced to death. In this case, one should not speak of assassination.

On the other hand, I think the way the U.S. acted in all these cases was abominable and unjustifiable. But that's beside Sarah's point. You can say God values our freedom so much that he doesn't intervene when men are so cruel to each other (as in invasions or acts of terrorism), but the problem of evil is even more poignant in the "hard cases," natural disasters that are not caused by human sins (earthquakes, etc.). He says there is no "answer" to any of this, but God too is vulnerable, wounded, in complete solidarity with his suffering children.
I was annoyed by his apparent indifference to poverty until I came to the helpful distinction he makes between poverty (total dependence on God) and misery (lacking life-sustaining necessities and, more seriously, lacking God). It is legitimate to work and fight against "misery" in the world.
In my own life I have a reverse problem of evil. I have never truly suffered in my 73 years. Of course things have happened to me that others might call suffering, but I feel incredibly, overwhelmingly loved and blessed.
Joy is just as appropriate as weeping at funerals! Sadness is mostly about our own loss, great joy that the deceased is now in God's hands, and gratitude at the blessings of his life.

Manuel wrote: "In part 4, paragraph 310, Sarah writes the following:

How can we not be scandalized and horrified by the action of American and Western governments in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Syria? Countrie..."

I have found this chapter the weakest in the book so far. As you note, he has here mashed together quite a few different situations. The actions of the US in Afghanistan scandalize and horrify? In a sense, yes, but not in the sense he means. Rather than mounting a punitive expedition seeking the capture of bin Laden and the punishment of the Taliban, we decided to try to re-make Afghanistan in our image. As Cardinal Sarah says, we have made an idol of democracy. (He says the same about liberty, where I somewhat disagree with him, but that's a different topic.) The original war plans for Afghanistan did not involve a large military presence, but rather the initial effort by special forces, with a follow-on effort to grab bin Laden and then a quick departure.

I completely agree with him re Libya, but Iraq is very complicated. I will say just that there is a difference between error and lie, that as far as I can tell Hussein himself either thought he still had a WMD program or wanted the West (and everyone else including the Kurds) to think he had one. Oops. That and the dynamic inside intelligence agencies as ambiguities and qualifications are ignored, dropped or smoothed over as intelligence moves from the analysts' hands (where I have first hand experience) up the chain to senior decision makers.

Finally, Syria. What one earth is he critical of the U.S. and the West for in Syria? That we didn't get involved early on in an ugly civil war? That we eventually did only when it included ISIS and then in too limited a way? Or should we not have gotten involved even then? Early in the Syrian civil war, I met a woman who had immigrated to the US from Syria as a girl. She was beside herself with fear and anguish over the events in her homeland where she still had many relatives. She kept insisting that the U.S. should do something. I asked her who she wanted us to bomb and did she thank that having the U.S. get involved in killing Syrians would help things. She didn't want that, but thought somehow that the U.S. should be able to do something.

Later I had a friend who thought the U.S. should send significant ground forces to address ISIS and resolve the civil war in Syria. I asked him if he was planning on suggesting to his sons that they should join the military to assist with that important national goal. I probably lost a friend that day, but it has always struck me that it is much easier to want war when no one you know will be in the front lines.

I heard recently a distinction between evil and tragedy that I think was very useful and would help Cardinal Sarah's analysis here. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and other natural events, things we used to call "acts of God" are tragedies, but lacking agency cannot be deemed evil. Evil requires human agency (often (always?) as a result of demonic prompting).

This is the part of the book I have the most trouble with - so far - so I have the most to discuss. (I confess I get bored saying how much I agree with something.)

In paragraphs 303 - 309, he discusses Pope Francis' comparison of the Church as a field hospital. I confess I was unaware of how this has been interpreted by some as suggesting that the primary mission of the Church is social, addressing the physical wants and needs of society. I think this is bosh.

The only way the Church as field hospital makes sense is as the place where the spiritually dead of this world are brought off the battlefield and given new life in Christ, and then those of us given this new life are nurtured, hopefully, to robust spiritual life.

I think this is what Cardinal Sarah is saying as well.