Crannóggy Island

Preface This is the second of two essays that do not attempt to explain evil away or reduce providence to a formula that removes mystery. They are an invitation to consider how a good God can create a world with a genuine wound in it, and govern that world without either overriding its freedom or abandoning it to itself. The Question of Providence Having asked why a good God permits a world with a wound in it, a second question follows close behind, and it is no easier: how does He govern such a world at all, without becoming either the wound's author or a stranger to it? Ask someone what it means to say God governs the world, and you will usually get one of two pictures. In the first, God is a hand pulling every movement from above. Nothing happens that He does not directly bring into being: the storm, the accident, the choice you made this morning. Free will becomes a kind of illusion, convincing from where we stand, invisible from His side of the curtain. In the second...

Preface This is the first of two essays that are not an attempt to explain evil away, or to reduce providence to a formula that removes mystery. They are an invitation to consider how a good God can create a world with a genuine wound in it, and govern that world without either overriding its freedom or abandoning it to itself. The Wrong Question Ask many people why a good God permits evil, and they will answer as though the question had only one possible form. God could have made a perfect world. This world is not perfect, so something has gone wrong. That assumption needs to be examined before we accept it. It suggests an answer to a prior question none of us voiced: what sort of creation would a good God make in the first place? A finished world that later broke? Or a world still on its way to the glory for which it was made? We should admit, before going further, that not every "why" receives an answer. Job asked this question in its oldest form and was answered wit...

  The Scribe's Question A scribe asks Jesus which commandment is first of all. The question is not hostile; Mark tells us the man had listened well and asked in good faith. Jesus answers with two Old Testament texts woven into one (Deut. 6:4-5 and Lev. 19:18): "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:29-31) Jesus does not present two competing or independent commandments. The second arises from the first and cannot be understood apart from it. Matthew's version draws out the relation even more clearly. The second commandment, Jesus says, is like the first, and all the Law and the Prophets hang on the two together. That is not the language of two adjacent rul...

  Introduction There is an old parlour trick, beloved of diplomats and theologians alike. Ask whether the soup is too salty and receive, at generous length, a meditation on hospitality. The taste of the soup remains untouched. Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe has elevated this into an art form. Ask him whether an act is licit, and he will tell you about friendship. He does not change the subject; he changes its register (from proposition to atmosphere) and trusts, correctly, that most of us will find the atmosphere so pleasant we forget we came in with a question. Two documents make the case better than I could argue it cold: a homily preached in June at a Mass for two men marking fifty years together, and an essay on the Synod written for L'Osservatore Romano, in which the same manoeuvre is performed at greater length and, rather touchingly, with footnotes. The Mass itself is worth a sentence or two, since two accounts posted on it could not agree on what kind of sentence to giv...