Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

EVIL: QUESTIONING AND CHALLENGING THEOLOGY AGAIN AND AGAIN 111The “post-Auschwitz” period has developed a new sensitivitytoward the personal and existential side of evil and of how tospeak about it. Such a sensitivity has been nurtured even withinthe Church. Personal experiences of evil and suffering,expressed more openly than before, have led even to silencingtalk about the relationship between suffering and God. CardinalVeuillot, former Archbishop of Paris, testified impressively tothis. Only fifty-five years old, ill with tumors, he lay on hisdeathbed and said to his secretary: “We know how to makebeautiful speeches about suffering. Even I have spoken passionatelyabout it. Tell the priests not to speak of it: we do not knowwhat it is. I have wept over this.” 44It is, without doubt, a good thing that theologians and representativesof the magisterium have become more consciousthat evil poses particular demands on theological language.However, to keep silent or to point out only the limits of such adiscourse could contribute still more to a banalization of evil –this, even in the face of the greatest and most dramatic challenge,the question of God.In fact, such an option might suggest that humanity haslost all trust in a God who is capable of rising above and conqueringevil. Nothing can be expected from Him anymore. Noteven the coming of Jesus has changed or improved anything.Such a prominent theologian as Hans Urs von Balthasar is sensitiveto the dark, even pessimistic, side that can emerge. Hewrites in his Theo-Drama:Aggression, the will to power, reciprocal annihilation and, inthe sphere of history, the tragedy of a civilization that seems to beproceeding towards self-extinction. A light has gone out; the landscapeof existence seems dreary and alien. At no point can sin’soverthrow by Christ’s sacrificial death be tangibly grasped anywhere;faith is impotent in the face of crushing brute reality. 4544Bernard Bro, Le pouvoir du mal (Paris: Cerf, 1979), 93.45Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama. Volume I: Prolegomena (SanFrancisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 49. See also: Jürgen Werbick, Den Glaubenverantworten, 428-429. 568. 574.