Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

EVIL: QUESTIONING AND CHALLENGING THEOLOGY AGAIN AND AGAIN 101obscure the moral dimension behind apparently neutral mechanisms.17 The Nuremberg trials would try to shatter this illusionof neutrality and functionality, creating a new concept in penallaw: “crime against humanity.” 18After the Second World War, once all the depth and horrorof this evil came to light, reactions were such that it became akind of taboo to speak of it, even at the theological level, interms of previously known evil phenomena. Elie Wiesel, Jewishwriter and an authoritative voice in Holocaust literature, giveswitness to this in telling words: “It is not possible to do theologyafter Auschwitz or about Auschwitz. Everything we couldsay about it would be inadequate.” 19While recognising the unique horror of Auschwitz, we maysee this kind of “qualitative leap” towards the negative also inwhat happened on September 11, 2001. If Auschwitz was an“administrative massacre” then September eleventh could becalled a logistical massacre. Like Auschwitz, Septembereleventh was not a question of local and limited operations.Like Auschwitz, September eleventh was strategically calculatedand planned. People were channeled into the United Statesfrom different countries and settled in independentand autonomously operating groups. These groups wereprogrammed and financed through a labyrinth of structuresand were perfectly organized. All this was possible only in thecontext of an organization operating all over the world withglobalized technologies. Here too the “industrial” or “logistical”aspect became quasi-autonomous. Human beings were massacrednot because they, as particular persons, were targets of theaction. Their deaths were a product of chance; they were killed17Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (Vatican City: EditriceVaticana, 1987), Chap. V, pars. 33, 36.18Alain Finkielkraut, The Defeat of the Mind, trans. Judith Friedlander(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). See also R. Ammicht-Quinn,Von Lissabon bis Auschwitz, 208-210.19“E. Wiesel im Gespräch mit R. Borchert,“ Süddeutsche Zeitung(March 28-29, 1989), Beilage p. 1. Wiesel, in the same interview added: “oneday, perhaps, it will be possible to explain how Auschwitz was possible onthe human level. With regard to God it will always remain a disturbingmystery.“ See also R. Ammicht-Quinn, Von Lissabon bis Auschwitz, 210.