In the previous article, it was demonstrated that by simple reasoning, one can prove the existence of God, and that science properly understood, far from contradicting the existence of God, only supports it. There must be a first cause; the world cannot be due to chance.
In other words, faith and reason do not contradict each other, since both have truth as their object. As Saint Pope John Paul II wrote at the very beginning of his encyclical letter Fides et ratio, in 1988:
"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves."
Indeed, continues Saint John Paul II, it is characteristic of human beings, from the very beginnings of civilization, to ask themselves the following questions: "Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life?" It is one thing to recognize that God exists, but who is this God? Is it an energy, a cosmic force, or a person, a being endowed with reason, with whom one can establish a personal relationship? And as the Christian faith affirms, is this God one in three persons?
This is the challenge that the Church must face today, in what is called the "new evangelization": the ignorance and indifference of a majority of people, the existence of peoples who have already been Christians, but who now seem to reject God and his Church altogether. What once seemed obvious no longer seems so today: if we go back a few decades, it was still the majority of people who practiced their faith and went to church, but today religious practice (going to church) varies between 1 and 5 percent of the population.
Should we be surprised? The fact is that the majority of people do not deepen their faith, or make no effort to learn it. And so they develop all kinds of prejudices against the Church, not knowing that it is necessary for their eternal salvation, not even knowing that they have a soul which needs God's help to be saved.
One can read in the document of the Second Vatican Council Gaudium et Spes (joy and hope) on the Church and the world of this time, in paragraph 19, concerning atheism:
"The root reason for human dignity lies in man's call to communion with God. From the very circumstance of his origin, man is already invited to converse with God. For man would not exist were he not created by Gods love and constantly preserved by it; and he cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love, and devotes himself to His Creator. Still, many of our contemporaries have never recognized this intimate and vital link with God, or have explicitly rejected it. Thus atheism must be accounted among the most serious problems of this age, and is deserving of closer examination.
"The word atheism is applied to phenomena which are quite distinct from one another. For while God is expressly denied by some, others believe that man can assert absolutely nothing about Him. (This is agnosticism.) Still others use such a method to scrutinize the question of God as to make it seem devoid of meaning…
"Some form for themselves such a fallacious idea of God that when they repudiate this figment, they are by no means rejecting the God of the Gospel. Some never get to the point of raising questions about God, since they seem to experience no religious stirrings, nor do they see why they should trouble themselves about religion. (This is indifference, which causes people to say, "Jesus or the Church, I don't care!") "Moreover, atheism results not rarely from a violent protest against the evil in this world." (Several indeed stumble over this reasoning: "If God exists and that He is good, then why the evil, the suffering in the world?" We will see the answer a little further in this article.)
"Believers can have more than a little to do with the birth of atheism. To the extent that they neglect their own training in the faith, or teach erroneous doctrine, or are deficient in their religious, moral or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than reveal the authentic face of God and religion." (In other words, atheism is often caused by bad witness from Catholics themselves, which contradicts the teaching of Jesus.)
In fact, a large proportion of people who profess atheism (those who deny the existence of God) or agnosticism (those who claim that one cannot know anything about God) do so out of ignorance, much like one can read in the Letter of Saint Jude: They blaspheme everything they do not know (cf 1, 10).
This is why it is urgent and of the first importance for all Catholic homes to obtain the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992 — without a doubt the greatest heritage that Saint John Paul II left to the Church. Headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the project took 6 years to complete and involved a team of 12 cardinals and bishops. The Catechism encompasses everything that a Catholic must believe and practice. It follows the four traditional divisions found in The Catechism of the Council of Trent: the profession of faith (the Creed), the celebration of Christian mystery (the Seven Sacraments), life in Christ (the 10 Commandments) and Christian prayer (The Lord's Prayer). There is a condensed version of this catechism, in the form of questions and answers, called Youcat.
What can also help to deepen our faith is to attend fundamental retreats (on the basics of faith). It is on one such retreat, which the office staff of MICHAEL recently attended, that this article is based.
By studying this catechism, we can conclude that everything was done by God out of love, and that the whole plan of God can be explained by this logic of love. Saint John defines God by this single word: "God is love" (1 John 4:8). God didn't have to create the world or human beings; He did it out of love. He wants to share His joy — and even His divine life — with us. It is because God is love that He is one God in three persons: He cannot be solitary. God's knowledge of Himself is the Word — the Son, and this love of the Father for the Son is the Holy Spirit. Jesus said: "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30).
In the Youcat Catechism, the first questions and answers read as follows:
1. For what purpose are we here on earth?
We are here on earth in order to know and to love God, to do good according to His will, and to go someday to heaven.
2. Why did God create us?
God created us out of free and unselfish love.
5. Why do people deny that God exists, if they can know him by reason?
To know the invisible God is a great challenge for the human mind. Many are scared off by it. Another reason why some do not want to know God is because they would then have to change their life. Anyone who says that the question about God is meaningless because it cannot be answered is making things too easy for himself.
To the question mentioned above, namely why God, who is good, allows the existence of evil, it is simply to draw a greater good out of it — a mystery that is of course beyond our understanding, and that only God can realize. We read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, numbers 309 to 313, under the title "Providence and the scandal of evil":
"Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. He permits it, however, because He respects the freedom of His creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it:
"For Almighty God... because He is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in His works if He were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself" (St. Augustine).
"In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures:'It was not you,'said Joseph to his brothers,'who sent me here, but God... You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.'(Gen 45:8; 50:20)
"From the greatest moral evil ever committed–the rejection and murder of God's only Son, caused by the sins of all men–God, by His grace that'abounded all the more'(Cf. Rom 5:2), brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good."
Saint Paul wrote: "We know that in everything God works for good for those who love Him." St. Catherine of Siena said to "those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them": "Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man. God does nothing without this goal in mind."
God knew in creating man and woman that they would sin, since He had given them freedom. But, in His love, God did not abandon human beings in sin and death, He sent His own Son to earth, the image of the Father, thus making the invisible God visible (Col 1:15). Why did the Son of God become man and agree to die on the cross? Out of love for each one of us.
If sin came through Adam, Jesus is the new Adam, who came to save us from sin. In the Book of Genesis, it says that Eve came out, was pulled from the side of Adam. On the cross, the Church, the bride of Christ, came out from the side of Jesus, when He was pierced by the spear, and water and blood came out. Jesus is the head of the Church, and all the baptized are the body of the Church, her members. If the Church is the Bride, Jesus is the Bridegroom. At Mass, before Communion, the priest says: "Blessed are the guests at the wedding feast of the Lamb" (Revelation 19:9). Jesus is the Lamb, the Bridegroom. Saint Ambrose also describes the reception of Holy Communion as being the kiss of the Bridegroom.
We strongly encourage you to read and study the Catechism, which truly contains a treasure full of riches to meditate upon.
Alain Pilote has been the editor of the English edition of MICHAEL for several years. Twice a year we organize a week of study of the social doctrine of the Church and its application and Mr. Pilote is the instructor during these sessions.
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