Australian Jesuit, Fr Richard Leonard, whose latest book tackles the
role of God in human suffering, told a packed Gardiner Street church
recently that he wanted to dispel the myth that God is like a Harry
Potter film.
In his talk about his book Where the Hell is God?, the
forty-seven-year Director of the Australian Catholic Film and
Broadcasting Office said he had come to the conclusion that many
Catholics are not praying to God but are praying to Zeus.
“They don’t mean to pray to Zeus but the God they believe in is
someone that has to be kept onside. It is a God who can be nasty and a
bit unpredictable and who might send bad things if you just don’t do the
right thing,” he explained.
Discussing how believers can make sense of their Christian faith when
confronted with tragedy, suffering and natural disasters, Fr Leonard
said that those who saw God as like a Harry Potter film, believed in a
God who is “generally full of sweetness and light but every so often
goes off into the ‘department of dark arts’ and sends down earthquakes
and does terrible things in the world.”
In his seven steps to spiritual sanity, Fr Leonard underlines that
God does not directly send pain, suffering and disease. Nor does God
punish us and send us accidents or natural disasters so as to teach us
things.
“This idea of God’s punishment is much more alive in the
Catholic imagination than we would ever have dared admit,” he said.
According to Fr Leonard, Christians need to remember the New
Testament teaching that “God is light – in Him there is no darkness.”
The film critic and author of a number of publications explained how Where the Hell is God?
questions many of the beliefs people hold about the role of God in
human suffering and offers insights into how believers can make sense of
their Christian faith when confronted with tragedy.
It is based on the experience of his sister who was left a
quadriplegic at 28 following a car accident and in need of 24-hour care
seven days a week for the past twenty-two years.
Tracey Leonard was a nurse when the accident occurred. She had
previously worked with Mother Teresa in India and was running a health
centre for 1,000 aboriginals in Australia at the time of the accident.
She later wrote a book about her experiences titled, The Full Catastrophe, which has sold 15,000 copies in Australia.
“It has had a terrific impact on young people - so her life has had a
ministry in and through the accident. But that doesn’t make the
accident a good thing,” Fr Leonard said. “But it made me a more
empathetic priest,” he added.
However, the plight of his sister brought the Leonard family face to
face with the issue of euthanasia he recalled. For a time, his sister
implored them to kill her, sometimes up to three times a day.
“I seriously considered euthanising my sister though I’d topped the
class in medical ethics courses in Jesuit College. But when faced with
somebody I loved saying ‘would you want to live like this?’ - in that
place the emotional pressure becomes extraordinary.”
However, as someone who believed in the teachings of the Church on
euthanasia, he could not do it and “after three years and for the last
nineteen, my sister has not asked my mother, myself or my brother to
euthanise he,r and in fact, three times in the last 19 years she has had
to fight for her life. And she has fought it bravely and won all
times.”
Fr Leonard, who has written Mystical Gaze: An exploration of the Films of Peter Weir, as well as Movies That Matter,
told the audience in Gardiner Street church that he was appalled by
some of the comments and observations of fellow Christians which he
heard following his sister’s tragic accident.
“I am very grateful to the correspondents who wrote to me after my
sister’s accident. They alerted me to how often we hear some terrible
theology that does not draw us to God in the worst moments of our
lives,” he explained. Through his sister’s accident, Fr Leonard said he
came to understand that “God is not sending us these things - but is
with us in it.”
Jesus did not just come to die but God used his death
to announce the end of death, he said.
“We have to hold onto a loving God in the face of suffering. Some
Catholics and Christians believe in a tyrannical God – the God they have
faith in is in fact a tyrant who keeps sending them pain and suffering
and difficulties to see what they are made of and see how you cope.
But
the problem of a tyrannical God is it is irreconcilable with the New
Testament.”
“We find no vengeance, we find no revenge in God. In fact the
opposite is true, we find a God who is visible in Jesus Christ, who is
about forgiveness, justice, love and reconciliation and is trying to
bring light into the world,” he said.
SIC: CIN/IE
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to Clerical Whispers, its contributors or its Team, or the blogspot itself, for any or all of the articles placed here.
The publishing of an article here does not, nor should it be interpreted as, an agreement or acceptance, of the article contents as being factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Accessing this blogspot and perusing its articles is considered as an acceptance of the above.
Seán Keohane,
Editor, Clerical Whispers