The Pope finally made it to L\u2019Aquila today, the epicenter of an earthquake that killed 295 in Italy\u2019s Abruzzo region on April 6.\u00a0 Driving rain, cold, and mud continue to beset the occupants of the tent cities established for the 65,000 homeless victims.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the day of the quake, the Pope said that he was praying \u201cespecially for the children<\/a>\u201d killed in the tremors.\u00a0 Two days later he assured the survivors that the \u201cPope prays for all, imploring the Lord\u2019s mercy for the deceased<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Today, in the medieval village of Onna, where the death rate was highest, he \u201cencourage[d] everyone, institutions and businesses, to see that this village and this region are reborn<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Later today, under a blue canopy in L\u2019Aquila\u2019s town square, with the green mountains of Abruzzo rising above, the Pope invoked a local saint and recalled his Easter Mass, performed after the L\u2019Aquila earthquake.\u00a0 The Italian news channel RAI raved about the Pope\u2019s interactions with occupants of one of the tent cities: \u201cWe\u2019ve never seen him so close to the people before,\u201d said a reporter.\u00a0 \u201cHe had a word for each person.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pope is undoubtedly a caring, generous man who has brought much-needed solace to the stricken survivors of the earthquake.\u00a0 Still, nonbelievers will be eternally puzzled by the logic of praising and praying to a God after a natural disaster that he could have averted.\u00a0\u00a0 If God is sensitive enough and powerful enough to respond to prayers now, why didn\u2019t he intervene before?\u00a0 And we know that he can<\/em> intervene: see, e.g.,<\/em>\u00a0 the Bible and the daily priestly practice of asking for God\u2019s protection against a whole host of human ills.\u00a0 The Pope may pray to God to show his mercy to the dead children of Abruzzo.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t it have been more useful for God to have shown his mercy before they were killed?\u00a0 Presumably, believers see proof of God\u2019s love in the survival of quake victims rescued from collapsed buildings, leaving unexplained why other quake victims were not so blessed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But the need to feel protected by a supernatural power is so strong that it overcomes any logical difficulties entailed by the idea of a loving, just God who supervenes over the daily slaughter of the innocents.\u00a0 And the belief in such a God provides people with strength in the face of unbearable loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n What does a non-religious world-view have to offer in place of irrational faith?\u00a0 A celebration of human compassion as the source of every triumph over natural randomness and injustice.\u00a0 An awareness that human ingenuity is all we have to save us from undeserved tragedy, but a knowledge that that is saying quite a lot.\u00a0 Nonbelievers feel as much sorrow for the victims of the quake as any believer, but they look exclusively to human efforts to help them.\u00a0 Since the earthquake, the Pope and the local archbishop have lauded civic solidarity, and rightly so.\u00a0 The workers who have tried to help the victims have done so out of human empathy.\u00a0 Most every engineer would do anything he could to prevent all loss of life from earthquakes; the same can\u2019t be said of the divine engineer.\u00a0 The rebuilding of L\u2019Aquila, which the Pope called for, is already occurring, thanks to the Italian civil authorities.\u00a0 It sure as heck isn\u2019t God who\u2019s rebuilding it.\u00a0<\/p>\n A secular perspective on suffering does not promise an afterlife, but it does focus our attention on the true source of the virtues which can lessen and sometimes overcome suffering.\u00a0\u00a0 For many people, that will not be enough and they will continue turning to the idea of a God.\u00a0\u00a0 The nonbeliever joins with them in their desire for a more just world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Pope finally made it to L\u2019Aquila today, the epicenter of an earthquake that killed 295 in Italy\u2019s Abruzzo region on April 6.\u00a0 Driving rain, cold, and mud continue to beset the occupants of the tent cities established for the … Continue reading