EDITORIAL

California tragedy a spiritual problem

Posted

It happened again this past week in Southern California: a disturbed gunman with no regard for human life opened fire on innocent persons, leaving survivors with more questions than answers. It is a scene that has played itself out, with haunting familiarity, from schools to businesses across America. Many in the media have summed it up as a social problem, or a legal issue that could have been prevented with better gun laws. We would be deceiving ourselves, however, if we failed to recognize that the problem is not primarily social or legal, but a spiritual one.

In his 1995 Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, St. John Paul II noted that the deepest roots in the struggle between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death” are to be found in “the eclipse of the sense of God and of man, typical of a social and cultural climate dominated by secularism.” He insisted that such a turning away from God on a fundamental societal level could only result in a vicious circle in which the dignity of the human person is increasingly diminished, while we experience a darkening of the living, saving presence of God in our midst.

It would be illogical to consider that the disregard for human life in abortion and physician assisted suicide are of a different origin than the tragic events that took place in Southern California. They are together the result of the eclipse of the presence of God in our world. Hope and healing will only be fully realized when we make the choice to welcome Him back in.