Horror in Las Vegas polarises the world of religion
SINCE the horrific massacre in Las Vegas, the word “evil” has been heard with unusual frequency, on the lips of political leaders as well as clerics. This evil-talk is not just a reflex response or a banal statement of the obvious. It has philosophical implications, and often places the speaker in a particular corner of the debate about guns.
In the first minute of his response to the killing spree, Donald Trump termed it “an act of pure evil”. Striking an unusually scriptural tone, he went on to quote a verse from the Psalms, proclaiming that “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted, He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” Even in that comforting passage, talk of evil is in the background. It comes a couple of lines after the declaration that “The Lord turns his face against those who do evil, He will erase their memory from the earth.”
.. In the first minute of his response to the killing spree, Donald Trump termed it “an act of pure evil”. Striking an unusually scriptural tone, he went on to quote a verse from the Psalms, proclaiming that “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted, He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” Even in that comforting passage, talk of evil is in the background. It comes a couple of lines after the declaration that “The Lord turns his face against those who do evil, He will erase their memory from the earth.”
.. Another clear implication of the stress on “evil” is that there is no point trying to stop its effects through regulation. If evil is an inexorable feature of a fallen plane of existence, one that has been tainted from the very start of things by human sin, then no policy measures will ever remove it. The only response to evil is to identify it clearly, to avoid secular soft-headedness, and perhaps to mitigate its effects as and when they arise, without presuming to abolish it. In other words, gun control will not work.
.. the Vatican under Pope Francis has shown sympathy for the view that the “structural violence” implicit in unjust and unequal societies is as much to blame for gun deaths as any individual moral calculus. The Pope has particularly condemned the sale of weapons for profit, whether within countries or internationally, as a huge moral scourge.