“Man has forgotten God,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared in 1983. After recent news of more mass shootings in our country, we must face these prophetic words. Most Americans will address this news with political solutions: tighter gun control laws, increased security in public places, or loosened concealed carry laws are the fix, depending on who you ask. But these political solutions will not correct the spiritual problem that our culture faces. We must examine this problem at the philosophical and theological levels.
First, who commits mass shootings? Usually the killers are young white males, described as loners, have few or no close friends, and more often than not come from fatherless homes and broken families. They’re alienated from family and the society as a whole. But the most important factor here is their religion: they are usually atheists and militantly so. Mass shootings, statistically, are a rarity in the set of violent crimes. However, the phenomenon of young men coldly murdering defenseless and unsuspecting strangers in public places an indicator of a serious cultural sickness, a nihilism that results from rejecting God and searching for meaning in ideologies that oppose the faith.
There is no truth, beauty or goodness apart from God. Man is created by God to search for Him. But when this search is made without faith, man loses hope of eternal life and finds himself hating, rather than loving, God and neighbor.
To cure this cultural sickness, we must make known to others that the emptiness they experience is filled by God’s love and that they can only be healed by His grace. St. John Paul II wrote in “Fides et Ratio”: “The mystery of the Incarnation will always remain the central point of reference for an understanding of the enigma of human existence, the created world and God Himself.” Fulfillment of our desires and our search for meaning comes in Jesus Christ, and this is the hope that the Church must offer the world.
Matthew Bosnick is a member of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Charlotte.
Our country is in a fervor again over mass shootings. One of the deeper issues or root causes that Americans refuse to consider or much less talk about (because it seems “intolerant” of us) is the selective and total disregard for life in the womb. Abortion is kept hidden because it is barbaric.
We too hide under covers and pretend God somehow loves these innocents less than those killed by guns. How else could a society so easily dispose of 60 million babies?
This number represents the current population of both California and New York! The fruit of abortion is violence. Silent Americans on this issue contribute to the continuing deterioration of the love, care and respect that should be given to every person, born or unborn.
Chris Goodman is a member of St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Charlotte.