Prayer in times of tragedy: in Catholic Answers

When children and their parents were shot and killed in the USA by a militant anti-religious transsexual, Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, responded to those who talked about praying in response to this terrible event, with a tweet: “These children were literally praying as they got shot at.” The post is still up, you can see it here, and others responded in a similar way.

I responded to the story with an article for Catholic Answers. It begins:

It has become a regrettable feature of American public discourse that tragedies, like mass shootings and natural disasters, are greeted by some public figures and commentators with mockery of the idea of prayer.

I seem to remember, some years ago, when Christian politicians assured the victims of some disaster of their prayers (“our thoughts and prayers are with the victims” and so on), non-Christian commentators would react angrily, saying that what the victims needed was food and shelter, or else that something should be done to mitigate such events in the future, like flood defenses or gun control.

It might, indeed, be reasonable to question politicians’ sincerity if they offer prayer as a substitute for action (see James 2:16), if that were really what was going on. Now, however, we seem to have moved on to a new phase, in which the idea of prayer in itself is ridiculed, because it didn’t save the victims. We have entered a dark place, where the principles of those scoffing at the Crucifixion have found their way into public discourse in a still majority-Christian nation: “Let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him” (Matt. 27:42).

Read it all on Catholic Answers.

I see they have turned the argument of my article into a Twitter thread, which is rather fun.

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