Casuistry and Catholic Guilt...

...or why can't I be totally happy about anything.

It is, I guess, a tribute to the effort of the West to remain civilized that there is any debate about the proper reaction to the news of the death of Osama bin Laden.  Among the full-throated ululations of joy are the occasional kill-joy voices reminding us that bin Laden was, after all, a fellow human being and, moreover, someone who we are commanded to love, even as we recognize that he is our enemy.

Lisa Graas has collected a cross-sampling of the Catholic blogosphere's reaction to the news of bin Laden's assassination.  Included in the sampling is this statement from a "Vatican representative":

Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican Spokesman:


“Osama bin Laden – as we all know – was gravely responsible for promoting division and hatred between peoples, causing the end of countless innocent lives, and of exploiting religions to this end.

“Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us before God and before man, and hopes and commits himself so that no event be an opportunity for further growth of hatred, but for peace.”

It is a good that bin Laden is dead, and it is an evil.  It is good that bin Laden is dead because he was a murderer and it is good that justice is done to murderers.  It is an evil because bin Laden was a man with an immortal soul that may very well be starting an eternity of suffering lost to good, and the loss of any soul is a victory of sin and we shouldn't rejoice in the victory of sin.

So, I guess, there ought to be some conflicting feelings about the death of evil man, if only because no one is ever ontologically evil.

If we look for some guidance, we find this issue parsed on a much higher plane than ours in the part of the Suma Theologica not written by St. Thomas Aquinas.  In the Supplement to the Third Part, Question 94, to the question of whether the saints rejoice in the suffering of the damned, St. Thomas' friend Rainaldo de Piperno compiles writes:

 I answer that, A thing may be a matter of rejoicing in two ways. First directly, when one rejoices in a thing as such: and thus the saints will not rejoice in the punishment of the wicked. Secondly, indirectly, by reason namely of something annexed to it: and in this way the saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly.

So, we can properly rejoice that good triumphed over evil and that justice was done, albeit a prayer for the soul of Osama bin Laden would also be in order.

It may be a tough line to define, and to adhere to, but that is the way it seems to break.