Christians are accused of discounting human suffering. Catholics are charged with increasing people’s sufferings in order to keep the rules of the Church, sometimes with regarding suffering as a just punishment, and even with considering it as something good and desirable in itself. In addition, your profession and mine are closely and continually connected with suffering in a variety of forms, and while on occasion we may be forgiven for seeing life in terms of little else, the possibility of this one-sided view at least prevents us from evading the fact that there is a great deal of suffering in ordinary life and that as both Christians and professionals we are compelled to think seriously of it.

Suppose we begin with this idea of suffering as a punishment, or a judgment, or a visitation of divine wrath. It is not uncommon to meet people who regard their sufferings as a judgment, and who gloomily go further and say that not only is God punishing them, but he is quite right to do so.