Why bother believing in a God that lets the big 'C' happen?

(Vatican Radio) For another in his series 'Why Bother? Staying Catholic despite it all', Monsignor Peter Fleetwood tells us how one of the most taboo subjects is "the big C", cancer, which seems to have such a grip on us. But people rarely talk about cancer. They hardly ever use the word, especially when talking about someone who is living with it. Even when people are talking about someone with cancer, the word itself is often not mentioned. But why is it so hard to speak about this disease? And again how is a Christian supposed to face a disease like cancer? Our instinct in the face of so much pain and humiliation is to scream at God, asking how a good God can allow it. Even when the anger is past, many give in to the temptation to jump from the impotence of the best doctors when it comes to cancer to the question: "why bother believing in God who lets this sort of thing happen?"

Listen to Monsignor  Peter Fleetwood in a programme produced by Veronica Scarisbrick:

 

Faith Monsignor Fleetwood goes on to say is meant to help us be more than just creatures of instinct, to see beyond life's negatives, and even beyond the positives, to the basis of all life. And Christian faith has a remarkable challenge in it: to believe that God, who is the basis of all life, is more powerful than everything negative we ever come across. We are challenged to believe that God is more powerful than the most wicked person, more powerful than any horrendous sin that can be committed, more powerful than the most negative experience we can ever have, and the worst of those is death. We may often wander into church for mass, and on Sundays we say the words of the Creed, but how often do they sink in? Do you really believe Jesus rose from the dead? Because if you do, there is nothing to fear.