Confronting Evil Today Mini-Course

The 2008-2009 SJU Mini-Course

In Partnership with KAIROS - Grand River

Mainstream culture still thinks of evil in fairly traditional terms, that is, the actions of individuals who cannot resist the temptation of the rewards of their evil acts. In this series of lectures, we examine religious thinkers - including Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gustavo Gutierrez - who look at evil in its social context. These thinkers from the world's religions go back to the roots of their traditions to find wisdom, values, practices and forms of community to fight evil in the modern world. The objective of this mini-course is to inspire a discussion of what evil means in a world that both benefits and suffers from dramatic changes brought about by modern society, technology, and ideology.

Lecture #3: A Response to Evil 
Lecture #3 PowerPoint Presentation

One of the most sophisticated and intelligent discussions of confronting evil in the modern world has emerged from Roman Catholic social teaching, which some have described as "the Church's best kept secret." In a personal reflection, Dr. Seljak outlines how his thinking about sin, redemption, and the Good News of Jesus Christ has been changed by the work of prophetic Catholic thinkers such as Enrique Dussel, Gustavo Gutierrez, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Gregory Baum. He argues that understanding and confronting evil, especially the evil in which we ourselves participate, is crucial to our own salvation and the redemption of a world given over to injustice and violence.