If a person can decide, and this without God, what is good and what is evil, they can also determine that a certain group of people must be eliminated. Such decisions occurred, for example, in the Third Reich and were made by individuals who came to power through democratic means but used it to implement the perverse programs of the National Socialist ideology, which was inspired by racist assumptions. Similar decisions were made by the Communist Party in the Soviet Union and in countries subjected to Marxist ideology. In this context, Jews and Roma, Ukrainian peasants, Orthodox and Catholic clergy in Russia, Belarus, and beyond the Ural Mountains were exterminated… Why does all this happen? The answer is ultimately simple: it occurs because God as Creator has been rejected, thus as the measure for revealing good and evil.
He who can establish the definitive boundary of evil is God. God himself came to save us, to free humanity from evil. It is not possible to think of the boundary that God has set for evil in its various forms without recalling the mystery of redemption.
Is the mystery of redemption the answer to the historical evil that returns in various forms to humanity's fate? Is it also an answer to the evil of our time?
Those who are subjected to the systematic action of evil have nothing else but Christ and his cross as a source of spiritual self-defense, as a promise of victory. Has not the sacrifice of Maximilian Kolbe become a sign of victory over evil? And was not the life story of Edith Stein such a victory?
The world was redeemed by God. If redemption forms a divine boundary imposed on evil, it happens only for this reason: evil has been radically conquered by good, hatred by love, death by resurrection.
(John Paul II /1920–2005/, Memory and Identity. Conversations at the Turn of Two Millennia)
