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About the Book
In this transformative and enlightening book, Dr. Paul Chaloux demonstrates that suffering is not retribution from an angry, vengeful God but the saving action of a loving God who directs us away from evil and toward eternal joy in Heaven.Book Synopsis
Suffering is one of the most challenging and inescapable mysteries of life -- even for the innocent. Thinkers have long been vexed by the idea that a good God permits suffering, and it has been a stumbling block for many souls striving to live lives of faith. But what if we've been looking at suffering improperly all this time? What if, instead of serving as evidence against God, suffering represented the very proof of a loving God?
In this transformative and enlightening book, Dr. Paul Chaloux -- adjunct professor of theology at the Catholic University of America -- demonstrates that suffering is not retribution from an angry, vengeful God but the saving action of a loving God who directs us away from evil and toward eternal joy in Heaven.
Educated in his own "school of suffering," Dr. Chaloux explains the four tasks of suffering that are essential in the economy of salvation and why, if suffering were to be abolished, no one would be saved. U
About the Author
Paul Chaloux was born in Maine in 1960 to Paul and Dolly Chaloux, the oldest of 6 children. He grew up in Northern Virginia and attended public schools. After graduating with a chemical engineering degree from the University of Virginia in 1982, Paul worked for over 30 years as an engineer, manager, and strategist for IBM in upstate New York. While there, he also served as a catechist for 15 years at St. Columba Parish in Hopewell Junction, NY. In 2015, after earning a master's degree in religious education from Fordham University and retiring from IBM, Paul was accepted into the PhD program at the Catholic University of America to study Catechetics, with the goal of teaching future catechists. However, his plans changed dramatically when he was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson's Disease just after moving to Washington, DC for his studies. His new neurologist, after learning that Paul was studying theology, asked him why people suffer. He had no answer since it was not his intended field of study, but the question intrigued him enough to cause him to take up the subject. Five years later, having earned his PhD in moral theology, Dr. Chaloux wrote Why We Suffer for general audiences as a follow on to his dissertation, The Grace Concealed in Suffering: Developing Virtue and Beatitude, which hedefended at CUA on March 5, 2020. Dr. Chaloux currently teaches theology as an adjunct professor at the Catholic University of America and serves as a catechist at St. Agnes Parish in Arlington, Virginia. He has been married for over thirty years to his wife Sue and they have 4 adult children and 2 granddaughters.
