Tragedy

[28yrolddiscerner]

Why does God allow massive earthquakes??? Isn’t God all powerful?!

[CatherineM]

God created a planet that heals itself and constantly reshapes itself. Earthquakes are a part of that process. Just like death is. Without death, we couldn’t afford to have births. Without things like earthquakes or volcanos, our planet would stagnate. 

They also allow us to expand our knowledge as we strive to understand these processes and learn to predict them. It also teaches us compassion as we worry about people in the path of a tornado, or send supplies to this whose lives have been impacted by a hurricane.  

Just because we can’t understand his will doesn’t mean he isn’t there. 

[phatcatholic]

I would add that God "allows" earthquakes because they are a just consequence of the Fall. It's one of the cataclysmic effects of the original sin, which introduced disharmony in the spiritual realm and the natural realm, and in the relationship between man and the natural world. But, just because earthquakes are natural evils, that does not mean that good cannot come from them, as CatherineM pointed out.

As the Catechism says on original sin (emphasis mine):

400 The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul's spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination (cf. Gen. 3:7-16). Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man (cf. Gen 3:17, 19). Because of man, creation is now subject "to its bondage to decay" (Rom 8:21). Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will "return to the ground" (Gen 3:19; cf. 2:17), for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history (Rom 5:12).