The Social Resonance of Sin and Redemption
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - March 21, 2008
Today we solemnly mark the day on which the Lamb of God was slain to take away the sins of the world. It is a day on which we see, in the mutilated body of Christ on the Cross, the real consequence of sin. Simply put, sin kills, and not just in a generic way. By sinning, one attempts to take the place of God and determine good and evil — but the only path to the throne is attempted deicide. Whether intentional or not, the sinner ultimately seeks to kill God, to extinguish his presence in one's soul, his image in others or his goodness in the world. For that reason, no sin is really ever merely "personal" or "individual." Every sin, even the seemingly most private, always bears consequences in one's relationship with God, with others, and with one's surroundings.
This point about sin's social dimensions was mentioned by Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, the Regent of the Vatican's Apostolic Penitentiary, in a March 9 interview with L'Osservatore Romano. After having taught the Penitentiary's annual course for new confessors, he sat down with the Holy See's official newspaper for a routine interview about the work of his dicastery, about the sacrament of confession in general, and various related topics. Little did he know that his interview would make headlines throughout the world.
In one of many questions he was asked whether sin has primarily a personal or social reference. He replied, "The reference is always the violation of the covenant with God and with brothers and the social consequences of sin. If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has a value, a resonance beyond the individual, above all social, because of the great phenomenon of globalization. In effect, the attention to sin presents itself more urgently today than yesterday, because its consequences are wider and more destructive."
The reporter then asked, on account of sin's increased social resonance, whether he would say that there are any "new sins." He responded, "There are various areas today in which we adopt sinful behavior, as with individual and social rights. This is especially so in the field of bioethics where we cannot deny the existence of violations of fundamental rights of human nature – this occurs by way of experiments and genetic modifications, whose results we cannot easily predict or control. Another area, which indeed pertains to the social spectrum, is that of drug use, which weakens our minds and reduces our intelligence. As a result, many young people are left out of Church circles. Here's another one: social and economic inequality, in the sense that the rich always seem to get richer, and the poor, poorer. This [phenomenon] feeds off an unsustainable form of social injustice and is related to environmental issues –which currently have much relevant interest."
From these two rather dry and straightforward answers, several media outlets sensationalized that the Vatican had "updated" or even "replaced" the seven capital sins. Others framed it that the Vatican had added bioethical, narcotic and environmental "thou shalt nots" to the Ten Commandments.
Bishop Girotti had, of course, suggested no such thing, nor even come within a hemisphere of doing so. That so many in the secular media so quickly reported these caricatures as news, however, shows just how mistaken their understanding of sin is, and how erroneous their notion of the Church. For many in our culture, sin is something arbitrary that a given moral authority, like Church leaders, may declare evil today and good tomorrow. A short time ago, those in our culture assert, sex outside of marriage was considered evil, now it's considered a liberating right of passage; homosexual activity was thought perverted, now it's just another lifestyle choice; the death penalty was widely invoked, now it's almost universally scorned; abortion was accounted as murder, now celebrated as a civil right. What is moral or immoral is thought to be so only until the next public opinion poll or Supreme Court decision says otherwise.
But this is not the Church's understanding of morality. Sin is not something capricious that Church leaders can whimsically invent in one era and eliminate in the next. It is something that objectively violates the love of God, love of neighbor or authentic love of self that causes real harm to oneself and one's relationships. Church leaders can no more contrive or erase sins than physicists can create or negate the law of gravity. A morally evil act has no statute of limitations that sanitizes the evil and somehow makes it good. A morally good action has no expiration date after which the good begins to corrupt.
In his interview, Bishop Girotti was stressing certain points that many in the modern world, including some Catholics, have forgotten. He underlined that sin causes objective social and not just personal harm, and, because of two modern developments, this capacity for social damage has been magnified. First, a far greater interconnectedness through television, travel and the internet makes it possible for one's private sins to harm many more. The sexual sins of the disgraced former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, for example, rippled to impact not just his family, but the people of the state of New York and even the national presidential election. Second, scientific advances, while making possible great good, also magnify the possibility for even greater harm. One terrorist with a biological or nuclear agent can massacre multitudes. One computer prodigy can launch a virus that can wipe out the hard drives and hard work of millions. One genetic genius can mutate biological organisms in such a way as to introduce great harm into gene pools. An industrial or private polluter can introduce such harmful new toxins into a water supply that alone he can wipe out not only its aquatic life but the human communities that may depend on that resource for survival. As Bishop Girotti said, "the attention to sin presents itself more urgently today than yesterday, because its consequences are wider and more destructive."
The Church's moral teaching is not, fundamentally, about naming and avoiding sin, but about training us to love God and others as Christ does. While there are certainly social consequences of sin that the Church in her prophetic dimension points out to us, there are also social consequences to deeds of love. Good actions have ripple effects as well. Today we mark the action of love with the largest ripple of all: one Person's good deed made salvation possible for every human being who will ever live. Where sin abounds, as St. Paul wrote to the Romans, grace abounds all the more. The Lord intends for us to be his ripples bringing that grace into situations of sin, old and new, and converting them into occasions of love.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
