| March 21, 2008
Old Sins
Revisited
For older Catholics who
remember tallying up their sins like amateur golfers on the 18th green
while waiting their turn in the confessional, news of an expanded list
of capital sins could be disconcerting. Maybe it wasn’t enough to just
avoid the Big Seven (if you know all seven, you are probably an older
Catholic).
For younger Catholics
who have never weighed out the difference in moral grams between lust
and a passing impure thought, recent Vatican statements about major
social sins such as pollution and accumulating too much money may
register both interest and approval. Our church is paying attention to
global inequities, being relevant about real global wrongs. Many young
people have traveled and have witnessed the impact of First World
consumption on Third World countries and asked, “Who is responsible for
such suffering?” They have seen the face of social sin and felt the
sting of our collective responsibility for it.
If there is value in the
latest Vatican alert, besides the prospect of drumming up more
confessions, it may be the overdue recognition of the church’s
longstanding tradition on social justice as constitutive, not optional,
to the Gospels and to ordinary Catholic faith. Like the poor, many of
the sins on the latest list have always been with us, especially the gap
between rich and poor. But it has always been simpler to consider sin as
a private matter. It kept people busy parsing their personal failings
and, until recently, kept confession lines long. Meanwhile, broader
patterns of social evil like racism, sexism and poverty thrived. It was
possible to be a faithful communicant on Sunday and a slum landlord on
Monday.
Without judging anyone’s
personal guilt, we ought to call drug trafficking, chemical dumping,
unethical science and corporate greed as sinful as they are criminal.
And to the extent that we have shared in the benefits of these offenses
to the common good, we ought to acknowledge ourselves as sinners. Our
collective repentance is a matter of life and death to millions who live
on the other end of the economic continuum. Getting beyond self to a
collective urgency about systemic destruction and exploitation of other
people must be the mission of the church and the fruit of a mature
Christian conscience. The Vatican has restated an old challenge in a new
and timely way.
National Catholic
Reporter, March 21, 2008
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