22. CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN

    In an entry in the Third Installment of my reflections, I expressed my outraged response to the final pronouncement of a Conference convened to explore the failure of Catholics to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  The participants attributed the problem to the loss of consciousness of sin.  In response, I emphasized the tragedy that few priests are capable of making the Sacramental ritual a living encounter with Jesus, the Wounded Healer.  And I expressed the fear that, from the perspective of the Curia, the solution lay in preaching designed to re-instill "good old Catholic guilt".

     A few days ago, Fr. Joe's homily on forgiveness challenged me to revisit the issue.  From his sociological perspective, we no longer sin;  we simply make mistakes.  And, by extension, admitting a mistake is not a matter of seeking forgiveness.

     Almost immediately, I had to revisit my belief that we sin because we are wounded, not because we are wicked.  From this perspective, we mistakenly assume that gratifying desires, seeking power, acquiring goods, or the like will assuage the pain and fill our emptiness.  But these mistakes mask a refusal to enter the grieving process that yields forgiveness.  And it is that refusal which is sinful.

     The belief that we sin because we are wounded, not because we are wicked has many implications.  Thus, it rejects the supposition that we are naturally selfish.  (From a critical perspective, this supposition is the literary offspring of the Hellenic suspicion of passion and desire as disruptive forces which must be subjected to the rule of reason.  And reason, of course, generates judgments which in turn generate guilt.)  It also rejects the supposition that we are inherently selfish, not because selfishness is natural, but because, as offspring of Adam, we suffer the corruption which entered the world through his original violation of the natural order.  And both rejections are validated by experience with little ones who can be spontaneously caring and compassionate as well as eruptively self-assertive as they struggle to find their place in a family and a world.   

     In the end, therefore, I suggest, once again, that the point at issue is the definition of sin.  The powers-that-be in the institutional Church define sin as a violation of a natural law inscribed in the natural order by the Creator of or a Code of Canon Law which badly needs revision.  I insist that sin is a break with intimacy and a failure to live with integrity.

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QUITE OBVIOUSLY, I HAVE FAILED TO LIMIT THE ABOVE REFLECTIONS TO A SINGLE PAGE.  HOWEVER, SINCE THAT FAILURE TRIGGERS GUILT RATHER THAN SHAME, I AM NOT LIKELY TO ABANDON MY SELF-INDULGENT APPROACH TO WRITING.

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