Archbishop of Sydney

SIN

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
10 March 2002

Moral values seem to have changed a lot. One entertainer used to claim that sixty years ago a nude was a horse without a saddle!

Once upon a time only Catholics believed that Mary, mother of Jesus was born free from sin. Today many claim that everyone is born free from sin, innately good, and that evil comes from elsewhere; perhaps from the structures of society.

Others take another tack. Years ago Charlie Brown announced that it does not matter what you believe, as long as you are sincere. In other words, nothing is right or wrong (in its nature), but thinking makes it so.

But most still believe in evil and the September 11 attacks on innocent civilians have reinforced this popular conviction. Nonetheless there has been a shift in the public mind about the allocation of responsibility for this evil, a weakening in the belief in personal responsibility. Evil is not our fault; or at least it is someone else's fault!

At the start of every Eucharist Catholics are invited to confess their sins. What does this mean?

Sin is a moral failure, a failure to do our duty towards other people or to God. It is disobedience of God's will, the breaking of the natural law e.g. parents failing to care for their children. Sin is an offence against love, either positively through hatred or revenge or through indifference and neglect, failing to do our duty.

Sin is not the same as unknowingly breaking a taboo. Sin is not an innocent mistake. God is not like a court of law, because genuine ignorance means we are not guilty of sin, even when a bad act has been committed. Three conditions are necessary before a person can commit a sin in God's eyes. He must know what he is doing, he must be free to act like this (not be forced or bullied) and some commandment or moral law must be broken. An awkward child, taking reasonable care, who breaks grandma's best vase is not committing a sin. That was an accident.

There is no doubt that this traditional explanation has weakened. People now prefer to speak of crimes rather than terrible sins, while some insist that most evil actions are symptoms of sickness or illness. Some blame a bad gene for most bad behaviour, as genes are now blamed for everything from bigotry to baldness.

Genuine developments in human understanding have also battered the idea of sin, that we can knowingly and freely choose to do evil.

Through sociology we know that patterns of bad behaviour can flow from generation to generation. Drugs can modify our moods and our actions. Through repetition our reflexes and actions can be conditioned into patterns, hypnosis can weaken our self-control and psychoanalysis can tell us something of the influence of our past on our actions, through our old loves and hates.

In other words we are not as free as we sometimes imagine. But each person still has a core of freedom and knowledge to choose good or evil. This separates us from the animals.

To deny that humans can sin is to make a big mistake.