Yes, there is such a thing as social sin in Catholic teaching. Here’s what it means. (And what it does not.)

ast month, Michael Hich­born, whose nom de plume is “Lep­an­to Insti­tute,” made the lunatic claim that Judas Iscar­i­ot is “the patron saint of social jus­tice.” In truth, it would be St. Mar­tin de Por­res. I wrote about it here and here; Mary Pez­zu­lo wrote about it here and here; David Rus­sell Mosley wrote about it here. And well before all that (I note for the record), Arch­bish­op Cha­put warned that the Lep­an­to Insti­tute “sows divi­sion”. Vivat Cha­put.

But in addi­tion to the weird­ness about Judas, Mr. Hich­born also denied the exis­tence of social sin. In the awk­ward and inept frag­ments that are his hall­mark, he wrote: “True social jus­tice? Rejects the idea of social sin. There is no such thing.”

Real­ly? No such thing, huh? How very odd, then, to find that Pope St. John Paul II defines social sin at some length in his apos­tolic exhor­ta­tion on the Sacra­ment of Con­fes­sion, Rec­on­cil­i­a­tio et Paen­i­ten­tia. Has Mr. Hich­born not read it? Has he for­got­ten it? Sad. In that text (for on this blog I always seek answers direct from the Mag­is­te­r­i­al texts), the pope says that the “mys­tery of sin” “is com­posed of [a] twofold wound which the sin­ner opens in him­self and in his rela­tion­ship with his neigh­bor. There­fore one can speak of per­son­al and social sin: From one point of view, every sin is per­son­al; from anoth­er point of view, every sin is social inso­far as and because it also has social reper­cus­sions.” (15)

All sin is social, says John Paul II, in this regard: It wounds our rela­tion­ship with our neigh­bor. No man is an island. Some are an Insti­tute, but no man is an island.

This does not mean that sin is not per­son­al at all; and it does not mean that “exter­nal fac­tors” in a soci­ety are to blame for a per­son­’s sins. That would be a mis­read­ing. The pope is clear in point­ing that out:

Sin, in the prop­er sense, is always a per­son­al act, since it is an act of free­dom on the part of an indi­vid­ual per­son and not prop­er­ly of a group or com­mu­ni­ty. This indi­vid­ual may be con­di­tioned, incit­ed and influ­enced by numer­ous and pow­er­ful exter­nal fac­tors. He may also be sub­ject­ed to ten­den­cies, defects and habits linked with his per­son­al con­di­tion. In not a few cas­es such exter­nal and inter­nal fac­tors may atten­u­ate, to a greater or less­er degree, the per­son­’s free­dom and there­fore his respon­si­bil­i­ty and guilt. But it is a truth of faith, also con­firmed by our expe­ri­ence and rea­son, that the human per­son is free. This truth can­not be dis­re­gard­ed in order to place the blame for indi­vid­u­als’ sins on exter­nal fac­tors such as struc­tures, sys­tems or oth­er peo­ple. (16)

That is impor­tant. Only an indi­vid­ual can be respon­si­ble for sin. “Social sin” does not mean that soci­ety sins, or that soci­ety bears the bur­den of guilt. What it does mean is that every sin, to one degree or anoth­er, has a con­se­quence for oth­ers.

The pope speaks of three dis­tinct mean­ings of “social sin.”

• “To speak of social sin means in the first place to rec­og­nize that, by virtue of human sol­i­dar­i­ty which is as mys­te­ri­ous and intan­gi­ble as it is real and con­crete, each indi­vid­u­al’s sin in some way affects oth­ers.” (16)

To sin is to wound not only your­self but a broth­er or a sis­ter. It puts you out of right rela­tion­ship with God, out of right rela­tion­ship with your­self, and also out of right rela­tion­ship with oth­er human beings (who are them­selves the image of God). In that way, all sin wounds the Christ in your broth­er or sis­ter.

The pope expands on this thought:

Con­se­quent­ly one can speak of a com­mu­nion of sin, where­by a soul that low­ers itself through sin drags down with itself the church and, in some way, the whole world. In oth­er words, there is no sin, not even the most inti­mate and secret one, the most strict­ly indi­vid­ual one, that exclu­sive­ly con­cerns the per­son com­mit­ting it. With greater or less­er vio­lence, with greater or less­er harm, every sin has reper­cus­sions on the entire eccle­sial body and the whole human fam­i­ly. Accord­ing to this first mean­ing of the term, every sin can undoubt­ed­ly be con­sid­ered as social sin. (16)

It is not just “soci­ety,” in the sec­u­lar sense, that is wound­ed by each sin, but the soci­ety of the Church itself. The Body of Christ also bears the wound. Even to that extent alone, all sin is “social” in its effects.

• “Some sins, how­ev­er, by their very mat­ter con­sti­tute a direct attack on one’s neigh­bor and more exact­ly, in the lan­guage of the Gospel, against one’s broth­er or sis­ter. They are an offense against God because they are offens­es against one’s neigh­bor. These sins are usu­al­ly called social sins, and this is the sec­ond mean­ing of the term.

Mur­der or theft, for exam­ple, would fall into this cat­e­go­ry. Rape would, too. It is a sin, the pope says, “against love of neigh­bor.” It “applies to every sin against jus­tice in inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships.” (There’s that fun­ny Church thing about jus­tice again.)

St. John Paul II lists the kind of sins that are includ­ed:

Also social is every sin against the rights of the human per­son, begin­ning with the right to and includ­ing the life of the unborn or against a per­son­’s phys­i­cal integri­ty. [Euthana­sia is one such sin. So too sex reas­sign­ment surgery. Or a vasec­to­my.]

Like­wise social is every sin against oth­ers’ free­dom, espe­cial­ly against the supreme free­dom to believe in God and adore him; social is every sin against the dig­ni­ty and hon­or of one’s neigh­bor. [Bear­ing false wit­ness counts here: the sins of detrac­tion, rash judg­ment, and calum­ny.]

Also social is every sin against the com­mon good and its exi­gen­cies in rela­tion to the whole broad spec­trum of the rights and duties of cit­i­zens. The term social can be applied to sins of com­mis­sion or omission—on the part of polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic or trade union lead­ers, who though in a posi­tion to do so, do not work dili­gent­ly and wise­ly for the improve­ment and trans­for­ma­tion of soci­ety accord­ing to the require­ments and poten­tial of the giv­en his­toric moment; as also on the part of work­ers who through absen­teeism or non-coop­er­a­tion fail to ensure that their indus­tries can con­tin­ue to advance the well-being of the work­ers them­selves, of their fam­i­lies and of the whole of soci­ety.

An employ­er sins against the com­mon good when he fails to pay a just wage. An employ­ee does so when he fails to report to work on time every day with no good rea­son.

• “The third mean­ing of social sin refers to the rela­tion­ships between the var­i­ous human com­mu­ni­ties. These rela­tion­ships are not always in accor­dance with the plan of God, who intends that there be jus­tice in the world and free­dom and peace between indi­vid­u­als, groups and peo­ples.”

Here the pope is think­ing of such things as “the class strug­gle.” “Like­wise,” he says, “obsti­nate con­fronta­tion between blocs of nations, between one nation and anoth­er, between dif­fer­ent groups with­in the same nation: all this too is a social evil.” Racism would count as a social sin in this sense, as would slav­ery. The nuclear arms race is a social sin.

But once more the pope is at pains to point out that only indi­vid­u­als can sin:

Now it has to be admit­ted that real­i­ties and sit­u­a­tions such as those described, when they become gen­er­al­ized and reach vast pro­por­tions as social phe­nom­e­na, almost always become anony­mous, just as their caus­es are com­plex and not always iden­ti­fi­able. Hence if one speaks of social sin here, the expres­sion obvi­ous­ly has an ana­log­i­cal mean­ing. How­ev­er, to speak even ana­log­i­cal­ly of social sins must not cause us to under­es­ti­mate the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the indi­vid­u­als involved. It is meant to be an appeal to the con­sciences of all, so that each may shoul­der his or her respon­si­bil­i­ty seri­ous­ly and coura­geous­ly in order to change those dis­as­trous con­di­tions and intol­er­a­ble sit­u­a­tions.

This leads the pope to state even more clear­ly what social sin is not:

Hav­ing said this in the clear­est and most unequiv­o­cal way, one must add at once that there is one mean­ing some­times giv­en to social sin that is not legit­i­mate or accept­able even though it is very com­mon in cer­tain quar­ters today. This usage con­trasts social sin and per­son­al sin, not with­out ambi­gu­i­ty, in a way that leads more or less uncon­scious­ly to the water­ing down and almost the abo­li­tion of per­son­al sin, with the recog­ni­tion only of social guilt and respon­si­bil­i­ties. Accord­ing to this usage … prac­ti­cal­ly every sin is a social sin, in the sense that blame for it is to be placed not so much on the moral con­science of an indi­vid­ual, but rather on some vague enti­ty or anony­mous col­lec­tiv­i­ty such as the sit­u­a­tion, the sys­tem, soci­ety, struc­tures or insti­tu­tions.

“It is impor­tant to point this out in any dis­cus­sion of social sin. It often hap­pens that those who claim that there is “no such thing” as social sin have only the false usage in mind; they do not acknowl­edge, or they do not know, that there is a true one.”

As the Church uses the term, “social sin” can have any one of the three sens­es John Paul II spec­i­fies. But it does not mean that there is no such thing as per­son­al sin; and it does not mean that “the sys­tem” or “soci­ety” or “insti­tu­tions” have sinned or bear guilt. Only indi­vid­u­als sin. Only indi­vid­u­als have guilt. “Social sin” is sin against com­mu­ni­ty and neigh­bor; it is not the sin of “soci­ety.”

As St. John Paul II fur­ther says, even when the Church speaks of sins in terms of “col­lec­tive behav­ior,” “she knows and she pro­claims that such cas­es of social sin are the result of the accu­mu­la­tion and con­cen­tra­tion of many per­son­al sins. … The real respon­si­bil­i­ty, then, lies with indi­vid­u­als.” And the solu­tion to that is always con­ver­sion and the chang­ing of hearts:

At the heart of every sit­u­a­tion of sin are always to be found sin­ful peo­ple. So true is this that even when such a sit­u­a­tion can be changed in its struc­tur­al and insti­tu­tion­al aspects by the force of law or—as unfor­tu­nate­ly more often hap­pens by the law of force, the change in fact proves to be incom­plete, of short dura­tion and ulti­mate­ly vain and ineffective—not to say coun­ter­pro­duc­tive if the peo­ple direct­ly or indi­rect­ly respon­si­ble for that sit­u­a­tion are not con­vert­ed.

Seg­re­ga­tion was a social sin, but it was a social sin of many accu­mu­lat­ed acts of indi­vid­ual racism. In order for seg­re­ga­tion to end, it was impor­tant to change laws. But con­sciences need­ed to change too.

And the same is true, by the way, about abor­tion. Abor­tion is anoth­er grave social sin. It is impor­tant that we work to change the laws. But chang­ing laws will be, in John Paul II’s words, “ulti­mate­ly vain and inef­fec­tive” unless we also con­vert souls.

Only when a soul is con­vert­ed are social sins reduced.