Tag: Sin

1 min read

Sin

Misusing “Oh, my God!”

Msgr. Charles E. Pope

May 25, 2023 5:00 pm May 25, 2023

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While the phrase “Oh, my God” could be a prayer, it is not usually meant in this way. More commonly it uses the Divine name as a mere expression of…

While the phrase “Oh, my God” could be a prayer, it is not usually meant in this way. More commonly it uses the Divine name as a mere expression of surprise or exasperation. This is not a reverent or prayerful use of God’s name in most circumstances. The word “vain” means empty. And, therefore, the context you cite would usually seem to qualify as using God’s name in vain.

However, in assigning culpability (blameworthiness), it is good to remember that some have developed a bad habit of using this expression. As such, they usually commit the sin in weakness rather than malice, not intending to show disrespect to God.

It should further be recalled that the Second Commandment, “You shall not use the name of the Lord in vain,” has for its first meaning that we should never use God’s name to swear falsely or curse others. Irreverence of God’s name through casual use, such as you cite, is an extended meaning of the commandment. Thus we see that violations of the Second Commandment do admit to some degree of seriousness. It is far more serious a sin to use God’s name to swear falsely than to inadvertently use it to express surprise.

Still, one ought to avoid such vain or empty uses. One way to help break a bad habit that may have developed is for the one who says, “Oh, my God!” to correct themselves aloud by saying, “Oh, I mean to say, ‘May the name of the Lord be praised!’” This makes reparation and also helps break the habit.

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7 min read

Evil

Can the Existence of Evil Disprove God’s existence?

Sister Anna Marie McGuan

May 15, 2023 7:08 am May 15, 2023

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7 min read

The existence of evil is a common objection to the existence of God, or at least to a personal God who is all-knowing and all-good. How is it possible to…

The existence of evil is a common objection to the existence of God, or at least to a personal God who is all-knowing and all-good. How is it possible to reconcile belief in God with the clear evidence of evil and its manifold manifestations? This is a good question, and one that people have been asking for thousands of years (just read through the book of Job in the Old Testament). To answer the question, two related, yet distinct ideas must be examined.

The meaning of evil

Firstly, it is necessary to establish what exactly is meant by “evil.” When speaking of evil, it is easy to see it as a force that drives nature or people toward destruction. However, evil does not exist per se, meaning in and of itself. It only exists in things as a lack of something that should be present. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote: “…every being, as such, is good; …evil can exist only in good as in its subject” (STh., Q. 49, a. 3). For example, blindness is not something added to the eye; it is the lack of a power that should be there. The eye suffers the deprivation of the good of sight, which is an evil. Sickness is not the addition of a new perfection; it is the lack of health in a body. Hence, a physician works precisely to restore someone to health, the good state the body should be in.

This understanding of evil is important because it immediately rules out the idea that the material world is evil and must be overcome in order for human persons to be happy. That dualistic perception of the world and its origins is at the heart of the Manichean heresy, which lies within the Gnostic tradition. Essentially, the two eternal principles of “good” and “evil” are at war, and all matter is seen as evil. This, of course, is in direct opposition to the biblical tradition which precedes it, in which all creation is declared “good,” even “very good,” in Genesis 1. Matter is definitely not evil in the biblical vision.

What about when bad things happen? Physical or natural evil that people experience is the playing out of the laws of the universe, like the earthquake that causes the tsunami that causes the destruction of an island and all the plants and creatures living on it. One the one hand, it is seen as a tragedy. On the other hand, however, how it happened is perfectly logical and can be traced back through the laws of nature. This type of evil can also be quite relative. For example, the lion eats the antelope. Good for the lion, evil for the antelope. As St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Now, the order of the universe requires…that there should be some things that can, and do sometimes, fail” (STh., Q. 49, a. 2).

The existence of evil

Secondly, once evil is understood as the privation of a good and not a principle of existence, the idea free will in rational creatures must be addressed. Moral evil is more nuanced than physical evil, and it is really at the heart of the above-stated question about God. Moral evil refers to the choice by a rational creature to do what he knows is not good, either for himself or for others. In this case, the privation of the good that ought to be there is caused by the choice of the creature. For example, the thief lacks the virtue of justice. The good that ought to be present, namely, the ready disposition to give to each what is due, is lacking. Instead, the thief has an inordinate desire to possessions and violates justice in order to satisfy that desire. A famous line from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn summarizes this perfectly: “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes … right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.” Man, each and every man, chooses to commit moral evil or not. God is not the cause of this type of evil, but he does allow it to exist.

If God is all good — why doesn’t He stop people from doing bad things? This is the conundrum, right? The answer lies in the great value and the goodness of freedom, even when it has gone wrong. Make no mistake — God has explained what freedom is for: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Dt 6:5). Or, as St. Paul wrote: “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rm 3:9-10).

Each person has an innate understanding that what St. Paul says is true, and freedom’s true purpose is clear. Yet, if someone makes a bad or a vicious choice, God still permits the choice. The power of goodness and love, latent within the human will, is so great and good, that God will not thwart man’s use of it. He wants humans to choose to love freely — to love him freely, to love the self freely, and to love others freely. He could have created puppets who automatically loved him and could not do otherwise. He did not. As such, there are adverse consequences to human freedom: sin and the effects of sin.

Sin and evil

That is really the crux of the problem. It can be explained metaphysically and in a satisfactory way that evil exists, but God’s seeming absence from the scene right when we need him fails to satisfy. But, is he absent? St. Augustine said: “For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil.”

St. Augustine’s argument here is actually the only solution. The existence of evil cannot disprove the existence of God, because evil exists only in something good as in a subject (blindness in the eye, illness in the body) or as part of the lawful order of the universe. Yet, God’s allowance of evil, especially evil freely chosen on the part of human persons, cannot but bring us to the question of why? To begin to understand this, the nature of human freedom must be appreciated and understood. Freedom is a power for good, not for evil, but it can be misused. God allows this because this is how he created rational human beings — for the good, capable of evil. He will not go back on his creation. At the same time, the evil that God permits, will, in his time and purposes, be an avenue from which he brings good.

Sister Anna Marie McGuan is with the Religious Sisters of Mercy in Alma, Michigan.

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2 min read

Sin

Unforgivable Sin?

Father Ray Ryland

April 30, 2023 1:35 pm April 30, 2023

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In three parallel passages in the Gospels, Jesus speaks of sin against the Holy Spirit: Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-29 and Luke 12:10. St. Luke’s version is the most succinct: “Everyone…

In three parallel passages in the Gospels, Jesus speaks of sin against the Holy Spirit: Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-29 and Luke 12:10. St. Luke’s version is the most succinct: “Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven.”

The first clause of this sentence reminds us that a person who is mistaken about Jesus, who does not know Jesus as the Son of God, can be forgiven for not acknowledging Him.

To understand the second clause, we must first note a basic truth: God limits himself with regard to human freedom. Though He always includes in His overall plan even our misuse of our freedom, He always respects that freedom and will not destroy it.

He therefore does not force himself on us, so to speak – does not force us to accept His love and forgiveness. Our freedom gives us the frightful capacity to reject Him and to refuse to allow Him to forgive us.

The “unforgivable sin” is the sin of refusing to be forgiven. It is the determination to continue in sin at all costs.

In his encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem (“Lord and Giver of Life,”1986), Pope John Paul II taught: “If Jesus says that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven either in this life or in the next, it is because this ‘non-forgiveness’ is linked, as to its cause, to ‘non-repentance,’in other words to the radical refusal to be converted” (no. 46).

Sometimes sincere Christians ask themselves whether in fact they have committed the unforgivable sin. If one asks that question in awe and even in fear, the very asking shows that a person has not committed the unforgivable sin.

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1 min read

Sin

What Is Concupiscence?

Father Reginald Martin

April 17, 2023 2:18 pm April 17, 2023

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The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “Concupiscence stems from the disobedience of the first sin. It unsettles man’s moral faculties and, without being in itself an offence, inclines man to commit sins” (No. 2515). Baptism removes original sin, but does not free us from finding sin attractive, so concupiscence is the part of our human condition that responds to the allure of sin.

We commonly associate concupiscence with sexual temptation, but it affects us on a far deeper level, opening us to the attraction of all sin. If we surrender, our sin weakens the bonds that ought to unite us to the other members of the Body of Christ, and makes us more apt to sin again.

As a remedy, the Catechism urges us to strive for the purity of heart Jesus commends in the beatitudes (see Mt 5:8). This purity refers to charity, chastity and love of truth (see Catechism, No. 2518) and not only equips us to embrace physical purity, but enables us to view the world “according to God, to accept others as ‘neighbors’” (No. 2519). With practice, this effort becomes a virtuous habit that enables us more and more to turn away from ourselves, that we may discern, “find and … fulfill God’s will in everything” (No. 2520).

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6 min read

Sin

What Does It Mean To Be Truly Free?

Msgr. Michael Heintz

April 2, 2023 7:00 am April 2, 2023

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6 min read

We are all born into captivity. And we don’t even know it. We are not nearly as “free” as we like to think we are. Each of us is born…

We are all born into captivity. And we don’t even know it. We are not nearly as “free” as we like to think we are. Each of us is born enslaved to ourselves and thus have become complicit in the rebellion of the fallen angels against their Creator and ours. It’s a subtle and insidious enslavement; none of us rolls out of bed in the morning consciously thinking, “I am the center of the universe,” and yet almost all of our desires, choices and actions are governed by this diabolical assertion. And the assertion, like all things diabolical, is a lie.

Far from being always so obvious to us, original sin is very much like a virus that affects our entire operating system, lurking behind the screen of our life and manifesting itself in our serial sins as well as greater offenses — it distorts the way we see ourselves, the world and God. As postmodern persons, we are remarkably self-conscious and yet bereft of genuine self-awareness. We don’t really see ourselves because we are, ourselves, “in the way.” The “ego,” what Thomas Merton called the “false self” — the “me” that is at the center of this lie — occludes our vision so that we don’t see even ourselves as we should. Our vision of others also is skewed, and so we end up looking at others either as objects in the way of the exercise of our will (competitors) or as instruments we can use to achieve our own ends. In some ways, the art of Christian living is learning to stay out of the way.

Far too often we imagine that God’s grace works something like this: our unruly desires and passions lead us into any number of sins, in thought, word, action and omission. God’s grace enters in and acts as a governor, limiting our choices — clamping down, as it were, on that freedom and thus keeping us on the “straight and narrow.” However, rather than imagining grace as a kind of power that limits us by external constraint, perhaps we might re-conceive divine grace more helpfully.

In baptism, we were plunged into the dying and rising of the Lord Jesus Christ and configured to Him. We share, by His gift, in His risen life, the life of the world to come, the new life made possible by His own paschal victory and now extended to us by the sacraments. Perhaps rather than seeing grace as an external constraint, we might rather view it as it really is: the fruit of the new life given to us in Christ. To be “in Christ” (one of St. Paul’s favorite expressions) is to share in His new life — His victory and triumph over sin. Grace, far from acting as a kind of inhibitor, actually liberates us and makes us free, genuinely free. When Gabriel greeted Our Lady with the strange Greek epithet kecharitomene, usually rendered “full of grace,” he was observing her unique status among all the daughters of Eve (as well as among all the sons of Adam): Mary is most graced. And yet we must not read that to mean that she was somehow less free. Mary is actually the freest human person who ever lived, and that is precisely because she is most graced. Grace does not inhibit or create curbs for freedom, it liberates it.

Filial Love

The saints are those who have entered into this genuine freedom in Christ. They are not constrained or cramped by grace. Quite the contrary, they are men and women who have moved from servile to filial love — their relationship with the Lord is not one dominated by rules and regulations, but rather is informed by the New Law, the law of love. It is this love that is the motivating factor of moral action in their lives. It would never dawn on them to think, “What’s the minimum I need to do not to be damned?” Rather, they are moved and drawn by love, a love for Christ that first comes from Him — a divine love, the agape of the Gospels — and this is what forms their life. The “operating system” in the life of the saints is no longer sin, but it is this love and the grace and freedom it brings.

Holy Trinity. Shutterstock

In his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, St. John Paul II recognizes that the relation of truth and freedom has been constant in the Church’s teaching: “Only the freedom which submits to the Truth leads the human person to his true good. The good of the person is to be in the Truth and to do the Truth” (No. 86). This flows from Jesus’ own words: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32).

In a culture that exalts in independence and autonomy, and in which the uninhibited exercise of freedom is the golden ring for which all unreflectively strive, the Gospel invites us to discover freedom precisely in relationship: We are most free when we live in relation with God in Christ. The Christian faith holds that the Holy Trinity — God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit — is the fullness of what it means “to be,” and thus “to be” in the fullest sense is “to be” precisely “in relation.” For us who by grace are offered a created share in that Uncreated Life (what Tradition would call deification or divinization), true freedom is discovered only as life in Christ, the supreme grace, by whose Spirit we have been liberated from the grip of sin and death, and through whom we have a unique and privileged access to the Father — to live as truly free sons and daughters in the Eternal Son made man.

Msgr. Michael Heintz, Ph.D., a priest of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, is academic dean at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

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1 min read

Suffering

Can Suffering Help Make Up For Sin?

Father Reginald Martin

April 1, 2023 7:41 am April 1, 2023

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The Sacrament of Baptism frees us from sin and makes us a new creation (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1213). It does not, however, take away our free…

The Sacrament of Baptism frees us from sin and makes us a new creation (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1213). It does not, however, take away our free will, and experience shows us we are sadly prone to fall into sin after our initial conversion. God’s mercy provides a number of remedies for such subsequent sin, principally the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation restores the union with God that is weakened by sin, but we may still suffer a lingering need for spiritual purification. Our theology teaches us we may accomplish this purification here on earth or, after our death, in purgatory.

We call this purification “atonement,” and we accomplish it in various ways. The Catechism identifies traditional forms of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, as well as “revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness” (No. 1435). The text also recommends frequent reception of the Eucharist (No. 1436).

The value of atonement is its power to unite our pain with the suffering of Christ. The cross “reconciles man with God … and it heals” (No. 1990). To seek signs of the cross in our life enables us to embrace Christ’s love more intimately.

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