See Episode 2 – Holocaust: Resisting Extreme Social Sin
See Episode 3 – Resistance in Everyday Actions
In the first three episodes of this series, I have been publishing research from my 2015 MA theology Thesis on resistance to social sin. Today I am sharing the Layers of Resistance model I developed, with some updated thinking from a recent presentation I gave to a community of Catholic Sisters last autumn.
Drawing from the Church’s understanding of social sin and insights from feminist theology, the model urges us to resist the supposed impossibility of changing the world. We can resist the globalization of indifference by acts of resistance, big or small, that seek to heal distorted relationships. Our individual actions can and will influence our the collective – in fact we can coordinate our individual actions into collective ones. Resistance is not futile. It is the way of love.
Unpacking Social Sin
First of all, before we talk about how to resist social sin , it’s important to have some common understanding of what we mean by social sin in the first place. Social sin is a relative late comer to the field of Catholic moral theology, reflecting a major shift in understanding in later part of the 20th Century. Two major influences were the renewed inter-religious dialogue during and after the Second Vatican Council on questions of racism, poverty, war and peace and Latin American liberation theology.
This category of social sin was picked up by global church in 1971 synod of bishops – Justice in the World. The Synod recognized that we are indissolubly linked and responsible. The Bishops also recognized the inability to overcome social sin by our own strength and the need to forge new paths towards action in the cause of justice in the world. This document was instrumental in my own congregation’s reclaiming of our charism of peace through justice during the renewal period.
Social sin is a broad term that “encompasses the unjust structures, distorted consciousness, and collective actions and inaction that facilitate injustice and dehumanization.” (Heyer, 415) The Church understand social sin to be both personal and collective in its source, which implies that resisting social sin must also be personal and collective. “Every sin is personal under a certain aspect; under another, every sin is social, insofar as and because it also has social consequences.” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 117) It is a both/and reality, and this understanding must frame our response.
In his 1987 social encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Pope John Paul II* boldly claimed that “one cannot easily gain a profound understanding of the reality that confronts us unless we give a name to the roots of the evils which afflict us,” that is, structural sin. Over time, these structures of sin “grow stronger, spread, and become the source of other sins, and so influence people’s behavior.” (36)
Three years earlier, in his 1984 apostolic exhortation, Reconciliatio et paenitentia, Pope John Paul II reflected on the role of the individual in social sin and the relationship to the structural elements. I find this passage especially challenging:
“It is a case of the very personal sins of those who cause and support social evil or who exploit it, of those who are in a position to avoid, eliminate, or at least limit certain social evils but who fail to do so out of laziness, fear, or the conspiracy of silence, through secret complicity or indifference, of those who take refuge in the supposed impossibility of changing the world, and also of those who sidestep the effort and sacrifice required, producing specious reasons of a higher order.”
Pope Francis adds another element to the dynamic of social sin, which I think is critical in the present (mis)information age to understand and engage, namely the Globalization of Indifference which is playing out hourly on our current geopolitical stage.
“In today’s world, the sense of belonging to a single human family is fading, and the dream of working together for justice and peace seems an outdated utopia. What reigns instead is a cool, comfortable and globalized indifference, born of deep disillusionment concealed behind a deceptive illusion: thinking that we are all-powerful, while failing to realize that we are all in the same boat. This illusion, unmindful of the great fraternal values, leads to a sort of cynicism. For that is the temptation we face if we go down the road of disenchantment and disappointment.” (Fratelli Tutti, 30)
So we need to resist the temptation of taking refuge in the supposed impossibility of changing the world. We need to resist the illusion of isolation, the temptation of cynicsm, and being comfortable with the globalization of indifference. Reading the signs of our current times, lives depend on our ability to resist. How? That’s where I offer the Layers of Resistance Model for your reflection and action.
Layers of Resistance
Social sin is inherently relational – the sum of individual and collective acts. Therefore, our resistance to social sin must also be relational.
Layer 1 – Responsibility and Consciousness
Each of us is born into and lives in a social context. We are enmeshed in unjust structures beyond our control, some of which we derive benefit from, others which might burden us. The first layer of resistance calls us to develop a critical conciousness of our own connections to social sin, and to raise the awareness of others.
In the Latin American theological understanding of social sin, this is called conscientization. In order to accept responsibility for social sin, we must be awake to sin embodied in structures which affront human dignity/creation. Salvadoran theologian Jon Sobrino notes that “[e]vil has its own dynamic and requires concealment and lying.” He observes that “the problem is not ‘seeing,’ but ‘wanting to see.’ If people do not want to see the reality in front of them, there is no solution.” (Sobrino 38, 41)
Layer 2 – Lamentation
Note, THIS IS NOT GUILT. “Guilt,” writes Gregory Baum, “is not a useful theological concept for understanding the situation of the great majority of persons, caught as they are in the inherited structures and in the corresponding legitimating ideologies.” (Baum 119) Instead, he points us to the power of the biblical tradition of lament.
Bryan Massingale also calls us to lament our connection to social sin. Lament “entails a hard acknowledgement that one has benefited from another’s burden and that one’s social advantages have been purchased at a high cost to others. Here lament takes the form of a forthright confession of human wrongdoing in the light of God’s mercy. It is a form of truth-telling and contrition that acknowledges both the harms that have been done to others and one’s personal and communal culpability for them.” (Massingale 111)
One of Massingale’s key insights is that this lament feels visceral. We feel it in our gut. It makes us comfortable, and this is as it should be. This compels us forward to action.
Layer 3 – Healing Distorted Relationships
The third step draws from the wisdom of both magisterial teaching (see discussion of Popes John Paull II and Francis above) and feminist theology. Because social sin is just that, social or relational, then the path towards resistance must heal the relationships that have been distorted by the social sin. Indeed, feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether asserts that “there is no evil that is not relational.” The historical or systemic nature of sin does not absolve us of personal responsibility. (Ruether 181)
Looking specifically at the social sin of sexism, Ruether notes that on the one hand, the system of sexism was started by human beings and continues today through the cooperative actions of human beings of both genders. Yet, she believes that if we were to stop our “many sided cooperation with it, it could not continue to stand.” (182)
Just as the social sin of sexism had its beginning in the actions and choices of human persons, we can also choose to “make a beginning” toward conversion. “In making a beginning, we can discover that the power of sexism has already been disenchanted. It has begun to be defeated ‘spiritually’, that is, it has lost its authority over our lives.” (183) This beginning is situated in our own relationships and spheres of influence.
As we seek to heal relationships distorted by social sin, Pope Francis reminds us to look at the perfect model of relationship: the Trinity – a model of communion. “If we go to the ultimate source of that love which is the very life of the triune God, we encounter the community of three divine persons, the origin and perfect model of all life in society.” (Fratelli Tutti 85)
The model of divine love embodied in the Trinity–the root of our faith–calls us to recognize that we are all made in the image and likeness of God with inherent dignity. This truth of Trinitarian love challenges us to stand up for human dignity and to seek right relationship and heal distorted ones. These are the radical roots of our faith which ground us and bring forth life and goodness.
In his new encyclical, Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis tells us: “All our actions need to be put under the ‘political rule’ of the heart. In this way, our aggressiveness and obsessive desires will find rest in the greater good that the heart proposes and in the power of the heart to resist evil.” (13)
Resistance is the moral response to social sin – individual and collective resistance. Resistance must not only be grounded in love, it must be centered in our own spheres of influence. Think back to the example of the rescuers discussed in Episode 2. Their acts of resistance, no matter how small, made a difference in their spheres of influence. Grounded in their belief that they were connected to all people, integrating the value of human life in their world view, and that they were not powerless but that they had agency, they acted. This enabled them to resist the supposed impossibility of changing the world.
We too can resist this temptation, and the globalization of indifference or feeling overwhelmed by the sheer scope of social sin if we first peel away the layers and take action to resist social sin in our own lives.
Applying the Layers of Resistance Model
Choose one aspect of social sin that you feel called to resist. Focusing on one aspect can help us to avoid feeling overwhelmed as we seek ways to resist. Some questions to consider:
1st Layer of Resistance
- What do you already know about the focus area.
- How are you/we linked to, accepting of, complicit in the social sin of this focus area?
- How are you, might you raise the awareness of others?
2nd Layer of Resistance
- What truths need to be told about your/our complicity with the social sin of this focus area?
- What risks might you/we be called to take?
- What is this telling you about you/our moral identity?
3rd Layer of Resistance
- Who are the persons and ecosystems you are related to through this focus area?
- What relationships are being distorted through this social sin?
- What concrete act(s) might you take within your sphere of influence to heal these distorted relationships?
*It is not surprising that Pope John Paul II addressed the reality of social sin, given his personal history, as noted in this memorial page on the US Holocaust Museum website: “With the passing of Pope John Paul II, the world has lost a moral leader fervently committed to fighting the prejudice and hatred that led to the Holocaust. His own personal experience of Nazi oppression and the persecution of Jews, including the deaths of his childhood Jewish friends and their families in the concentration camps, strongly influenced his leadership in Jewish-Christian relations.”
Sources
Gregory Baum, “Structures of Sin,” in The Logic of Solidarity: Commentaries on Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical “On Social Sin,” eds. Gregory Baum and Robert Ellsberg (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989)
Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Vatican. 2006
Kristin E. Heyer, “Social Sin and Immigration: Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors,” Theological Studies 71, no. 2 (Summer 2010)
JUSTICE IN THE WORLD – Justicia in Mundo, 1971 Synod of Bishops
Bryan N. Massingale, Racial Justice in the Catholic Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004)
Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti. Vatican. 2020.
Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos. Vatican. 2024.
Pope John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia. Vatican. 1984
Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis. Vatican. 1987
Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993)
Jon Sobrino, Where is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope, trans. Margaret Wilde (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004)
At the Corner of Susan and St. Joseph 