Men need to understand the frustration of women who cannot achieve economic equity in society, despite equal training and hard work.Īnglos need to understand the debilitating effects of racism on an African American’s self-esteem before black and white persons can move together to address the structural roots of racism. The only way we can recognize these sinful structures is if we step outside our own world and consider the world from another person's perspective. It exists within any structure in society that oppresses human beings, violates human dignity, stifles freedom and/or imposes great inequity. Social sin resides within a group or a community of people. There is sin as deed and sin as illness." must be purified and transformed into structures of solidarity through the creation or appropriate modification of laws, market regulations, and juridical systems” (#193).Īs theologian Gregory Baum says, “Personal sin is freely chosen social sin is collective blindness. Social sin is every sin committed against the justice due in relations between individuals, between the individual and the community, and also between the community and the individual” (#118). Such sins in particular are known as social sins. “Certain sins, moreover, constitute by their very object a direct assault on one’s neighbor.
“The Church’s wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and in the structure of society: Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social actions and morals” (#34).įrom the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church From the Encyclical, Charity in Truth (Caritas in Veritate), by Pope Benedict XVI
0 kommentar(er)
