His Eminence Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic
Archbishop Emeritus of Toronto
Biography :: Letters, Homilies, Statements :: Articles

"Naming the Real Sin"
June 1993

A recently published book, The Stripping of the Altars (Yale University Press) by Eamon Duffy, shows that the Catholic Church in England before the Reformation was not "guilty as charged" by the Reformers. The 654-page long, detailed and painstaking work points out that the Church was vibrantly alive, active and prayerful. What called itself reformation did not arise out of her own inner need but was forced on her from on high. Faced with such an assertion, we react almost guiltily: is this not unecumenical thinking? Agree with Henry VIII, Cranmer & Co. or not, do we not owe it to ecumenism to say, and to think, that there must have been something seriously wrong with the Catholic Church in England?

To change the subject but not the question, our arbiters of correct political thought might now permit us to begin suspecting that the Russian society of 1880 was freer, culturally richer, more just and progressive (though not as advanced technologically, of course), and more humane in every respect than the Russian society of 1980. But, is not such a suggestion culturally impious? What about progress? Dare we imagine a century of human striving on the dung heap? Is our world not rushing inexorably towards the Omega point? These questions bring back the memory of the assassinations of influential Catholic men in the land of my birth, simply because they were Catholic, during the Second World War. All too many said, "He must have been guilty of something." Afraid of blaming the murderers, they blamed the victim.

Was it mere fear, or something deeper? Do we not find it very difficult to live with loss, pure and simple, with complete waste, with evil in short? We prefer to close our eyes, to sugarcoat evil, to explain it by finding reasons for it and thus making it tolerable, to act like Job's friends: "He must have done something wrong, his vision was too narrow, his shortcomings have caught up with him, he rubbed people the wrong way, historical context went against him." Besides: we must not be pessimistic and whining complainers; above all, we must not be judgemental. Rather, we must be positive, fair, equable consensus-builders, we must see the good in everything and everyone.

Yet, we have little choice but to admit the fact of undeserved and inexplicable defeat, where a strong residue of pure evil remains after all the explaining has been done, the historical and social context given its due, the victim's conscience and past behaviour examined to the last shred. Evil will not go away -- think of Cambodia, think of Bosnia, think of our abortion statistics. Jesus' death was a defeat which we cannot embellish. We can indulge in some qualifying: how much persuasion and what profound change of heart would have been needed for Pilate to have even a glimmer of what Jesus was about? Jewish authorities were well aware that his proclamation threatened what they stood for. Yet, however much we explain or explain away, Jesus' death remains a terrible miscarriage of justice and an immensely sad end of a glorious life. Our blessed rage to understand remains stuck with inexplicable evil.

There is much to weep about in our Church and society. Who can give an adequate reason for the recent apostasy of so many? Or for the fierce determination to stamp out God from human hearts and minds, or to prevent Him from entering the public square? We are tempted to ask with Nadezhda Mandelstam, "How many are capable of naming the real sin of the age, of telling good from evil by the only true criterion, of forcing memory to speak out loud, of calling themselves and others to repentance?"