320 STRUCTURES OF SIN

YOUCAT Lesson 320, March 20, 2015

YOUCAT the catechism for Catholic youth

320  Is there such a thing as structures of sin?

 

Structures of sin exist only in a manner of speaking.  A sin is always connected with an individual person who knowingly and willingly agrees to something evil.  [1869]

Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica”:    The painting was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country village in northern Spain, by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italian warplanes at the request of the Spanish Nationalists. –Wikipedia. …320

Nevertheless, there are societal situations and institutions that are so contradictory to God’s commandments that we speak about “structures of sin”—yet these, too, are the consequence of personal sins.

1869

  

V. THE PROLIFERATION OF SIN

1869 Thus sin makes men accomplices of one another and causes concupiscence, violence, and injustice to reign among them. Sins give rise to social situations and institutions that are contrary to the divine goodness. "Structures of sin" are the expression and effect of personal sins. They lead their victims to do evil in their turn. In an analogous sense, they constitute a "social sin."(  Pope St.John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia 16.)¹⁴⁴ --CCC