“I see the Catholic Church as an organization designed to make you feel guilty,” a friend of mine told me as I was visiting him over the Christmas break. “I disagree,” I said. “Its purpose is to relieve guilt when you go to Confession.”
“That’s to make you think you need the Church,” he told me. While we couldn’t finish our conversation, many in my generation would agree with him, all of whom see the morally relativistic judgment-free culture as a superior alternative to the society God would design. But let me ask you this: Should we feel guilty for murdering someone?
If you answer yes, that’s because you think it’s wrong to murder people because we wouldn’t want others to murder us. In Christianity, the philosophy behind this comes from Matthew 22: 37-40 when Jesus declared, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
You don’t need to be a Christian to agree that it’s wrong to murder someone. Most of us grew up with the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This is no different, except removing God from the equation. If this is appealing to you, consider studying Objectivism, the life philosophy developed by Ayn Rand based on the concept of rational self-interest.
For example, if society didn’t think it was wrong to murder one another, what would restrain us from murdering every Trump or Clinton supporter? Because we rationally value our survival, we’ve set up a system of laws defending the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s in our self-interest, and the interest of every individual of society to live rationally self-controlled.
But what happens when you’re angry and you say something you shouldn’t have said? It causes a rift between you and your loved one. You’ve isolated yourself, and the only way to repair your relationship is by apologizing. They should accept your apology because it’s in their rational self-interest to expect you’ll forgive them if they slip-up someday. Humility is the basis of every healthy relationship, and that means realizing nobody is perfect.
We’re all growing, and we’d be hypocrites not to offer grace. Mathew 7:1-2 states, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” We should, however, judge others for the bad things that they do, but aren’t willing to fix.
For example, many young people today believe the earth will soon not be able to sustain life because of global warming. If that is the case, shouldn’t we be recycling? Shouldn’t you judge someone for throwing paper into the garbage instead of the recycling bin? They might say, “Give me a break, it’s not like what one person does matters anyway,” but it all adds up, doesn’t it? Our individual actions have consequences for the whole of society, and if you realize that suddenly you’re likely to deny it unless society is willing to forgive you. Why should we admit we are wrong? It’s easier to just say the climate isn’t changing.
No one likes to feel like they are wrong or guilty of wrongdoing. But if you don’t, you’ll keep repeating the same offenses, distancing yourself even further. That’s why Catholics practice communal confessions every time we go to mass as we say the Penitential Rite.
Admittedly, most people don’t feel guilty for mistakenly putting recyclables in the trash, but what if you do something worse than that? What is your deepest, darkest secret—the one you are petrified if it ever came out?
Creating a judgment-free culture isn’t going to solve the psycho-social issues that afflict society, but God has given you a way to experience what it means to be clean again and to learn how society should be ordered so that we don’t make the same mistakes.
Ordained Catholic priests are available to hear your confession, offering forgiveness on behalf of God and society because we know we all commit mortal sins, whether that’s missing church on Sunday, or something much worse. They’ve heard it all, and they are bound by God never to reveal what they’ve heard or face the penalty of eternity in hell and defrocking—stripped of their job, their source of income and everything of meaning from their lives.
Church isn’t for perfect people, it’s for sinners made saints through God’s mercy. It sure isn’t perfect, but we do know that perfection exists in heaven. As we pray God’s will be done on Earth as it is in heaven, we gradually restore our broken identities through the love of Christ, offering real improvements during our time on Earth. In short, “Catholic guilt” is actually a constructive part of a healthy identity, but only when you let God forgive you.
William Nardi (@williamznardi) is a contributor to Red Alert Politics. He is a student at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a former intern for the Washington Examiner.
