The Self, Society & Social Sin

Bernard Connor

Bernard Connor

• 1938-1999• Born Sussex, to SA as OP student 1964• Moral theology degrees from Edinburgh,

California & Natal• Theology of social morality huge influence

on SA Bishops Conference• Seminary lecturer, student chaplain• Editor of RC journal Grace & Truth (1980-

1992)

Theology of Social Sin

• Dehumanising social conditions e.g. racisim, sexism, militarism, poverty, political oppression, consumerism

• Doctorate Sin Self & Society: A Theological Investigation into Structural Evil

• Social structures an analytical category with ethical standards

• Moral agency & responsibility of the self

A Double Hermeneutic

• Inductive ethics, from experience not abstract principles, dominant in SA

• Sociological structural approach seemed too deductive for some liberation theologians

• Connor took middle ground: dialogue– of victims & social scientists– from below & above – ‘experience near’ practice & ‘experience distant’

theory– nature & grace

• Drawing on Anthony Giddens’ work on social sin

Personal & Social Sin

• More than personal behaviour hardening into social attitudes

• Social structures link members, so are the medium as well as outcome

• Like a building, each social structure constrains & enhances, enables & disables human action: – perverted spaces “open up the lines of action that

harm & close off those that would bring good”• Social sin calls for responsibility

– for the present & future, not guilt for the past– like personal sin, acknowledged only when being

overcome

Social Images

• IT enables multiplication & manipulation of images which people use to interact– we need these images to have a shared vision of the world– but they can be distorted, used to legitimise dehumanising social

conditions– like blindness – blocking off parts of reality from consciousness,

blinding people to the immorality of their action– people are still responsible: choice to be complicit or not

“Both everyone & no-one appears to be guilty. This, in turn, makes it hard to say who, if anyone, should repent &

make recompense, & how this might be done constructively.”

Social Evil

• Reification of social sin: – evil is perceived as intrinsic to a group of people or

social structure – not the case: sin is the absence of good (inter)action,

not a force in itself – “Social structures are not apart from the people

occupying them”; they are inside people’s actions, both beneficiaries & victims

– So replacing leaders of a distorted regime e.g. apartheid, poverty of globalisation is not enough; the distorted consciousness needs to change

Structuration of Social Sin

• Advanced technology = advanced control over society & nature = more complex structural sin

• Today even hunger is socially mediated:“Whether people obtain enough to eat or not depends

today upon whether there is an adequate supply of foodstuffs, an adequate & just system for distributing it to drought-stricken regions, freedom from corruption & black market practices, a programme aimed at full employment

& what priorities governments have in their spending.”• Defective root metaphor: society as machine

– blind economic forces a myth – freedom to be responsible– just as the self cannot exist without society, society cannot exist

without human action & decision

Reconciliation

• De-structuring of social sin a process, where grace enters in

• Sacrament of reconciliation not enough for social processes:– responds to personal guilt– grace to individuals apart from social

structures regulating their actions– reconciling with God & Church, not society

Kingdom of God

• A metaphor for destructuring of social sin, making way for re-gracing of society

• Bible does not give a political & economic programme of action, but values

• Kingdom a transformative symbol of:– encounter with God, the self, & society– standards of justice & liberation to measure society by

• Jesus uses it in gospels – to contrast with the conditions of the time– to assume what is good & redeem what is bad

• Shows there are alternatives to the status quo, enabling a new way of imagining reality