What Is The Worst Thing In The World?

• 1 year ago

By DONALD DeMARCO

Given all the horrors that have plagued the world since the beginning of time, the very worst thing must be unimaginably horrible. Yet, it is quite common and is often regarded as acceptable and even worthy of promotion. This lack of sensitivity to the worst thing in the world ensures that it will stay with us and continue to torment us.

In an October 1946 Radio Message to the Participants in the National Catechetical Congress of the United States in Boston, Pope Pius XII, who knew only too well about the horrors of war, declared: “Perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin.”

Bishop Fulton Sheen concurred when he stated: “Sin is not the worst thing in the world. The worst thing in the world is the denial of sin….If I deny that there is any such thing as sin, how shall I ever be forgiven? The denial of sin is the unforgivable sin, for it makes redemption impossible.” According to the New Testament, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

In her Introduction to C.S. Lewis’ 1961 book The Screwtape Letters, Phyllis McGinley states: “Of all losses man has sustained in the past hundred years, no deprivation has been so terrible as the abandonment of private guilt. It was dreadful for him to lose a Creator. It was worse than dreadful, it was shattering, for him to cast off responsibility.” She goes on to say that the denial of private guilt is tantamount to amputating “half of the human psyche.” Such amputation, naturally, leaves man morally blind to his own faults.

Screwtape, himself a demon who holds an administrative post in Hell, maintains that selfish gain and power are the only goods and cannot comprehend either God’s love for man or the possibility of man being virtuous. He is, therefore, a proponent of sin and an opponent of goodness.

By not recognizing the malefic nature of sin, they are allowed to spread unabated. Once they establish a foothold in society, they are approved and promoted. As they enjoy this ascendency, they work to suppress or drive out virtue. Alexander Pope, in his Essay on Man, put the matter in a poetic nutshell when he affirmed that “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, as to be hated, needs but to be seen. Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

 Sins that are not expiated are like wounds that continue to fester. They have a dynamic that, unless they are expiated, persist in spreading harm. Abortion provides a good example of this dynamic. Initially it was regarded as a shameless act, then it was called an “abominable crime,” followed by “a terrible choice,” “a sorrowful necessity,” “a choice,” a “sacrament,” and finally, a “right.”

As abortion became more and more acceptable, attitudes toward supporters of life became increasingly hostile to the point that Cong. Anna Paulina Luna (R., Fla.) has seen fit to report to the Capitol Police Jane Fonda’s “suggestion” to “murder” pro-life supporters. More than 200 Catholic churches have been vandalized within the current year, ostensibly, because of the Church’s opposition to abortion. Some pro-abortionists favor severe penalties for states that defend life. It is as if they are implementing the mandates of Screwtape.

The malevolent quality of denying sin becomes evident when we realize that if there were no such thing as sin, then there could be no such thing as forgiveness. Hence, sins would continue to spread their evil unchecked. And if there were no forgiveness, the crucifixion and death of Christ on the Cross would have no meaning. God would not save man from his sins, but allow them to continue, unconcerned about the ruinous effects that sins have on both the person and on society.

What could be worse than reducing Christ’s death to a pointless act and permitting human beings to destroy themselves in their unrepentant foolishness?

Confession is an act that saves the world. It is an act that acknowledges God’s death as supremely meaningful. To cite Bishop Sheen once more, he reasons that “sin is most serious, and the tragedy is deepened by the denial that we are sinners…. The really unforgivable sin is the denial of sin, because, by its nature, there is now nothing to be forgiven. By refusing to admit to personal guilt, the nice people are made into scandalmongers, gossips, talebearers, and super-critics, for they must project their real if unrecognized guilt to others. This, again, gives them a new illusion of goodness: the increase of faultfinding is in direct ratio and proportion to the denial of sin.”

Sin that remains unforgiven (and only God, we must remember, can truly forgive sins) turns the world upside down. We have been warned: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20). In our topsy-turvy world, vice becomes virtue, virtue becomes vice. Abortionists become our moral leaders, while pro-lifers are vilified as contemptuous of human rights. Churches are vandalized, pornography flourishes.

If the denial of sin is the worst thing in the world, then, by contrast, penitence, forgiveness, and a return to God, is the best thing in the world.

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                (Donald DeMarco, Ph.D., is a senior fellow of Human Life International and a professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario.)