There are signs in the Church that two decades
of moral presumption
are giving way to repentance and humility.

The grave danger of presumption

By W. Patrick Cunningham

n Among the sins that offended against the virtue of hope, we were all told in grade school, were the evil twins presumption and despair. The first denied the need for the grace of Christ; the second denied its effectiveness in producing our salvation. Ironically, because in ages past Catholic children were well versed in the prevalence and seriousness of sin, we were often counseled and exhorted not to despair of salvation, to always consider our sins, however grave, to be forgivable and accessible to God's healing. We were less frequently lectured on the danger of presumption. With failings and temptations all around, who could be bold enough to think he didn't need the grace of God?

How the world has changed in thirty years! It doesn't take much insight to come to the conclusion that both the world and many members of the Church are deep in the clutches of presumption today. Sin abounds, but does grace abound? (Rom. 5:20) We know that over two-thirds of professed Catholics are either temporarily or permanently sterile by their own actions, despite the clear teaching of the Church. Many have procured or have been involved in abortions, some more than once. Failings in the area of business ethics and law are commonplace.

A Christian community that is aware of its failings would be expected to crowd the sacrament of reconciliation/penance. But it is not so today. Across the land, churches are sparsely attended for reconciliation on Saturday, but crowded with communicants on Sunday. The picture of a land that is full of crimes and injustice, yet unrepentant of them and full of religious fervor on the Lord's Day is reminiscent of the scene painted by the prophet Amos (Chapter 5), of religious people keeping festival even as they murder the just and steal from the poor:

21 I hate, I spurn your feasts,
I take no pleasure in your solemnities;
22 Your cereal offerings I will not accept,
nor consider your stall-fed peace offerings.
23 Away with your noisy songs!
I will not listen to the melodies of your harps.
But if you would offer me holocausts,
24 then let justice surge like water,
and goodness like an unfailing stream.

We can only conclude from the facts that presumption has a firm grip on many of us today. Presumption is particularly destructive, because it acts as a kind of moral AIDS transmittor. It is highly contagious. "Do you still go to confession every month? Well, our priest told us that it's very difficult to commit a mortal sin, and our sins are forgiven in Holy Communion." It prevents its own cure, because it is not only a sinful state, but it also prevents the sinner from seeking and finding a cure. Hence it in a real sense shuts down our moral immune system.

This failing is not an exclusive problem of Catholics, although the change is most striking here. Because Protestant Christians do not have access to a formal sacrament of forgiveness and reconciliation, we cannot measure in any objective way their sense of sin or the prevalence of presumption. What has brought us to this situation? What false theology underlies it? And, most importantly, how can we turn it around and become once more a people of repentance and humility?

Superficial reasons

On the surface, we can trace the decline of devotion to the sacrament of reconciliation back to the years following the Second Vatican Council. The Council directed only that "The rite and formulae of Penance are to be revised so that they more clearly express both the nature and effect of the sacrament" (SC art. 72). Nonetheless, many significant changes beyond simple revisions in the rite and formulas were made during the 1970s, particularly in Western Europe and America. Despite clear directions from Rome to the contrary, in many places children have not made their first confession prior to first reception of the Eucharist (Sanctus Pontifex, 1973). Thus they do not acquire the habit of identifying and admitting sin. Although the right to privacy in confession is guaranteed in canon law, in some newer churches the reconciliation rooms are designed to make that privacy difficult to obtain. Frankly, although confessors may prefer to lay on hands and look into the eyes of penitents during the sacrament, many-perhaps most-Catholics would never confess their serious sins under those circumstances. Moreover, in many modern churches the reconciliation rooms are poorly marked or difficult to find. If a penitent is unfamiliar with the church building, because of years of alienation and sin, or because he's driven halfway across town for anonymity, the difficulty of finding the confessor may drive him away.

These superficial problems, however, can be changed by administrative fiat. All a bishop or pastor has to do is direct that children confess before their first communion, and be so prepared, restructure the room with discreet curtains for privacy, and put up temporary or permanent signs showing where the sacramental room is placed.

Deeper concerns

We can change the superficialities in every church in America and still not have a renewal of the sacrament or reduction of the presumption. In order to become once again a community of repentance, humility and reconciliation, we must correct two basic problems. We must restore a sense of enormity of personal sin and abolish the notion that sin doesn't really matter.

Although both of these problems stem from an inadequacy of teaching and homiletics, the first is actually easier to correct. Man understands that sin is awful. Perhaps 60 percent of every local and national newscast is devoted to a recitation of sin. Of course the network anchors don't use that term. They talk about "crimes and injury to the environment." Man has a definite comprehension of sin, and knows that it is wrong to do bad things.

The real problem is that, despite a universal understanding that sin in general is bad, most people have difficulty admitting to personal culpability for sin. In psychological terms, they'll play the game "Ain't it awful" about what other people are doing wrong, but they won't admit that they commit the same offenses themselves (Rom. 2:1). As one possible remedy for this refusal to admit personal sin, let me suggest adoption of the "Sin of the Week" method of homiletics.

The "Sin of the Week" is very simple to employ. When preparing the week's homily, discern from the Gospel or Epistle text a single virtue or vice that is being promoted or excoriated. Next, determine a sinful action that would weaken that virtue or promote that vice. Finally, incorporate into the homily a brief description of the sin and its evil effects. Give examples and ask each member of the congregation to search his conscience for incidents. Then announce easily accessible hours of confession/reconciliation. And, of course, staff the places for reconciliation at those hours.

The sin of presumption could be chosen as the first topic. There are many relevant passages in the three-year Lectionary. Luke 12:16-20 tells the story of the presumptuous rich man with more grain than barns. It is a classic example of presumption. It also has a salutary reminder of death. Matthew 3:9 speaks to the pharisees who think they'll be saved because they are children of Abraham. In Luke 18:9 we read of the Pharisees who are "convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else." Talk about the shock of living your life by rationalizing every action and then realizing at the end of it you had lived an eighty-year lie. Talk about the consolation of returning to the Father and being forgiven and healed.

Each Sunday, choose a new text and talk briefly on another sin and the need to be forgiven, healed and reconciled to the Father and to the Church. Don't just focus on sin, but also on virtue. Don't ignore the sexual sins, and the evils of contraception and abortion. Above all, offer the cure, and build up the virtue of hope.

The darkest presumption

We cannot turn from a discussion of presumption without mentioning in some detail what I call the "darkest" side of presumption. It is in fact an angel of darkness masquerading as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). There is a current of thought original to radical Calvinism that is expressed in the phrase "once saved, always saved." I recall overhearing the conversation of some pious Baptists who attended my mother's funeral in 1977. I could tell they were clucking their tongues over Mom being buried in a Catholic service. All conversation was stopped, however, when my aunt mentioned that Mom was "saved" in a Baptist church when she was a young girl. "Well then," one of the women sighed, "she must be with the Lord."

The theory of "persistent salvation" or "once saved, always saved" comes from the radical predestination preached by Calvin. Calvin believed that there were two kinds of humans, those predestined to heaven and those predestined to hell. Human will was, in his view, inefficacious. We have no role in our own salvation. The grace is Christ's, the will is God's. All we can do is surrender to the inevitable. The sign of that surrender is not sacramental. It is the verbal testimony-acknowledgement-of the fact of salvation.

I was reminded of the pernicious nature of this while listening to a taped testimony from a congregant of a local evangelical church. This man confessed to a lifetime of alcohol, drugs and sexual indulgence. He spoke also of a moment of spiritual awakening, prompted by a reading of the Bible. "At that moment," he related, "I realized that I was saved, that nothing I could do would destroy my salvation." He went on dealing drugs for many months, but finally cleaned up his act and even went to work as a church custodian.

As I listened to the tape, which was supposed to be inspirational, all I could think was "this guy ought to be in the penitentiary." He had lived as a sociopath. His attitude was full of the most intense presumption of God's grace. He had everything exactly wrong, except the accessibility of redemption to him.

First, God wills that everyone be saved. This is an article of faith. God does not withhold the grace of salvation from anybody. We pray "O God, who wills not the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live . . . ." Second, man participates in the act of salvation sacramentally and volitionally. He is not a passive spectator in a drama with one actor. Third, God requires repentance and conversion as a condition of salvation. He tells the forgiven woman of John 8:11: "Go and sin no more." Finally, once we have been incorporated into Christ, we can, through intentional sin, fall back into spiritual death. There is no divine guarantee on weak human wills. We can turn away from the Master. For this reason even St. Paul refers to maintaining his self-discipline so that, "having preached to others, I may not end up disqualified from the race" (1 Cor. 9:27).

There are many Catholics with similar ideas about salvation and redemption. They may, for instance, have bought into the idea that our eternal destination is determined by our "fundamental orientation." They may think that individual acts of sin, even serious sin, can somehow avoid changing that orientation toward the good. John Paul II specifically condemns this pernicious notion: "Only the act in conformity with the good can be a path that leads to life" (Veritatis Splendor, 72, also cf. 65). This is a more sophisticated example of the sin of presumption.

Signing forth repentance

There are signs in the Church that two decades of moral presumption are giving way to repentance and humility. We hear less today about the need to promote children's self-esteem above all else. We hear parents demanding that their offspring be taught the catechism, the commandments, and the virtues. And we see in some places a return to the sacrament of penance/reconciliation. I myself have stood recently in a non-Lenten confession line nearly a half-hour long. These are, after all, reasons to hope, in a day when-as always-hope is the best antidote to both despair and presumption. n