Where Has Shame Fled?
“If I am a sinner and deny sin, there is no forgiveness. The denial of sin is the unforgivable sin.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Once upon a time in every civilized society people wanted to keep their dirty little secrets from being found out. What point is there in shouting what should be one’s shame from a hilltop? But what happened since then is that America’s civilization became shame-less … that is to say, guilt-free and stupid. Civilization became uncivilized, unwilling to censor that which deserves to be suppressed.
It was doubtless inevitable that when the notion of sin was suppressed, the experience of shame disappeared with it. Indeed, men decided to become proud of their sins and shout them from a hilltop. But as G.K. Chesterton wisely remarked, “… there would be a lot less scandal if people didn’t idealize sin and pose as sinners.”
Difficult it would be today to give a clear picture to young people of how relatively more powerful the notion of sin was eighty years ago. It kept most people from showing off their sins. Today showing off one’s sins is not only acceptable, there is big money and fame to be gotten from it. Whereas a personal scandal for an actor or actress in old Hollywood was enough to end one’s career, today it is bound to get a book contract and a made-for-television movie. Whereas child actors fifty years ago were protected from appearing in movies with scandalous scenes of seduction, today they are depicted as part of the action one way or another, either by incredibly obscene speech and/or by suggested copulation.
The censorship system that once kept movies clean now assures that they will be dirty with impunity. This was, of course, a stupid policy, since the people who make these movies wrongly assumed that society will never recover its senses and will never bury the sins of Hollywood’s past. If the people who make foul-mouthed movies today think their movies will be timeless classics (that might include some of the movies made by Martin Scorsese, for example) they will have to unwisely assure themselves that smut will forever be tolerated as it presently is.
Political scandals that once were unthinkable are now daily disclosed throughout the national media. Even rabidly curious reporters cannot satisfy the public’s drooling appetite for details. Back in the day, readers may recall a United States President’s sexual exploitation of a female in the oval office, and more recently a Congressman’s sexual abuse of a Congressional page boy in his apartment are good for national joke-making on late night television talk shows.
Catholic-hating propagandists delight in warning Catholic parents to keep their children away from their priest. (But in all the years of my youth, while kneeling in a dark box confessing my own dirty little secrets, no priest ever did or said anything but to provide forgiveness and a way to atone in the name of Jesus Christ.)
After Judas betrayed Jesus he did not celebrate his sin. And when Peter denied Christ, he did not brag about his denial. Paul scolded the Christians at Ephesus when he found out they had applauded a man sleeping with his father’s wife. The man and his community were shameless. In such a community, how is it possible for young people to grow up understanding that shame is important because it helps to disable sin?
The shameless ones tell us not to judge them because no one is without sin. But we know we are with sin, and we are ashamed of ourselves. It is the shameless ones who refuse not only to be judged, but to judge themselves. Yet in their hearts they cannot be happy, because sin cannot make us happy, and only shame for our sins can open the door to conversion and forgiveness.
If anyone should suppose that the Supreme Court could reverse an earlier absurd Court ruling that pornography is protected by the 1st Amendment, it is simply far too early for anything like that to happen. Pornography, popular as it is, will have countless radical defenders dying at the gate to protect it. What must happen first is a groundswell of public opinion recognizing the inherent evil effects of the sex industry. But for that to happen we must wait patiently upon the Lord’ grace to enter our hearts and urge us to obey His will.
It is hugely significant that our new pope is an American. If the conversion of American hearts needs to be triggered by a person with a missionary spirit fully qualified to achieve that end, Pope Leo XIV, with a few good years left to him, might be the one the Holy Spirit has sent to do the job. He was, after all, a missionary sent to Peru. Let him come to America with missionary zeal, and in the majestic person of the Apostle Peter, who preached eloquently in Jerusalem and converted thousand, let him preach about sin and shame to the millions of fellow Americans from whom shame has fled.
Orate constanter pro sapientia et fortitudine!
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