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THE REPLACEMENT OF SIN WITH THE CRIME OF OPINION IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

Public morality, free from sin but obsessed with guilt, ends up producing a new form of Puritanism, crueler than what she thought she had overcome. Because modern Puritanism no longer arises from an excess of religion, but from a lack of faith; it does not aim at holiness, but to compliance. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert: he can only remain silent.

— Theologica —

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At the moment the concept of sin it is expelled from language and collective thought, society - deprived of its theological dimension - nevertheless does not stop judging. On the contrary, paradoxically he judges more than before.

God's judgment rejected, man places himself as the absolute measure of good and evil. And so, in the name of freedom, new moral tribunals are erected that do not allow appeal. Today it is enough to state that abortion is not a "great social achievement" but a vile massacre of the innocent, to be accused of hatred; it is enough to question homosexualist culture to be declared enemies of freedom and progress, or branded as obscurantists for daring to defend the institution of the natural family, or simply express the truth that human life is a gift from God to be suspected of religious fanaticism.

In this way, to the theology of sin understood as an act of the will that separates man from God and from which the voluntary and free deprivation of grace derives, society replaces the sociology of guilt. It is no longer sin that offends God, but the "heretical" opinion offends collective sensitivity. This creates a system of symbolic sanctions that, despite not having the form of law, acts with the same coercive force: marginalization, censorship, the loss of speech. A teacher who dares to critically discuss the "dogmas" of single thought is suspended or isolated; an artist who represents the Christian faith outside the canons of secularist aesthetics is accused of provocation; a priest who reminds us of the need for moral judgment is accused of fomenting hatred. Even a simple evangelical quote — like «I am the way, the truth and the life " (GV 14,6) — can be read as an act of presumption or offense. Trials no longer take place in courts, but in television studios and social network, where guilt is measured in seconds and condemnation is pronounced en masse.

I talk show television programs are now a real plague: there is no debate in them, not even through comparisons, even wanting to be polemical, but structured on questions and answers. Far from it: issues are raised - often very delicate and complex - to spark fights at the end of which no conclusion is reached. All this is studied and desired. Experts and scholars in various fields of knowledge are invited, to which the hosts ask, without pain of human ridicule, to answer in half a minute to controversial questions that science and philosophy have been debating for centuries. If the scholar dares to exceed thirty or forty seconds, the mandatory advertising break arrives; after which a new program block begins and the invited scholar has meanwhile disappeared from parterre television. In return, But, at the beginning of the evening, the now calm presenter - in an attitude of almost kneeling deference - lets the politician in office who is particularly appreciated by that company speak without any cross-examination, who is granted a monologue lasting forty uninterrupted minutes, with five or six questions asked in an amiable and subdued manner, clearly agreed in advance to avoid unpleasant questions. In these circumstances there are no advertising needs of any kind, the same ones justified until recently with the need to support the television company which lives on advertising revenues. Everything is postponed to subsequent blocks, where particularly aggressive journalists are broadcast who chase peripheral private or public administrators with microphones and cameras, issuing orders in a severe peremptory tone: «You have to answer… you have to answer!». Ignoring that the right not to respond - and not to a journalist, but to an investigating magistrate -, it is one of the fundamental constitutional rights recognized to the suspect and the accused. Then follows the next block in which one does not hesitate to ask a philosopher to explain in four words - for a maximum of thirty seconds - the principles of metaphysics "in a way that is understandable to everyone", or an astrophysicist to clarify the dynamics of the expansion of the universe in a few moments.

In such a context, the television screen becomes the new moral chair of the world: acquittals and convictions are pronounced from it, it is decided who is worthy of speaking and who must be silenced. In modernity we no longer seek forgiveness, but the public exposure of the guilty party. Penance is no longer the fruit of conversion, but social erasure. Apparently it seems like a form of justice, but in reality it is just a new sacrificial ritual without redemption. It is the upside-down confessional of modernity, where forgiveness is not sought but the public exposure of the guilty party. And penance is no longer conversion, but the cancellation. Apparently, it seems like an achievement of freedom: sin eliminated, man believes himself to be free from any moral judgement. But actually, precisely by denying sin, he has canceled the very possibility of forgiveness. Indeed, if there no longer exists a God who judges and redeems, there is no longer even an act of mercy that can forgive and erase sin. Only the sense of guilt remains as a permanent condition, a social brand that cannot be erased, because no one anymore has the authority nor the will to forgive.

Unfortunately, in recent years, even within the Church we have sometimes succumbed to the same worldly logic, taking on expressions and criteria typical of the squares driven by gallows emotion. After the serious scandals that have involved and often overwhelmed various members of our clergy - scandals that canon law properly defines sERIOUS oFFENSES — has begun to be used, even at the highest levels, a formula that sounds like an insult to the Christian faith: «zero tolerance». Such a language, borrowed from political and media lexicon, it reveals a mentality foreign to the Gospel and the penitential tradition of the Church. It is obvious that when faced with certain crimes - such as sexual abuse of minors - the perpetrator must be immediately neutralized and placed in a position to no longer harm, therefore subjected to a just punishment, proportionate and, according to canonical doctrine, MEDICAL, that is, oriented towards its recovery and conversion. This is why the expression "zero tolerance" is aberrant on a doctrinal and pastoral level, because it does not belong to the language of the Church, but to that of populist campaigns that focus and play on the belly moods of the masses.

Declaring that you need a doctor they are the sick and not the healthy (cf.. Mt 9, 12), Jesus indicates and entrusts us with a specific mission, does not invite us to "zero tolerance".

Faced with these new trends a paradoxical moral short circuit emerges: the same consciences that for years have hidden the dirt under the carpets with rare and silenced clerical malice, today they are zealous in publicly proclaiming their severity, almost as if to purify themselves before the world. Sometimes innocent people or simply suspects are hit to demonstrate rigor, while the real culprits - in other times protected - often go unpunished and, sometimes, promoted to the highest ecclesial and ecclesiastical leaders, because it is precisely there that we find them all "to judge the living and the dead", almost as if their reign - that of falsehood and hypocrisy - "will never end", in a kind of I believe on the contrary. All this is presented as evidence of a "new Church" that would finally embrace the politics of firmness. And the much vaunted mercy, where have you been? If we go and see we will discover that in order to benefit from mercy it seems it is necessary to be black who commits violence in the most central areas of cities, including attacks on the police themselves, despite being promptly justified, they do not commit crimes because they are violent and inclined to crime, but due to society being strictly guilty of not having adequately welcomed and integrated them. Let's ask ourselves: what credibility can an evangelical announcement have that preaches mercy only for certain "protected categories" and at the same time adopts the logic of the so-called "zero tolerance" for those, within itself, he was seriously wrong? It is here that the most dramatic outcome of internal secularization manifests itself: the Church that to please the world renounces the language of redemption to take on that of gallows revenge, showing mercy only with what corresponds to the social tendencies of political correctness.

In Christianity, sin was a wound that she could be healed; in secularized anthropology, guilt is an indelible stain. The sinner could be converted and reborn, the contemporary culprit can only be punished or re-educated. The mercy, deprived of its theological foundation, it becomes an administrative gesture, a paternalist concession, an act of public clemency that does not regenerate but humiliates. Because true mercy does not arise from a change of heart or from an act of indulgence, but by the redemptive justice of God, which manifests itself in the sacrifice of the Son and finds fulfillment in the Cross, where justice and mercy embrace each other. It is not the opposite of justice, but its fullness, as the Psalm states: «Love and truth will meet, justice and peace will kiss each other" (Shall 85,11).

When this foundation is lost, mercy is reduced to tolerance, justice with vengeance, forgiveness loses its saving power and justice becomes ruthless because it is devoid of grace and man, who believed he was free from sin, he discovers that he is a prisoner of guilt.

It is the reversed logic of the Gospel: where Christ said «Go and from now on sin no more» (GV 8,11), the secularized world says «You have sinned, so you don't deserve to talk anymore". Where the Church announced the possibility of redemption, the new civil morality proclaims the irredeemability of the guilty. This is the true drama of modernity: not having replaced God with man, but having replaced mercy with vengeance. And divine mercy is not weakness but the most sublime form of justice^[1]. Without mercy, justice degenerates into punishment and the truth turns into an instrument of condemnation. Saint Thomas Aquinas had grasped this essential truth: mercy of truth — the mercy of truth — is the only one that saves, because it does not suppress justice, but he does it in charity. When truth is separated from mercy, only the cruelty of human judgment remains.

Saint Augustine warned that by eliminating God, sin remains, but without forgiveness"^[2]. When you remove this truth, all that remains is the power of some to declare a crime what was once called a sin. It is the ultimate outcome of that "freedom without truth" which constitutes the most dangerous of modern illusions^[3].

It is not about, so, of overcoming moral judgment, but of its extreme secularization. Modern man has not stopped distinguishing between what he considers right and what he considers unfair; it only changed the foundation and sanction of this distinction. Where once sin was confessed and redeemed, today the error of thought must be denounced and punished. Christological redemption is replaced by social re-education. And this transition was gradual, but inexorable. The culture of guilt without God has generated a closed moral system, which works with the same inquisitorial logic as ancient heresies, but with reversed signs. The tribunal is no longer that of the Church which aimed to include the wanderer in the path of salvation, but that of the media that condemn to exclusion without appeal; penance is no longer the conversion of the heart, but the public recants its ideas; forgiveness is no longer grace, but conditional reintegration into the ideologically correct community. In tal modo, post-Christian society has created a new civil theology, made up of inviolable dogmas and collective liturgies. Anyone who contests them becomes an apostate from the new secular religion, a deviant to be expelled. It is here that the concept of freedom undergoes its reversal: what was once freedom of conscience now becomes supervised freedom of opinion. Everything can be said, as long as it is said in the authorized language.

Public morality, free from sin but obsessed with guilt, ends up producing a new form of Puritanism, crueler than what she thought she had overcome. Because modern Puritanism no longer arises from an excess of religion, but from a lack of faith; it does not aim at holiness, but to compliance. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert: he can only remain silent.

 

the Island of Patmos, 16 November 2025

 

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Notes

[1] See. Saint John Paul II, Dives Misericordia, n. 14.

[2] See. St. Augustine, Confessiones, (II), 4,9

[3] See. Saint John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth, 84.

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THE REPLACEMENT OF SIN WITH THE CRIME OF OPINION IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

Public morality, detached from sin yet obsessed with guilt, ends by producing a new form of puritanism, more cruel than the one it believed it had overcome. For modern puritanism no longer arises from an excess of religion, but from a defect of faith; it no longer aims at holiness, but at conformity. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert; he can only remain silent.

-Theological-

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.

At the very moment when the concept of sin is expelled from language and from collective thought, society — stripped of its theological dimension — does not cease to judge. On the contrary, paradoxically, it judges more than before. Having rejected God’s judgement, man places himself as the absolute measure of good and evil. Thus, in the name of freedom, new moral tribunals are erected—tribunals that admit of no appeal. Today it is enough to affirm that abortion is not a “great social achievement” but a vile massacre of the innocent, to be accused of hatred; it is enough to question the homosexualist culture to be declared an enemy of freedom and progress; or to be branded as obscurantist for having dared to defend the institution of the natural family; or simply to express the truth that human life is a gift of God, to be suspected of religious fanaticism.

In this way, to the theology of sin understood as an act of the will that separates man from God and from which there follows the voluntary and freely chosen deprivation of grace, society substitutes a sociology of guilt. It is no longer sin that offends God, but the “heretical” opinion that offends collective sensitivity. Thus a system of symbolic sanctions is created which, although it does not have the form of law, acts with the same coercive force: marginalisation, censorship, and the loss of the right to speak. A lecturer who dares to discuss critically the “dogmas” of single thought is suspended or isolated; an artist who represents the Christian faith outside the canons of secularist aesthetics is accused of provocation; a priest who recalls the necessity of moral judgement is charged with fomenting hatred. Even a simple Gospel quotation — such as “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6) — can be read as an act of presumption or of offence. Trials are no longer held in courts of law, but in television studios and on social networks, where guilt is measured in seconds and condemnation is pronounced by the crowd.

Television talk shows have by now become a veritable plague: in them there is no real debate, not even through exchanges that, even if polemical, are articulated in questions and answers. Quite the contrary: topics are raised — often very delicate and complex ones — in order to trigger brawls at the end of which no conclusion is ever reached. All this is studied and intended. Experts and scholars from various fields of knowledge are invited, and the presenters ask them, without the slightest sense of human absurdity, to respond in half a minute to controversial questions that the sciences and philosophy have been debating for centuries. If the scholar dares to exceed thirty or forty seconds, the unavoidable commercial break arrives; once it is over, a new segment of the programme begins and the invited scholar has in the meantime disappeared from the television panel.

By contrast, at the beginning of the evening, the now calm presenter — in an attitude of almost genuflecting deference — allows the politician in office particularly favoured by that network to speak without any contradiction, granting him a forty-minute uninterrupted monologue, with five or six questions posed in a pleasant and subdued manner, clearly agreed in advance so as to avoid unwelcome questions. In such circumstances there are no advertising emergencies of any sort, the very same that only a short while before were justified by the alleged necessity of supporting the television company that lives on advertising revenue. Everything is postponed to the subsequent segments, where particularly aggressive journalists are put on air, chasing private citizens or local public administrators with microphones and cameras, commanding them in a stern and peremptory tone: “You must answer… you must answer!” They ignore the fact that the faculty of not answering — and not to a journalist, but to an investigating magistrate — is one of the fundamental constitutional rights recognised to the person under investigation and to the defendant. Then there follows yet another segment in which one does not hesitate to ask a philosopher to explain in four words — for a maximum of thirty seconds — the principles of metaphysics “in a way that everyone can understand,” or to ask an astrophysicist to clarify, in a few moments, the dynamics of the expansion of the universe.

In such a context, the television screen becomes partly the chair of modern non-knowledge and partly the new moral chair of the world: from it are pronounced absolutions and condemnations, and it is decided who is worthy of speech and who must be reduced to silence. In modernity one no longer seeks forgiveness, but the public exposure of the guilty. Penance is no longer the fruit of conversion, but social erasure. In appearance, it seems a form of justice, but in reality it is only a new sacrificial ritual without redemption. It is the inverted confessional of modernity, where one does not seek forgiveness but the public exposure of the guilty. And penance is no longer conversion, but erasure. In appearance, it seems a victory for freedom: with sin eliminated, man believes himself freed from all moral judgement. Yet in reality, precisely by denying sin, he has erased the very possibility of forgiveness. For if there is no longer a God who judges and redeems, there is no longer any act of mercy that can forgive and wipe away sin. What remains is only guilt as a permanent condition, a social brand that cannot be erased, because no one any longer possesses either the authority or the will to forgive.

Unfortunately, in recent years, even within the Church there has at times been a yielding to this same worldly logic, adopting expressions and criteria proper to squares moved by a lynch-mob emotionality. After the grave scandals that have involved — and often overwhelmed various members of our clergy — scandals that canon law properly defines as serious offenses, a formula has begun to be used, even at the highest levels, which sounds like an insult to the Christian faith: “zero tolerance.” Such language, borrowed from the political and media lexicon, reveals a mentality foreign to the Gospel and to the Church’s penitential tradition. It is obvious that in the face of certain crimes — such as sexual abuse of minors — the perpetrator must be immediately neutralised and placed in the condition of no longer being able to cause harm, and therefore subjected to a punishment that is just, proportionate and, according to canonical doctrine, medicinal, that is, directed to his recovery and conversion. For this reason, the expression “zero tolerance” is aberrant on the doctrinal and pastoral plane, because it does not belong to the language of the Church, but to that of populist campaigns that aim at and play upon the gut instincts of the masses.

By declaring that it is the sick and not the healthy who are in need of a physician (cf. Mt 9:12), Jesus indicates and entrusts to us a precise mission; He does not invite us to “zero tolerance.”

Before these new tendencies, a paradoxical moral short circuit emerges: the very same consciences that for years have hidden the filth under the carpets with rare and conspiratorial clerical malice now show themselves zealous in publicly proclaiming their severity, as though purifying themselves before the world. At times the innocent, or the merely suspected, are struck down in order to demonstrate rigour, while the true guilty — once protected — often remain unpunished and, at times, are promoted to the highest ecclesial and ecclesiastical positions, for it is precisely there that we find them all, “to judge the living and the dead,” almost as though their kingdom — the kingdom of falsehood and hypocrisy — “will have no end,” in a kind of inverted Creed. All this is presented as proof of a “new Church” that would at last have embraced the politics of firmness.

And what of the much-vaunted mercy, what has become of it? If we look closely, we shall discover that, in order to be able to benefit from mercy, it seems necessary to be black people who commit acts of violence in the most central areas of the cities, including assaults against the very Forces of Order, yet who are promptly justified, not because they do not commit crimes, but because, being violent and inclined to delinquency, it is said that they act on account of a society strictly guilty of not having adequately welcomed and integrated them.

Let us ask ourselves: what credibility can a Gospel proclamation have that preaches mercy only for certain “protected categories” and at the same time adopts the logic of so-called “zero tolerance” towards those who, within its own ranks, have gravely erred? It is here that the most dramatic outcome of internal secularisation is manifested: the Church which, in order to please the world, renounces the language of redemption to assume that of lynch-mob vengeance, showing herself merciful only with that which corresponds to the social tendencies of political correctness.

In Christianity, sin was a wound that could be healed; in secularised anthropology, guilt is an indelible stain. The sinner could convert and be reborn; the contemporary culprit can only be punished or re-educated. Mercy, deprived of its theological foundation, becomes an administrative gesture, a paternalistic concession, a public act of clemency that does not regenerate but humiliates. For true mercy is not born from an emotion or from an act of indulgence, but from the redemptive justice of God, which is manifested in the sacrifice of the Son and finds its fulfilment in the Cross, where justice and mercy embrace. It is not the opposite of justice, but its fullness, as the Psalm affirms: “Love and truth will meet, justice and peace will kiss” (Ps 85:11).

When this foundation is lost, mercy is reduced to tolerance, justice to vengeance; forgiveness loses its saving power and justice becomes pitiless because it is deprived of grace, and man, who believed he was freeing himself from sin, discovers that he is a prisoner of guilt.

It is the inverted logic of the Gospel: where Christ said, “Go, and from now on do not sin any more” (Jn 8:11), the secularised world says, “You have sinned, and therefore you no longer deserve to speak”. Where the Church once proclaimed the possibility of redemption, the new civil morality proclaims the irredeemability of the guilty. This is the true drama of modernity: not having replaced God with man, but having replaced mercy with vengeance. And divine mercy is not weakness, but the most sublime form of justice¹. Without mercy, justice degenerates into punishment and truth becomes an instrument of condemnation. Saint Thomas Aquinas had grasped this essential truth: mercy of truth — the mercy of truth — is the only mercy that saves, because it does not suppress justice but fulfils it in charity. When truth is separated from mercy, there remains only the cruelty of human judgement. Saint Augustine warned that, by eliminating God, sin remains — but without forgiveness². When this truth is removed, what remains is only the power of some to declare as a crime what was once called sin. This is the ultimate outcome of that “freedom without truth” which constitutes the most dangerous of modern illusions³.

It is not, therefore, a surpassing of moral judgement, but its extreme secularisation. Modern man has not ceased to distinguish between what he considers just and what he deems unjust; he has only changed the foundation and the sanction of that distinction. Where once sin was confessed and redeemed, today error of thought must be denounced and punished. Christological redemption is replaced by social re-education. And this passage has been gradual, but inexorable. The culture of guilt without God has generated a closed moral system, which functions with the same inquisitorial logic as the ancient heresies, but with reversed signs. The tribunal is no longer that of the Church, which aimed to include the erring within the path of salvation, but that of the media, which condemn to exclusion without appeal; penance is no longer the conversion of the heart, but the public recantation of one’s own ideas; forgiveness is no longer grace, but conditional reintegration into the ideologically correct community. In this way, post-Christian society has created a new civil theology, made up of inviolable dogmas and collective liturgies. Whoever contests them becomes an apostate of the new secular religion, a deviant to be expelled. It is here that the very concept of freedom is overturned: what was once freedom of conscience becomes today supervised freedom of opinion. One may say everything, provided it is said in the authorised language.

Public morality, detached from sin yet obsessed with guilt, ends by producing a new form of puritanism, more cruel than the one it believed it had overcome. For modern puritanism no longer arises from an excess of religion, but from a defect of faith; it no longer aims at holiness, but at conformity. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert; he can only remain silent.

From the Island of Patmos, 13 November 2025

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Notes
¹ St John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, n. 14.
² St Augustine, Confessiones, (II), 4, 9.
³ St John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth, 84.

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THE SUBSTITUTION OF SIN FOR THE CRIME OF OPINION IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

public morality, detached from sin but obsessed with guilt, ends up producing a new form of puritanism, crueler than the one I thought I had overcome. Because modern puritanism is no longer born from an excess of religion, but from a defect of faith; does not aim at holiness, but to conformity. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert: can only be silent

- Theological -

.

.

At the time when the concept of sin expelled from language and collective thought, society — deprived of its theological dimension — does not allow, however, to judge. It's more, paradoxically, judge more than before. God's judgment rejected, Man puts himself as the absolute measure of good and evil. And so, in the name of freedom, New moral courts are erected that do not allow appeal. Today it is enough to affirm that abortion is not a "great social achievement" but a vile slaughter of innocents to be accused of hatred; It is enough to question homosexual culture to be declared an enemy of freedom and progress, being branded a scurantista for having dared to defend the institution of the natural family, or simply express the truth that human life is a gift from God to be suspected of religious fanaticism.

To the theology of sin understood as an act of the will that separates man from God and from which the voluntary and free deprivation of grace derives, society replaces the sociology of guilt. It is no longer sin that offends God, but the “heretical” opinion that offends collective sensitivity. This creates a system of symbolic sanctions that, even without having legal form, they act with the same coercive force: marginalization, censorship, the loss of the word. A teacher who dares to critically discuss the “dogmas” of single thinking is suspended or isolated; an artist who represents the Christian faith outside the canons of secular aesthetics is accused of provocation; a priest who reminds us of the need for moral judgment is accused of promoting hatred. Even a simple gospel quote — like "I am the way", "truth and life" (Jn 14,6) — can be read as an act of presumption or offense. Trials are no longer held in court., but in television studios and on social networks, where guilt is measured in seconds and condemnation is pronounced en masse.

Los talk show television They have become a real plague: there is no debate in them, not even through confrontations that, even though they are controversial, are articulated in questions and answers. Quite the opposite: Issues are raised – often very delicate and complex – to trigger arguments at the end of which no conclusion is reached.. All this is studied. Experts and scholars from various fields of knowledge are invited, to whom the presenters ask, without the slightest qualms of human ridiculousness, that respond in half a minute to controversial questions that science and philosophy have debated for centuries. If the scholar dares to exceed thirty or forty seconds, the inevitable commercial break arrives; finished this, A new block of the program begins and the guest scholar has meanwhile disappeared from the television studio.

In compensation, however, at the beginning of the evening, the presenter, Now calm — in an attitude of almost genuflexed deference — he lets the politician in office who is particularly fond of that network speak without any type of contradiction., to which he is granted a monologue of forty minutes uninterrupted, with five or six questions asked in a friendly and submissive manner, obviously agreed in advance to avoid awkward issues. In these circumstances there are no advertising emergencies of any kind., the same ones that shortly before were justified by the need to support the television company that lives off advertising revenues.. Everything refers to the successive blocks, where particularly aggressive journalists are broadcast who persecute private individuals or peripheral public administrators with microphones and cameras, Intimidating them in a severe and peremptory tone: «You must answer... you must answer!!». Ignoring that the power not to respond — and not to a journalist, but to an investigating magistrate - it is one of the fundamental constitutional rights recognized to the investigated and the accused. Then follows the next block in which there is no hesitation in asking a philosopher to explain in four words - for a maximum of thirty seconds - the principles of metaphysics "in a way that is understandable to everyone.", or an astrophysicist who will clarify in a few moments the dynamics of the expansion of the universe.

In a similar context, the television screen becomes partly the chair of modern non-knowledge and partly the new moral chair of the world: from it acquittals and convictions are pronounced, and it is decided who is worthy of speech and who should be reduced to silence. In modernity forgiveness is no longer sought, but the public exposure of the guilty. Penance is no longer the fruit of conversion, but social cancellation. On the surface it seems like a form of justice, but in reality it is nothing more than a new sacrificial ritual without redemption. It is the inverted confessional of modernity, where forgiveness is not sought, but the public exposure of the guilty. And penance is no longer conversion, but the cancellation. In appearance, It seems like a conquest of freedom.: eliminated sin, man believes himself freed from all moral judgment. But actually, precisely by denying sin, has erased the very possibility of forgiveness. Indeed, If there is no longer a God who judges and redeems, There is no longer an act of mercy that can forgive and erase sin.. Only the feeling of guilt remains as a permanent condition, a social brand that does not erase, because no one anymore has the authority or the will to forgive.

Unfortunately, in recent years, even within the Church we have sometimes given in to the same worldly logic, adopting expressions and criteria typical of the squares moved by the emotionality of lynching. Following the serious scandals that have implicated and often devastated several members of our clergy—scandals that canon law properly defines as sERIOUS oFFENSES —, has started to be used, even at the highest levels, a formula that sounds like an insult to the Christian faith: "zero tolerance". A similar language, taken from the political and media lexicon, reveals a mentality alien to the Gospel and the penitential tradition of the Church. It is obvious that in the case of certain crimes - such as sexual abuse of minors - the perpetrator must be immediately neutralized and placed in the condition of not being able to do more harm., and therefore subjected to a just penalty, provided and, according to canonical doctrine, medicinal, that is to say, aimed at recovery and conversion. For this reason, The expression “zero tolerance” is aberrant on a doctrinal and pastoral level., because it does not belong to the language of the Church, but that of populist campaigns that target and play with the viscera of the masses.

By declaring that those who need a doctor They are the sick and not the healthy (cf. Mt 9,12), Jesus tells us and entrusts us with a precise mission, does not invite us to "zero tolerance".

Given these new trends a paradoxical moral short circuit arises: the same consciences that for years have hidden dirt under the rugs with rare and omertous clerical malice today are jealous by publicly proclaiming its severity, almost as if to purify oneself before the world. Sometimes the innocent or the simply suspicious are beaten to demonstrate rigor., while the real culprits - once protected - usually go unpunished and, sometimes, are promoted to the highest ecclesiastical and ecclesiastical positions, because that is precisely where we find them all, "to judge the living and the dead", almost as if his kingdom — that of falsehood and hypocrisy — “had no end”, in a sort of backwards Creed. All this is presented as proof of a "new Church" that would have finally embraced the policy of firmness.

And the mercy so decanted, what has become of her? If we are going to see, We will discover that in order to benefit from mercy it seems necessary to be black people who commit violence in the most central areas of cities., including attacks on the Law Enforcement Forces themselves, and yet readily justified, not because they don't commit crimes, but because, being violent and prone to crime, It is stated that the blame falls on a society rigorously guilty of not having welcomed and integrated them properly.. let's ask ourselves: What credibility can an evangelical advertisement have that preaches mercy only for certain “protected categories” and at the same time adopts the logic of so-called “zero tolerance” for those who, in your own bosom, han seriously wrong? Here the most dramatic result of internal secularization is manifested: the Church that, to please the world, renounces the language of redemption to assume that of revenge for lynchings, showing mercy only with that which corresponds to the social tendencies of political correctness.

In Christianity, sin was a wound that could be healed; in secularized anthropology, guilt is an indelible stain. The sinner could be converted and reborn; the contemporary guilty can only be punished or reeducated. The mercy, deprived of its theological foundation, becomes an administrative gesture, a paternalistic concession, an act of public clemency that does not regenerate, but humiliates. Because true mercy is not born from a movement of the spirit or from an act of indulgence., but of the redeeming justice of God, which is manifested in the sacrifice of the Son and finds fulfillment in the Cross, where justice and mercy embrace. It is not the opposite of justice, but its fullness, as the psalm states: «Love and truth will meet, "justice and peace will kiss" (Shall 85,11).

When this foundation is lost, mercy is reduced to tolerance, justice to revenge; Forgiveness loses its saving power and justice becomes ruthless because it lacks grace., and the man, who believed he had freed himself from sin, discovers that he is a prisoner of guilt.

It is the inverted logic of the Gospel: where Christ said "Go, and from now on sin no more" (Jn 8,11), the secularized world says: "You have sinned, and therefore you no longer deserve to speak". Where the Church announced the possibility of redemption, the new civil morality proclaims the irredeemability of the guilty. This is the true drama of modernity: not having replaced God with man, but having replaced mercy with vengeance. And divine mercy is not weakness, but the most sublime form of justice. No mercy, justice degenerates into punishment and the truth becomes an instrument of condemnation. Saint Thomas Aquinas had grasped this essential truth: mercy of truth — the mercy of truth — is the only one that saves, because it does not suppress justice, but he fulfills it in charity. When truth separates from mercy, only the cruelty of human judgment remains¹.

Saint Augustine warned that, eliminating God, sin remains, but without forgiveness. When this truth is removed, All that remains is the power of some to declare as a crime what was once called sin.². It is the ultimate result of this “freedom without truth” that constitutes the most dangerous of modern illusions.³.

It is not about, well, of an overcoming of moral judgment, but of its extreme secularization. Modern man has not stopped distinguishing between what he considers fair and what he considers unjust.; only the basis and sanction of such distinction has changed. Where once sin was confessed and redeemed, Today the error of thinking must be denounced and punished. Christological redemption is replaced by social reeducation. And this step has been gradual, but inexorable. The culture of guilt without God has generated a closed moral system, that works with the same inquisitorial logic of ancient heresies, although with inverted signs. The court is no longer that of the Church, that sought to include the wanderer on the path of salvation, but that of the media, that condemn to exclusion without appeal; penance is no longer the conversion of the heart, but the public abjuration of one's own ideas; forgiveness is no longer grace, but conditional readmission into the ideologically correct community. Thus, post-Christian society has created a new civil theology, made of inviolable dogmas and collective liturgies. Whoever questions them becomes an apostate of the new secular religion, a deviant who must be expelled. This is where the concept of freedom suffers its inversion.: What was once freedom of conscience today becomes controlled freedom of opinion. You can say everything, as long as it is said in the authorized language.

public morality, detached from sin but obsessed with guilt, ends up producing a new form of puritanism, crueler than the one I thought I had overcome. Because modern puritanism is no longer born from an excess of religion, but from a defect of faith; does not aim at holiness, but to conformity. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert: can only be silent.

From the Island of Patmos, 13 November 2025

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Notes
¹ Saint John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, n. 14.
² Saint Augustine, Confessions, (II), 4, 9.
³ Saint John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth, 84.

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