Roger Scruton, in his personal history of the Church of England, makes the thought-provoking claim that when John Calvin removed the sacrament of Penance from his “reformed” list of sacraments, “he made the first and fatal step towards the de-Christianization of the world.” Certainly, one could debate whether this demotion of Penance was the first step toward “de-Christianization.” One could reasonably claim, for example, that the division in the Church caused by the Reformation itself or, five centuries earlier, by the Great Schism of 1054 (in which the Eastern Orthodox Church split from the Roman Catholic Church), was that first step, in that those ruptures greatly damaged the unity of the Body of Christ and the Church’s ability to serve as a unified witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the world (see John 17:20–21; 1 Cor. 1:10–13). But Scruton is on to something important here—Calvin’s rejection of the sacramental nature of Penance was a crucial step toward de-Christianizing the world, even if it was not necessarily the first step.
Scruton views Calvin’s rejection of the sacrament of Penance as having set in motion a series of changes that would gradually undermine a key element of Christian morality: our awareness of our ongoing need to repent. Scruton emphasizes the harm that this has done to modern society:
There are many things wrong with modern societies, but nothing more wrong, it seems to me, than the loss of the habit of repentance. All that is most gross and offensive in the world in which we live comes from the inability of people to live in judgment, to accept the need for remorse and atonement, and to accept that, in begging forgiveness, they must also offer it.
Again, one could debate with Scruton regarding his claim that there is “nothing more wrong” with modern society than this loss of the habit of repentance; there are definitely some other candidates for the thing that is “most wrong” with modern societies. But Scruton is nonetheless correct to identify this loss as deserving a spot somewhere near the top of that list.
Undoubtedly, Calvin neither intended nor foresaw that his rejection of the sacrament of Penance would contribute to the loss of the habit of repentance and thereby to “all that is most gross and offensive in the world in which we live.” But with the benefit of hindsight, we can see the linkage here, especially when we combine Calvin’s demotion of Penance with other societal changes that occurred over the intervening centuries. Over time, Calvin’s action, along with these other changes, gradually undermined not only people’s awareness of their need for repentance, but also their sense of the gravity of sin and even their acceptance of the very concept of sin itself.
One of these significant cultural shifts occurred during the Enlightenment, with its general turn away from transcendence and its “turn toward the subject”—the turn toward a more exclusive focus on the individual person and his attainment of happiness in the here and now rather than in some kind of afterlife, with “happiness” being defined primarily in terms of the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain. The rise of philosophical materialism, which denies the existence of a transcendent realm/being and therefore the existence of any objective moral code, also contributed to the loss of the sense of sin and the need for repentance, as did Freud’s rejection of religion as an “illusion,” along with his emphasis on the pleasure principle. The rise of expressive individualism and the impact of the sexual revolution—with their focus on the self and the gratification of one’s desires, unconstrained (or, at a minimum, far less constrained) by traditional mores—have furthered this trend.
A synergistically negative effect has occurred in Western culture in this regard: As the sense of sin has decreased, the influence of the Judeo-Christian moral code that has served as the foundation of Western culture (and as the glue that has helped hold that culture together) has also decreased (as is exemplified by the decreased social stigma associated with abortion, adultery, cohabitation, giving birth to children out of wedlock, etc.). This decreasing emphasis on traditional morals has, in turn, further weakened people’s sense of sin and so on, causing the downward moral spiral of the West to continue largely unabated to the present day.
All of these factors, along with many others that could be named, have contributed to the de-Christianization of the West. Who needs to repent and who needs a redeemer if there is no God, no such thing as sin, no such thing as the objectively good or the objectively evil, no afterlife, etc.? Calvin’s fateful decision to remove Penance from the list of sacraments seems to have been one among many steps that eventually led to the rejection of the Judeo-Christian ethic and to widespread moral decline.
Scruton is right to point to people’s desire to evade judgment as contributing to many of these cultural and social changes. He insists that judgment is an inescapable aspect of being human, since to be human is to be a relational being who has free will and who is therefore accountable to himself, to other people, and to God for the choices he makes in exercising that free will. Scruton has argued that Western culture is actively fleeing from judgment of any kind in its quest for total freedom, conceived as the ability to fulfill any and all of one’s desires without being judged for doing so, and he asserts that the West is increasingly attempting to wipe out anything that might remind us that we are judged, including beauty and the face of God himself.
Standing athwart such trends is the Roman Catholic Church’s steadfast maintenance and promotion of the sacrament of Penance for almost two thousand years now, which Scruton applauds:
The Roman Catholic Church is right to regard penance as a sacrament. Penance is the work of restoration, which renews and purifies the sinner by putting him once more in a relation of love. It requires the sinner to face up to his failings, to confess to them, to humble himself before God and to make atonement.
By continuing to offer the sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation, the Catholic Church helps to keep us Catholics (and hopefully, to some extent, the broader culture) aware of the fact that we are judged, no matter how much we might strive to deny and escape from that reality. It keeps us aware of the fact that there is such a thing as sin, that we are all sinners, and that we all need to repent of our wrongdoing on an ongoing basis.
But, of course, the sacrament doesn’t just remind us of such realities; the sacrament offers the incredibly liberating and uplifting gift of being able to have those sins forgiven, here and now. As such, the sacrament of Penance can have a powerful and transformative impact on the life of the person who avails himself of it. To submit oneself to God’s judgment in the sacrament of Penance is to open oneself up more fully to the infinite love and mercy of God. No sin, no matter how shameful, no matter how heinous, no matter how seemingly unforgivable, is beyond the power and mercy of God to forgive. To be absolved of your sins by a priest who is acting in the person of, and by the authority of, Jesus Christ (Matt. 16:18–19)—to be reminded that God still loves you and to be given a fresh start in life—can be an experience of inexpressible joy and peace.