Every once in a while, I run across the claim that Christianity—and Catholicism in particular—is a faith that leads its adherents to live their lives riddled with guilt. I hear it most commonly from former Catholics who have either moved to other Christian denominations or have fallen away from religious practice altogether. “I left the Catholic Church,” many of them say, “because I could no longer stand the guilt.”
This seems to imply something very novel: that we should rarely or never experience guilt. If we were perfect, or close to it, that might be true . . . but we aren’t. One of the central tenets of the Christian faith is that human beings are flawed, broken creatures with an innate tendency toward sin. In other words, we do bad things. This is why it makes little sense to condemn Christianity for its adherents’ and leaders’ hypocrisy; our faith is possibly the only one in the world that openly admits it is full of imperfect, sinful hypocrites. The Church isn’t a temple for the saints, but a hospital for the sinners. When we fall short, we have (or should have) some self-awareness about it. A good Christian knows he isn’t perfect, but is trying to move steadily in that direction. He’s trying to overcome his sins, but to do this he must be aware of them. He must know right from wrong, and this knowledge will surely lead him to feel guilty when he does something in the latter category.
We expect this kind of self-awareness from others all the time. When somebody wrongs us, we want them to feel bad about it and apologize. To use an extreme example, consider a murderer standing trial. If he shows remorse—sorrow and guilt for what he has done—he is likely to receive a more lenient sentence than if he un-repentantly claims that the victim deserved it. We recognize a lack of guilt in this case as a sign that the murderer is a sociopath, and deserves the worst that the court can offer him. We recognize an honest expression of guilt, on the other hand, as a first, tentative step toward possible redemption.
