The Loss of the Sense of Sin and the Arrogance of Life: Challenges for Today’s Evangelization

At the beginning of 2014, during his morning meditations, Pope Francis, when referring to a famous phrase by Pius XII, stated that losing the sense of sin is the evil of this civilisation, an evil that strengthens Christian mediocrity and is inversely proportional to directing attention towards – and constructing – the Kingdom of God among men. The categories of sense of sin and sense of guilt, at least in theory and without generalisations, become understandable in the context of the Christian experience and the ecclesial consciousness; yet, when the human horizon is extended, the two concepts do not find a right to citizenship because the question is not even raised. The children and creators of contemporary culture, the men and women of our time, although directed towards the Kingdom of God, are strongly influenced by the global and plural secularist mentality, and this has a negative impact on their attitudes, behaviour and expressions of their existence. The Church, both within herself and outside herself, poses to herself the question of how she can redirect the expressions of this unprecedented anthropology towards Gospel values. The problem is not so much how to bring to the surface the sense of guilt and sin but, rather, how to restore or generate faith in the hearts of men. Effective evangelisation has the task of bringing back the Gospel into men’s hearts and educating in a sense of God so that contemporary man can have a higher paradigm (God) on which to base himself.