Could It Be a Sin to Be a Christian?

In churches where abuse has occurred, a question arises for worshippers. Am I sinfully complicit, just by being a lay member and thus sustaining the church to continue existing as a place where abuse occurs?

In his Letter to a Suffering Church (2019), Bishop Barron notes that abuse issues have prompted around a third of US Catholics to consider leaving their church. This desire to leave is partially emotional and partially intellectual. It is partially a disgust and an aversion from the source of disgust. But there is also an intellectual argument. The argument is the issue of complicity. The issue is whether continuing to be a Christian in certain churches is in fact to commit the sin of complicity.

To explore this question, we will begin by looking at the issue of immorality.

Immorality

Acting immorally involves two elements. People must do something wrong, and they must be responsible for causing the wrong. For example, a murderer is immoral because there is a wrongness (a death) for which the murderer is a responsible cause.

There are three criteria which are typically used to identify what it means to be a responsible cause. A person must know that something is wrong (so it cannot occur inadvertently). A person must intend the wrong (so it cannot be a mistake). A person must also be freely causing the wrong (so it is not coerced).

This means that if people do wrong “knowingly, intendedly, and freely,” then they act immorally. The 1992 Catechism clarifies that this immorality is also a matter of acting “sinfully” (CCC 1859–1861).

Organizational Immorality

When it comes to immorality and organizations, there is an important distinction between the immorality of individuals within an organization, and an immorality which becomes an institutional expression of the organization.

Moral organizations pursue good objectives. They have policies and a culture which insist upon good means to achieve their good objectives. When staff behave badly, they are dealt with promptly and justly, so there is no risk of other staff thinking that bad behavior can ever be acceptable.

By contrast, immoral organizations (like mafia gangs) pursue bad objectives (like robbery). Or they pursue good objectives in a bad way (like lying about products). The “bad way” can be a matter of bad policies (like allowing bribery). But it can also be a more subtle form of badness, which is a bad organizational culture.

Bad cultures arise when bad behavior is allowed to flourish and establish itself as an alternative to policies. For example, a business might claim that it does not accept staff bullying. However, if it does not deal promptly and justly with bullies, then the organization is automatically creating a counterculture which allows bullying.

When an organization proclaims virtue but culturally allows vice, then it is on the way to becoming an immoral organization. It is pursuing its good objectives with a culture which allows bad ways of doing so.

When organizations develop bad culture, they start to become institutionally complicit in the badness. A business which knowingly, intendedly, and freely allows a culture of bullying, becomes institutionally responsible for the bullying. It becomes institutionally complicit in the bullying.

When churches knowingly, intendedly, and freely do not do enough to deal with abuse then they, too, can start to become institutionally complicit in the immorality.

Complicity

Complicity is a special type of immorality, in which a person shares in someone else’s immorality. For example, if you load a gun and give it to a murderer, you may not pull the trigger, but you have still helped the murderer to commit the murder. This means that you share in the wrongness by being morally complicit in the sin of murder.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists nine ways in which a person may be immorally (sinfully) complicit. You can be complicit by your actions and by your words (ordering, advising, praising, or defending immorality). You can also be complicit by hiding immorality (like secrecy and covering up), by not hindering it, and by protecting the wrongdoer (see CCC 1868).

Complicity is not just a religious idea. It also exists in most legal systems. Most countries recognize that people can be “accomplices” to crimes. Most countries have “Common Purpose” (or “Joint Enterprise”) laws. These enable the prosecution of leaders of gangs who are “associated” with crime, but who are not directly committing it. In that situation gang leaders are acting immorally (and illegally) because they are complicit in the crimes of their gang members.

Essentially, complicity is a supporting and enabling which allows a wrongdoer to continue acting immorally. When organizational leaders lie and cover up abuse, they are potentially guilty of complicity. When they do so repeatedly, and they promote staff who do so, then they create a bad organizational culture of complicity.

This is what raises the moral question of church membership. People look at a bad church culture and wonder, Am I becoming complicit, because my donations enable bad leaders to survive and sustain their immoral culture of complicity?

The Scandal Dilemma

One of the reasons for “bad culture” in some churches revolves around a moral dilemma involving the sin of scandal.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) tells us that scandal is being an obstacle which trips, or causes someone else to fall into sin (Summa Theologiae 2-2 Q.43). Causing someone to fall into sin is itself a sin. It is the sin of scandal (see CCC 2284).

Scandal is an ancient idea, going back to the New Testament. When Peter tries to tell Jesus not to go to his death, Jesus rebukes him for tempting him to sin. Jesus states: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle [a scandal]” (Matthew 16:23).

The religious idea of scandal differs subtly from the modern media use of the word. Biblical scandal is causing sin. Media scandal is actual sin. The issues overlap when it comes to bad publicity.

Bad publicity illustrates an actual problem, but it is also a potential cause of new problems. It can destroy organizations and impact on the livelihoods of innocent third parties. When bad publicity puts an immoral factory out of business, it is not just badly behaved staff who are punished by losing their jobs. It can create innocent victims in its supply chains. This means that publicizing bad information about organizations can be the sin of scandal because it can cause injustice to innocent third parties.

Historically, some church leaders have been so focused on avoiding the sin of scandal, that they have ended up creating cultures of secrecy and cover-ups to avoid bad publicity. Those church leaders have lost sight of the fact that scandal is a moral dilemma. They have assumed that bad publicity is a single-issue problem to be avoided at all costs. In doing so, they avoid one horn of the dilemma (the sin of scandal). But their secrecy and cover-ups make them fall victim to the other horn of the dilemma, by becoming sinfully complicit in the wrongdoing.

Yes, avoiding inappropriate or unnecessary bad publicity is always a moral imperative. No one wants bad publicity to hurt innocent third parties. But sometimes bad publicity is unavoidable and necessary. Crimes must be reported. Organizations which will not respond adequately to internal complaints processes should be criticized publicly. Failure to do so is not the virtue of avoiding scandal. It is the sin of complicity!

When churches cannot see this fact, then they have an immoral culture which is encouraging people to act complicitly and therefore sinfully. Laity who think that their church may have an immoral culture are rightly worried. They ask themselves, am I becoming complicit in the immorality by supporting the continuity of that immoral culture? Is it a sin for me to remain in such a church?

Avoiding Complicity

People can avoid the sin of complicity by protesting and disassociating from the wrongdoing. For example, if there is an immoral business, then people can write letters of complaint. They can run publicity campaigns demanding change. They can also disassociate, by boycotting and refusing to buy or sell the products.

Sometimes disassociating is difficult, especially if an organization is the sole provider of an essential service. For example, if there were a hospital with an immoral culture, then people might want to avoid that hospital. But if the hospital is the only provider of healthcare in a town, then it would be impossible to do so.

When dealing with sole providers of essential services, people can still avoid complicity. They can still protest and campaign. They can also limit their engagement so that they access the services they need, but they do not support the organization over and above that. This might mean taking health care from an immoral hospital (and paying for it), but not volunteering or donating anything extra which could be used to support the continuity of the leaders responsible for the immorality.

These same general principles apply to churches. If some Christians believe that their churches have an immoral culture, then they can protest and campaign. They may even choose to disassociate by leaving and joining a different church.

Catholics face a more complex set of considerations. It is a core tenet of Catholic faith that the Church is the sole provider of a necessary service. (See “Is the Church Necessary for Salvation?”) This means that Catholics cannot leave their church, without also leaving their faith.

However, if there are Catholics who believe that their church has an immoral culture, this does not mean that remaining in the church will necessarily make them guilty of complicity. The example of healthcare shows that there are ways of avoiding the sin of complicity, even when dealing with a sole provider.

A Historical Example

One of the problems with avoiding complicity, especially when dealing with large organizations, is that people may feel that their complaints are useless. Nothing will ever change.

That is an unhelpful approach, which falls into hopelessness. Small numbers of thoughtful people can, and do, have enormous impacts.

For example, in the thirteenth century a crisis engulfed the Church when cardinals refused to elect a pope. An initial deadlock turned into a badly behaved realization that not having a boss can be convenient. So, between 1268 and 1271 the Church had no pope.

Eventually, a few lay citizens of Viterbo took matters into their own hands. They locked the cardinals in a building and put them on a diet of bread and water. Empty bellies proved more morally sensitive than hardened hearts, and so the cardinals quickly elected a pope.

The new pope, Gregory X (d.1276), was so inspired by the initiative of the laity, that he published Ubi Periculum (1274). That document made it official Church policy that the cardinals’ food rations would be steadily reduced if they ever tried to misbehave again, by dragging out a future papal election.

People should never underestimate what a few thoughtful individuals can achieve.

Conclusion

Historically, people have periodically tried to create churches of the “pure.” The fourth-century Donatists excluded sinners. The twelfth-century Cathars set standards of holiness which were literally suicidal. In the sixteenth century, John Calvin’s Geneva tried again. More recently, Isis’s Caliphate was an Islamic attempt at something similar.

These attempts always fail. They always collapse into censorious self-righteousness and hypocritical oppression. This is because humans are sinners. All organizations which contain humans will always contain sinners, including churches.

The Christian vocation is a call to holiness. It is a call for each person to do their best to reject sin. This means that people rightly look at all of their commitments, including church membership, and ask whether any of those commitments are taking them into sin.

When it comes to the sin of complicity, we have seen that rejecting complicity does not necessarily mean rejecting churches. It means rejecting indifference to abuse and rejecting indifference to bad cultures within churches. It means doing what you can to bring about change.