Not long ago the Diocese of Camden commissioned a study of the faith and practice habits of Catholics and non-Catholics in the six southernmost Jersey counties that make up the diocese. Among the 37 questions asked by an objective professional group was the one about the Lord Jesus himself. On hearing the findings, some professed amazement that “Nearly three out of every 10 residents (28 percent) are in strong agreement that when he lived on earth, Jesus Christ was human and committed sins, like other people—higher than the national average of 23 percent. A majority of Catholics in the Camden Diocese believe that Jesus sinned (33 percent agree strongly, 24 percent agree somewhat).”
After hearing confessions for 34 years, and after listening to peoples’ understanding of who Jesus is and was, I am amazed that the number was not even higher. In confession, now called the sacrament of reconciliation, the priest is privileged to hear what penitents voluntarily admit are their deepest convictions and beliefs. Beyond that, he can tell what presuppositions they bring in with them. He is there to relay to them nothing less than the forgiveness of an all-understanding Christ who willingly went to his death, when he could have done otherwise, in order to take away our sins. The priest himself confesses his sins to a fellow priest, as do bishops, popes and saints.
Why would so high a percentage of Catholics think that Jesus sinned? After all, we profess that he was God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. We affirm St. Paul’s praise that he was a human like us in all things but sin. Like his cousin the Baptizer, we cannot fathom why he asked to be baptized since he had no sin needing washing. He was God’s spotless lamb.
In an era that has all but retired the box, I suspect that most of us do not know what sin even is. Many blithely dismiss it as an obsolete superstition, so why go to confession at all? They think that the ecumenical council, begun 50 years ago, did away with all that. Others have not progressed beyond the childhood — and therefore only temporary — explanation that sin is doing something wrong. Our parents and educators, doing the best they could with our immature minds, told us to avoid doing some things and to be sure to do other things. Our childhood minds were just beginning to get into the deep waters of intention and circumstance that affect the morality of any act.
Specifically, we learned that anger is bad. So the tender conscience will confess that he or she got angry. I ask these penitents if they know that Jesus got angry at moneychangers, scribes and Pharisees, even at his own apostles. They say yes. So he must have sinned, frequently if we can imagine the slow wittedness of the Twelve. However, while anger is a negative emotion, it is not a sin. So Jesus did not sin when he attacked the pious religious leaders, hypocrites with whom he had the most trouble. Prostitutes, tax-collector collaborators and the many unable to observe all 613 prescriptions of the Torah flocked to him because he showed them God’s mercy while the mitered hierarchs did not. I direct the penitent to read the 23rd chapter of Matthew for penance.
For any wrong thing to be a sin, a person must choose to do what he or she knows is wrong. But experience shows that we seldom choose the negative emotion of anger. True, like any negative emotion it has to be held in check. It can easily boil over into violence and mayhem, revenge and sins against charity. By no coincidence is it one of the Seven Deadly Sins, actually a confusing designation because it does not attend to the intentions and circumstances of the person in the actual situation. Likewise lust, another of the big seven. When tender consciences confess this, believing that any thought of a sexual nature has to be sinful, I ask them if they have ever visited the Vatican Museum or the major basilicas of Rome. Their artistic displays were not meant to lead anyone into sin but instead presuppose a mature person who, if accompanying a child, can explain why that statue or painting is there.
So Jesus did not sin, notwithstanding the misinformation of so many. Sin exists, and the death and resurrection of Jesus would be incomprehensible without it. But Jesus overcame it.
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