“The papists, although they do not deny that human nature is corrupt, nevertheless minimize it such that original sin is almost nothing else than a depraved inclination toward sin.” I think that this comment by John Calvin well captures the crux of the matter.[1] When dealing with sin, Roman Catholicism recognizes its serious reality, albeit in a non-tragic view. Even if weakened by sin, nature (all created reality) maintains its ability to interface with grace (God’s favor) because grace is indelibly inscribed in nature. This is the theology of sin that can be found in Roman Catholicism, both in its traditional account and in its present-day developments. And this theology is what I will briefly unpack in this article.
1. Corpus Reformatorum 31:513 quoted by Raymond A. Blacketer, “ ‘Whatever Remains is a Horrible Deformity’: Sin in Early to Post-Reformation Theology” in David Gibson & Jonathan Gibson (edd.), Ruined Sinners to Reclaim. Sin and Depravity in Historical, Biblical, Theological and Pastoral Perspective (Wheaton: IL, Crossway, 2024) 145. Calvin is here commenting on Psalm 51.
Nature and Grace
In Roman Catholicism, there are two main axes that form its framework: on the one hand, as Gregg Allison has helpfully named it, the ‘nature–grace interdependence’ and, on the other, the ‘Christ–church interconnection.’[2] Historically, the Roman magisterium has given assent to both the Augustinian tradition (arising from Augustine and philosophically influenced by Neoplatonic thought) and the Thomistic tradition (emerging from a Christian reinterpretation of Aristotle via Thomas Aquinas). Whereas Augustinianism has stressed the corrupting reality of sin and the utter primacy of grace, Thomism has given a more positive account of human nature’s intrinsic disposition towards the operations of grace. Both traditions manage to coexist, in that the Roman Catholic system provides a sufficiently capable platform which can host both while not being totally identified or identifiable with any one of them. This is another significant pointer to the catholicity of the system itself.
2. I borrow these expressions from Gregg Allison, Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), 42–67.
The spheres of nature and grace are thus in irreversible theological continuity, as ‘nature’ in Roman Catholicism incorporates both creation and sin, in contrast to the Reformed distinction between creation, sin, and redemption. This differing understanding of sin’s impact means that grace finds in nature a receptive attitude (enabling Roman Catholicism’s humanistic optimism), which is different than the biblical doctrine in which entrenched sin leaves us unaware of our reprobate state. Nature is seen as ‘open’ to grace. For them, although nature has been touched by sin, it is still programmatically open to be infused, elevated, supplemented by grace. In contrast to biblical teaching, the Roman Catholic ‘mild’ view of the fall and of sin makes it possible for Rome to hold a view of nature that is tainted by sin but not depraved, obscured but not blinded, wounded but not alienated, morally disordered but not spiritually dead, inclined to evil but still holding on to what is true, good and beautiful.[3] There is always a residual good in nature that grace can and must work with. Contrast this view with the summarized biblical protestant account of sin: “the doctrine of total depravity affirms that, with the exception of the Lord Jesus Christ, all humanity, from the moment of conception, shares a corrupt human nature that makes us subject to God’s wrath, incapable of any saving good, prone to evil, and leaves us dead in sin and enslaved to sin.”[4]
3. The Roman Catholic teaching on sin can be found in Catechism of the Catholic Church 1849–1875.
4. David Gibson & Jonathan Gibson (edd.), “Mapping the Doctrine of the Total Depravity of Human Creatures,” in Ruined Sinners to Reclaim, 1.
After Vatican II, more recent interpretations of the nature–grace interdependence go so far as arguing that nature is always graced from within (e.g., a human being is already graced by God merely because she/he is God’s creature).[5] If traditional Roman Catholicism maintained that grace was added to nature, present-day Rome prefers to talk about grace as an infrastructure of nature. In spite of the differences between the two versions, the primary implication is the same: nature and grace are interdependent.
5. Stephen J. Duffy, The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992).
The nature–grace interdependence, in all its various forms and degrees, is the reason why Roman Catholicism nurtures an optimism in the ability of human beings to know and to follow God’s will and to cooperate with his grace. It also explains the idea whereby the physical world, including things like relics, holy places, bread, wine, etc., can transmit the grace of God—even becoming the body of Christ (as happens with the consecrated species of the Eucharist). Finally, it helps explain the ability of Roman Catholicism to embrace and integrate all cultures, all religions, the whole of humanity into its liturgies, practices and devotions, often falling into syncretism in the process.
In Roman Catholicism, there is no sense of the radical impact of the noetic effects of sin—the effects on our very reasoning. It is as if sin only mildly affects us, bending and blurring our capacity for truth, but not irreversibly breaking it at a fundamental level. Although sin is recognized, in Rome’s architecture it does not receive the importance it should receive biblically. This underestimation has consequences for the whole of Roman Catholic theology.
Pope Francis and Rome’s Move away from “Hamartiocentrism”
The tenure of Pope Francis (beginning in 2013) has radically altered the Roman church and created considerable confusion in Catholic doctrine. A recent book by the Sicilian Roman Catholic theologian Massimo Naro provides helpful guide in the theological universe of Pope Francis. From the outset, Naro readily acknowledges that the theology of Pope Francis is “an innovative proposal,” even if compared with the updating trend of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65).
If you want to try to enter the world of Francis, the first thing to do is understand his vocabulary and use of equivocation. Francis uses a number of traditional Roman Catholic terms (although he introduces many of his own as well), but he gives them new significances and distinct nuances. Alongside words like “mother church,” “faithful people of God,” “synodality,” “polyedric ecclesiology,” “existential peripheries,” “humanism of solidarity,” and “dialogue,” one of the Pope’s favorite words is “mercy.”[6] As with these other words, Francis gives mercy a new significance. In his way of putting it, mercy is “the bridge that connects God and man, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever despite the limits of our sins.”[7] In this dense sentence there is a strategic theological point. Among other things, as Cardinal Matteo Zuppi writes in the introduction, the Pope means that “at the center of the biblical message is not sin, but mercy.”[8] In Naro’s words, Christian theology must be freed from “hamartiocentrism,” i.e., from the centrality of sin.[9] Sin must be replaced by the pervasiveness of God’s mercy, which “can help us to break free from hamartiocentrism and to rediscover the tenderness of God.”[10] In Naro’s view, Pope Francis has finally replaced sin with mercy at the center of his message.
6. Massimo Naro, Protagonista È L’abbraccio: Temi Teologici Nel Magistero Di Francesco, Il Calamo Teologia 23 (Venezia: Marcianum Press, 2021), 19.
7. See the Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy Misericordiae Vultus, par. 2, 2015. The English translation of the papal text on the Vatican website is blurred and incorrect. It says “the bridge that connects God and man, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever despite our sinfulness” (italics added). However, the Latin official text says “praeter nostri peccati fines” which needs to be translated as “despite the limits or bounds of our sins” as the Italian, French, and Spanish versions rightly translate.
8. Naro, Protagonista È L’abbraccio, 16.
9. Naro, Protagonista È L’abbraccio, 93. The word hamartia is one of the main Greek words for sin.
10. Naro, Protagonista È L’abbraccio, 114.
In Francis’s theology, at most, sin is “the human limit,”[11] but not the breaking of the covenant, the rebellion against God, the disobedience to his commandments, the subversion of divine authority, followed by the righteous and holy judgment of God. If sin in a “human limit” then the cross of Christ did not atone for sin, but only manifested God’s mercy in an exemplary way. The words used by the Pope are the same as those of the evangelical faith (e.g. mercy, sin, grace, gospel), but they are given a different meaning than the gospel.
11. Naro, Protagonista È L’abbraccio, 91.
Francis sees everything from the perspective of a metaphysics of mercy that swallows sin without passing through the propitiation, expiation, or reconciliation that the cross of Jesus Christ wrought to give salvation to those who believe in Him. If everything is mercy and sin is only a limit, the resulting message is different from the biblical gospel.
“Starting with Mercy, Not with Sin”
This step is further confirmed in present-day Roman Catholic theology. In a recent article in Avvenire, the President of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, which is a Vatican institution at the service of the pope’s theological ministry, monsieur Antonio Staglianò, wrote an alarming headline: “The Challenge: Starting with Mercy, Not with Sin.” In the article, Staglianò reflects on the recent development in the Roman Catholic Church in which Pope Francis gave the okay to bless couples in same-sex romantic relationships. This blessing is made possible thanks to the Roman Catholic Church elevating the love and mercy of God, and relegating sin to a place of unimportance. In his 2020 encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (All Brothers), Francis never mentions the word ‘sin’ once, instead declaring that all of humanity are brothers and sisters. Francis did not invent this theology, but has only developed what was already implied in Vatican II.
Theologically and biblically, starting with mercy rather than sin has devastating consequences. How can one understand the love and mercy of God apart from his condemnation and hatred of sin? If God’s mercy is not a response to his hatred of sin, and if it is not his free gift of grace and redemption through Christ, then what mercy are we talking about? If mercy comes before sin, man must invent his own gospel. But a gospel invented by man is no gospel at all, and it cannot save.
Conclusion
In conclusion, J.C. Ryle’s sober comment comes to mind: “The plain truth is that a right knowledge of sin lies at the root of all saving Christianity. Without it such doctrines as justification, conversion, sanctification, are ‘words and names’ which convey no meaning to the mind.”[12] Roman Catholicism has a minimized view of sin and that impacts the whole account of its theology, away from biblical Christianity.
