The Self, Society

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The Self, Society Social Sin

• Bernard Connor

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Bernard Connor

• 1938-1999
• Born Sussex, to SA as OP student 1964
• Moral theology degrees from Edinburgh, California
  Natal
• Theology of social morality huge influence on SA
  Bishops Conference
• Seminary lecturer, student chaplain
• Editor of RC journal Grace Truth (1980-1992)

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Theology of Social Sin

• Dehumanising social conditions e.g. racisim,
  sexism, militarism, poverty, political
  oppression, consumerism
• Doctorate Sin Self Society A Theological
  Investigation into Structural Evil
• Social structures an analytical category with
  ethical standards
• Moral agency responsibility of the self

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A Double Hermeneutic

• Inductive ethics, from experience not abstract
  principles, dominant in SA
• Sociological structural approach seemed too
  deductive for some liberation theologians
• Connor took middle ground dialogue
• of victims social scientists
• from below above
• experience near practice experience distant
  theory
• nature grace
• Drawing on Anthony Giddens work on social sin

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Personal Social Sin

• More than personal behaviour hardening into
  social attitudes
• Social structures link members, so are the medium
  as well as outcome
• Like a building, each social structure constrains
  enhances, enables disables human action
• perverted spaces open up the lines of action
  that harm close off those that would bring
  good
• Social sin calls for responsibility
• for the present future, not guilt for the past
• like personal sin, acknowledged only when being
  overcome

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Social Images

• IT enables multiplication manipulation of
  images which people use to interact
• we need these images to have a shared vision of
  the world
• but they can be distorted, used to legitimise
  dehumanising social conditions
• like blindness blocking off parts of reality
  from consciousness, blinding people to the
  immorality of their action
• people are still responsible choice to be
  complicit or not
• Both everyone no-one appears to be guilty.
  This, in turn, makes it hard to say who, if
  anyone, should repent make recompense, how
  this might be done constructively.

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Social Evil

• Reification of social sin
• evil is perceived as intrinsic to a group of
  people or social structure
• not the case sin is the absence of good
  (inter)action, not a force in itself
• Social structures are not apart from the people
  occupying them they are inside peoples
  actions, both beneficiaries victims
• So replacing leaders of a distorted regime e.g.
  apartheid, poverty of globalisation is not
  enough the distorted consciousness needs to
  change

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Structuration of Social Sin

• Advanced technology
• advanced control over society nature
• more complex structural sin
• Today even hunger is socially mediated
• Whether people obtain enough to eat or not
  depends today upon whether there is an adequate
  supply of foodstuffs, an adequate just system
  for distributing it to drought-stricken regions,
  freedom from corruption black market practices,
  a programme aimed at full employment what
  priorities governments have in their spending.
• Defective root metaphor society as machine
• blind economic forces a myth freedom to be
  responsible
• just as the self cannot exist without society,
  society cannot exist without human action
  decision

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Reconciliation

• De-structuring of social sin a process, where
  grace enters in
• Sacrament of reconciliation not enough for social
  processes
• responds to personal guilt
• grace to individuals apart from social structures
  regulating their actions
• reconciling with God Church, not society

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Kingdom of God

• A metaphor for destructuring of social sin,
  making way for re-gracing of society
• Bible does not give a political economic
  programme of action, but values
• Kingdom a transformative symbol of
• encounter with God, the self, society
• standards of justice liberation to measure
  society by
• Jesus uses it in gospels
• to contrast with the conditions of the time
• to assume what is good redeem what is bad
• Shows there are alternatives to the status quo,
• enabling a new way of imagining reality

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