Sin of structures

Abstract

The main problem hiding behind the expression the “sin of social structures” is in the question who the real subject of social occurrences is: an individual human being in his/her freedom or some impersonal, and then consequently unfree social structures. Namely, since the sin is, according to classical theological definition, “actus humanus malus”, the talk about the “sin of social structures” seems to be contradictory in itself. But the fact that John Paul II. explicitly speaks about the sin of social structures in his encyclical letter “Sollicitudo rei socialis” warns that the problem is much deeper. In order to point out what the problem is and which is the real meaning of the expression the “sin of social structures”, the author has treated three thematic units in this work: 1. Structuralism and subjectivity of an individual; 2. The structure of moral act and moral performance; and as a synthesis, 3. The sin of social structures.
In the first part the author locates the problem of free human being, who is the subject of social occurrences, in structuralism, but in such kind of structuralism as is supported by F. d. Saussure in linguistics, by C. Levi-Strauss and Marxists in sociology and, on their lines, by the theology of liberation, through which the “sin of social structures” has actually come into theology. Evidently, the subjectivity of an individual plays an insignificant role in structuralism since the rules of the game are determined by the social structures, not by their individual representatives.
In the second part, entering the structure “actus humanus”, the author analyses the correlation between the  subject and object, or, respectively, the correlation between cognition and free will on the one hand and God’s gracious performance and social human nature on the other, and, consequently, he indicates the double “synergy”, which is at work in moral human act: 1. “gracious synergy”, by which man is opened toward transcendence, i.e. toward the God and toward God, and 2. “hermeneutic synergy” which, by its nature, closes him into immanence, i.e. draws him away from God. And it is precisely this “hermeneutic synergy” – through social sin – that makes a link-up from the “structure of sin” to the “sin of structures”.
In the third part the author shows how the sin, as a human “hybris”, i.e. as an excessive aspiration for wealth and power, as described by John Paul II., is socially set up, i.e. how the sin becomes something like a social “habitus”. Namely, social structures prove themselves as a rationalization of social life on the basis of universally accepted values. As such, they acquire the function of a “secondary subject”. And when those values become negative, there we have “sinful structures” in out midst. Their sin in a society displays itself as a “moral”, “physical” and as a combination of both, i.e. as a “structural conformism”. The moral sinfulness of social structures reflects in a progressive dehumanisation of an individual who, then, finds it difficult to reach true cognition and to make free decisions. The physical sinfulness of those structures is shown in the actually present victims of social injustice, while the “structural conformism”, as a specific kind of that sin, reveals itself in creating a conviction that it is all something like a natural law which is impossible to fight against on a personal level if it is not simultaneously restrained on the level of “sinful structures”.