A Catechesis of Guilt and Shame - Part 1

By Patrick Hall

“Catechesis is nothing other than the process of transmitting the Gospel, as the Christian community has received it, understands it, celebrates it, lives it, and communicates it in many ways."

Some time ago, I was in the check-out line of my local Wal-Mart and found myself behind a young woman with three small children.  A confrontation ensued between her and the Walmart associate concerning why she couldn’t use her public assistance money (i.e., SNAP Card) to purchase a carton of cigarettes. After leaning on my shopping cart for some time, I decided to use the adjacent self-checkout.  At the same time, the conflict between the woman and the associate had moved to a whole new level, turning more than a few heads in the store. To the very end, as I left the store, the young welfare mother was still screaming, that the store should take her public assistance.  At the time of this incident, I just shrugged and filed it away under similar incidents that have occurred in my neighborhood over the years; where questionable behavior among individuals who felt entitled has become the unfortunate norm. Civil behavior, values, social mores, or moral and religious guidelines have been eroded.

There was a time in the not-to-distant past when someone would be embarrassed or ashamed to openly parade, that they were receiving public assistance. Also, a young woman and man who had conceived a child out of wedlock would feel a sense of social ostracism. It was common for them to marry or give up the child for adoption. Of course, this was before Roe vs Wade, or as one theologian quipped, it was before the save the dolphins, kill your grandchildren era.

 As a child growing up in the 1950’s we still had homes for unwed mothers, where a young woman could have the child, and more likely than not give it up for adoption.  And yes, what regulated these now-forgotten cultural mores and/or social controls was a sense of guilt and shame in conceiving a child out of wedlock. Stigma was not always a bad thing! There was an additional stigma in receiving or being on “welfare”.  Also, one’s comportment in public was more stayed. Nowadays it is far too common to hear the conspicuous use of the f-bomb in public, irregular less of whether children are present, or that it might be anathematic to others around them.

 With the emergence of cabled television replete with the Jerry Springers, MTV’s 16 and Pregnant, and the Kardashians’ coarseness, this lack of awareness of sin or guilt and shame is now ubiquitous.  We have lost a sense of shame and guilt as a Judaic Christian nation, despite the popular secular notion that guilt and shame are useless.

However, we now have entire urban neighborhoods and prisons full of individuals unable to feel either guilt or shame. Guilt and shame have become pejorative among social elites, psychologists, social workers, teachers, and even clergymen, who show a willingness to promulgate this secular heresy.
 
Because of this constant devolution in cultural and religious standards, our moral compasses have become so damaged, that we as a society can no longer discern that we are even naked (Genesis 3:7).  The secular catechesis of moral relativism and postmodern nihilism have fully metastasized not only in lay culture but in far too many mainline churches.  

Many years ago, while working on an Indian Reservation in Southeastern Montana, I was having supper with a group of Catholic priests and nuns and our guest for that evening was a medical doctor, who had served for decades as the primary care physician for the reservation. During dinner, the issue of abortion was somehow breached by the good Doctor and he being a traditional Catholic began relating an incident of a young couple, coming to him to perform an abortion. Of course, being a practicing Catholic he could not; and tried to advise them of other available alternatives.  To make a long story short, the reaction of this priest and nuns to this doctor’s holding to the tenets of his faith went from a disapproving silence to a not-so-subtle rebuke of the Doctors refusal to be “Prochoice”.  I can remember the conversation quickly changed to a less controversial topic and the good doctor left with a look of disbelief on his face.

Thinking back fifty years ago, during my capricious adolescent years, my friends and I would often tease one another about seeing government welfare cheese and other foodstuffs in one of our friend’s homes. Sometimes we would out the person (no matter whether it was true or not) about seeing their mama walking down the street with a block of government cheese under her arm.  Now, this was cruel, and the sense of guilt and shame we were trying to elicit was farcical or misplaced at best. But the fact that we still had a sense of embarrassment over this, plus many other social ills commonplace today, spoke volumes that in our enculturation, we had a sense of moral limits, social guardrails if you will.  We still operated with an internal spiritual catechesis.  A sense of guilt and shame, that was more helpful in sustaining the civility and social cohesion of the neighborhood, than the secular spiritualism and moral anomie that now exists. We need to rediscover, “internalize” and teach the catechesis of guilt and shame.

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[Patrick is a retired University Library Director. He is graduate of Canisius College and the University of Washington where he earned Masters Degrees in Religious Studies Education, Urban Anthropology and Library and Information Science.  Mr. Hall has also completed additional course work at the University of Buffalo, Seattle University and St. John Fishers College of Rochester New York. He has published in several national publications such as Commonweal, America, Conservative Review, Headway, National Catholic Reporter, Freedom's Journal Magazine and American Libraries. He has published in the peer reviewed publications, Journal of Academic Librarianship and the Internet Reference Services Quarterly. From 1997 until his retirement in January 2014 he served on the Advisory Board of Urban Library Journal, a CUNY Publication.]