In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae Saint John Paul II upholds Christian teaching on the sanctity of life and condemns “the culture of death” that haunts modern civilization–the unspeakable crime of abortion that unleashes the plague of death on an unimaginable scale (4,000 abortions each day in the U.S., over 35 million deaths since 1973). In his encyclical, the pope refers to “the structure of sin” and a “conspiracy against life” that involves “powerful cultural, economic, and political currents” both on the national and international level. These “structures of sin” allude to the policies and laws of Western nations that have institutionalized evil with the sanction of governments, schools, churches, medicine, pharmaceutical companies, the media and the arts.
Whereas the world has always provided various “structures of sin”, whether it be totalitarian governments, the legalization of slavery or religious persecution, never has there existed such a colossal, monolithic, far-reaching, and formidable combination of structures and institutions promoting the same agenda of legalized sin on an international scale. The Supreme Court, the platform of the Democratic party, the National Education Association, the liberal media, politically correct colleges, the American Civil Liberties Union, major health insurance companies that pay for abortions and the United Nations all conspire with one another in reinforcing the “right” to kill babies
In previous centuries, sins were primarily personal and individual, rather than corporate and social, as people resisted the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil as wekk as struggled against the seven deadly sins such as pride, avarice and lust. Conquering personal sin has always been an arduous struggle. The flesh is weak, and all men are heirs of original sin, prone to selfishness and self-delusion. Thus we pray “Lead us not into temptation,” an acknowledgement of man’s fallibility and need for grace. The insidiousness of evil in the modern world, however, has found other dwelling places besides individual human weakness, incorporating itself into the mainstream.
The “structures of sin” that dominate contemporary life lead humans into temptation, seducing them into equating the legal with the moral, into rationalizing evil as an issue of “choice”, into approving cruelty (partial-birth abortions), into believing that right and wrong are merely opinions with no absolute universal meaning, into assuming that the highest virtue is “tolerance” rather than love, sacrifice, or justice. Tempting and easy as it is to sin, the “structures of sin” multiply the temptations and occasions of evil and make it even more irresistible for fallen man to degenerate even lower. Public schools that adopt Planned Parenthood’s “safe sex” mentality and teach the benefits of contraception lead the young to promiscuity and the loss of purity. The structure of an educational institution becomes the agent of moral change and removes the stigma and shamefulness of pre-marital sexuality; schools encourage teen-age pregnancy and abortion.
Governments and courts also encourage vice. “The right to privacy” can be used to justify contraception, abortion, and euthanasia. The institution of the law, which has traditionally functioned as a venerable teacher or moral authority, now legalizes abortion on demand and no-fault divorce, thus allowing and encouraging practices that destroy families and violate sacred bonds. The 1992 Supreme Court Case of Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey which upheld Roe v. Wade argued that people in the 1990s “organize their lives” around the availability of abortion, implying it is an absolute necessity for the pursuit of happiness. Many mainline churches have totally adapted to the sexual revolution, rejecting two thousand years of Christian tradition and Biblical teaching to conform to the canons of political correctness. Whether it is the Methodist Church embracing Roe v. Wade, the Episcopal Church ordaining homosexual priests, or dissident priests defying Humanae Vitae, which condemns contraception, these churches also have become structures of sin leading souls away from God and perverting the meanings of good and evil.
International organizations like the United Nations, which identify the “development” of third world nations as the availability of contraception, abortion, and sterilization rather than foreign aid in the form of food and medicine, illustrate another example of the institutionalization of evil on a universal scale. The ideology of political correctness on many college campuses represents yet another powerful, influential structure of sin, the politicization of education in the form of liberal indoctrination. This politicization carefully censors opposing points of view and penalizes professors who do not worship at the altars of feminism, deconstruction, and multiculturalism. Colleges which provide easy availability to contraceptives or sponsor gay and lesbian organizations likewise lead students to immorality and pander to the lowest common denominator.
The moral wasteland of Western civilization that has created “the culture of death” is no accident. Institutions such as government, law, medicine, education, and religion can create policies that uphold civilization, decency, and respect for life, or they can deconstruct all the sacred ideals, moral norms, and venerable traditions that have elevated human life above the barbarian level. These enormous structures of sin have led to a new paganism, a revolutionary moral decline that has been thoroughly documented in William J. Bennett’s The Index of Cultural Indicators: “The rate of violent crime in the U.S. is worse than in any other industrialized country.”
These formidable structures of sin have provoked a form of battle known as the “culture wars” which are struggles for the souls of men, women, and children. This war demands heroic resistance and moral courage: choosing homeschooling instead of public education, refusing to allow children to take health courses informed by Planned Parenthood ideology, refusing to pay any tuition to colleges which encourage fornication, never voting for politicians who are blind to the atrocity of abortion, contributing not one cent to churches that do not honor the Ten Commandments, daring to be politically incorrect in calling sodomy a disorder rather than an alternative lifestyle, and proclaiming the truth that contraceptive pills and abortion cause cancer.
The structures of sin imagine themselves invincible, but they remain formidable because of the vice of sloth–indifference and apathy to the enormity of evil–because, in Edmund Burke’s words, “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” If structures of sin like the evil empire of Soviet Communism could collapse because of the will of the people and moral leaders recognizing that might is not right, legalized abortion on demand can also be conquered when men love truth more than money and pleasure and when men end their perverse love affair with death and see again the miracle and goodness of life as the ultimate gift.
Mitchell Kalpakgian, Ph.D. has completed fifty years of teaching beginning as a teaching assistant at the University of Kansas, continuing as a professor of English at Simpson College in Iowa for thirty-one years, and recently teaching part-time at various schools and college in New Hampshire. As well as contributing to a number of publications, he has published seven books: The Marvelous in Fielding’s Novels, The Mysteries of Life in Children’s Literature, The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization, An Armenian Family Reunion (a collection of short stories), Modern Manners: The Poetry of Conduct and The Virtue of Civility, and The Virtues We Need Again. He has designed homeschooling literature courses for Seton Home School, and he also teaches online courses for Fisher More College and Fisher More Academy.
