Original scientific paper
Sin in Modern Society. Against God or Oneself?
Isabelle Jonveaux
; University of Graz, Institute for Religious Studies
Abstract
Consumer society encourages people to satisfy their desires in order to answer to the new imperative of happiness. In this context, sin against God considered as aware separation of God and his love is less and less a topic in Catholic Church or Sunday schools. Sociologists of religion like Yves Lambert in France or Franco Garelli in Italy also showed an important fall in attending of confession. One explanation for that would be that the sense of sin itself is slowly disappearing or changing. The European Values Survey reveals indeed that less and less Catholic people believe in sin. Does that mean that the modern society is freed from evil? The eclipse of the sin against God does not mean a disappearance of the system of evil and good in society. At the same time of this disaffection of the sin in Catholic Church, we can note in secular society a growing utilization of the rhetoric of sin in other contexts. At the turning point between consumer society and society of satiety, the appeal to the whole realization of all desires and the apparition of new responsibilities co-exist. These new responsibilities –for instance against the own body – give rise to new forms of sin which are no longer against God but against itself. This paper aims to seek out the new relationship to sin in the society of satiety from a sociological point of view.
Keywords
sin; Catholic Church; modernity; society; responsibility
Hrčak ID:
115433
URI
Publication date:
30.1.2014.
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