A return to biblical wisdom would put fresh light on the notion of sin. In the classical sin texts of the Gospels, it is omission more than commission that reveals our moral spirit. It is not the vicious mugger who is most indicted in the story of the Good Samaritan but the pious people who saw the victim and passed by. In the Matthean final judgment scene, those condemned were those who did not feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, bury the dead, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. The core of sin is the absence of caring and daring....or even of voting!!

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace says: "Every sin is personal under a certain aspect; under another, every sin is social, insofar as and because it also has social consequences." The systemic, in-systemed structural evils that wreak most havoc on the earth and humankind, could not function without the base of individual "omitters," the "good Germans" that Hitler built his Reich on and the "good Americans" that American militarism and imperialism utterly depend on.