I Must Be Doing It At Least Once A Day!
Asked to hear second graders confessions, then newly ordained Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois of Lutcher, Louisiana - You know Luthcher: “between Gramercy and Paulina.” – still has one of the best “Confession stories” of all time.
All was going well until a towheaded youth with a Cajun accent began, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been two weeks since my last confession and my sins are: I disobeyed three times, I told lies four times, I fought with my little brother. And I committed adultery fourteen times.”
Things went downhill from there.
“You what?”
“I committed adultery fourteen times.”
“What?”
“Well. Teacher in school says adultery is the worstest sin you can commit. And my mother says I am the worstest little boys she’s ever seen. So, I figure I must be doin’ it at least once a day.”
_____
The young Cajun offered a unique insight into sin: All sin is social.
While it would be quite a feat for a seven-year-old to “be doing it at least once a day,” the sinful nature of adultery is that it damages the social bonds of the marriage(s) of those involved and the relationships of parents and children and may echo through generations.
The social nature of sin recently played out in two Florida courts – both featuring the number 116.
In September 2021, the driver of a 2021 Tesla Model S Plaid blew through a Palm Harbor stop sign, hit a fire hydrant and fence, struck an embankment and went airborne, before crashing into the rear wall of a home, killing a 69-year-old grandmother. According to Florida Highway Patrol troopers, the driver was travelling at a minimum speed of 116 miles per hour - in a 30 mph residential neighborhood.
Tesla describes the Model S Plaid, which retails for $129,000, as having a 1,020 peak horsepower electric motor, a top speed of 200 miles per hour, and capable of accelerating from zero-to-sixty in 1.9 seconds.
The Tesla’s owner, who died in the crash, drove it out of a dealership only hours earlier and allowed a friend to get behind the wheel seconds before the crash. While the driver survived, 69-year-old grandmother Donna Rein was killed as her bedroom collapsed around her. She is survived by her daughter, a cancer survivor, and two autistic granddaughters who depended on her to pick them up from school and get them to therapies; and, her family was left temporarily homeless.
Sin always has a social consequence.
In December 2021, an 18-year-old lost control of a 2014 Model S Tesla sedan, jumped a curb, careened into a concrete wall, and rolled, before hitting another wall and then bursting into flames. He and another school senior were killed – not by the crash but by the fire from the Tesla’s damaged lithium-ion traction battery. A 12-page National Highway Transportation Board report indicated that the most likely cause of the crash “was the driver’s loss of control as a result of excessive speed” – 116 miles per hour.
The families of these drivers, their passengers and their victims will live the rest of their lives in pain and grief – grief and pain that may be passed through several generations.
Sin is not individual.
Like the Tesla crash deaths, genuine sin impacts more than the sinner and can affect multiple generations.
It is difficult to find sympathy for the two Silicon Valley fraudsters who were recently found guilty of a dozen charges of investor fraud and are facing decades in federal prisons. The greedy, ambitious entrepreneurs persuaded investors to pour nearly $1 billion – with a B – into their adventure, promising that just a few drops of blood taken from a finger prick could be scanned for over 240 medical problems – from cholesterol levels to complete genetic testing.
PROBLEM: Their device didn’t work.
The company actually established testing stations in 40 Walgreens stores in the Phoenix area and sold more than 1.5 million blood tests, yielding 7.8 million results for 176,000 customers. But court documents indicated that slightly more than one-in-ten test results were void or incorrect, causing patients to suffer needless emotional pain and repeated testing by legitimate medical facilities and undergo unneeded medical treatments.
Sin, even Greed, has a social component.
A one-time Colorado funeral home director had a great – albeit sinful – deal going. She generously charged poor families up to $1,000 for cremations that never occurred and then harvested and sold body parts – heads, spines, arms and legs, mostly for surgical training and other educational purposes, and later gave families ashes from bins mixed with the remains of different cadavers or, in one case, cement. At least a dozen families will never know what happened to their relatives.
Sin is social.
In Florida [Dear God, why does it always have to be Florida?], the Flagler County Commission Chairman was stopped on Interstate 75 by a Florid Highway Patrol trooper; he was clocked at 92 mph in a 70-mph zone. Thirteen days earlier he received a “warning” for hitting 89 mph in a 60-mph zone.
FHP report indicated he flashed “his business card to get out of” a ticket. The commissioner was described in the officer’s report as “extremely condescending, belligerent, illogical and disrespectful.” The commissioner warned the officer that an arrest would be a career “ending move.”
Hey, anyone can make a mistake: 90 or 70, 89 or 60. They’re just numbers – meant to save lives.
Twice in thirteen days.
Sometimes we forget.
One problem. The commissioner in question has a history of speeding tickets: 2017 – 65 in a 55-mph zone on State Road A1A. Then he failed to pay his speeding ticket on time and risked having his license revoked before unsuccessfully attempting to have the Flagler County sheriff intervene with the sheriff of St. Johns County – where the ticket was issued. In December 2018 – almost a month after his swearing in, the commissioner was ticketed for doing 64 in a 55-mph zone.
On November 26, 2021, he added to his ticket collection by hitting 85 in a 65-mph zone on I-4 in Seminole county and then managed to hit 89 in a 60 zone on I-4 on June 2, 2022. The trooper noted on that ticket: “VISUAL SPEED 90 MPH, ACTUAL 91.7, POSTED 60.”
The commissioner’s speeding hasn’t killed anyone – YET! But he’s surely put lives in danger.
Real sin is always social – even if you’re a county commissioner.
The author of Proverbs 16:18 (probably King Solomon - c. 970–931 BCE) – reminds us
“Pride goes before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
In the Sixth Century, Pope Gregory I – “the Great” - outlined the Seven Deadly Sins. Expanding on Gregory’s work, Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) wrote:
“Pride is the first sin, the source of all other sins, and the worst sin…
“Pride is the habit, the vice, which disposes a man to make
himself more than he is.
Pride is a special vice, for it has the special object of
inordinate esteem for one’s own excellence.”
Summa Theologica 162
Aquinas also cited Gregory’s “four species of pride,” including “claiming excellence not possessed.” Significantly, Aquinas reminds us,
“Since pride is a direct turning away from God
and is a practical act of contempt for God,
because it is an unwillingness to be subject to him,
it ranks with that actual hatred for God
which we have called the very worst of sins.
Aversion from God is in all sins, but it is the very essence of pride.
Other sins involve this aversion by their nature as sins;
pride is the sin itself.
Hence the first and worst of all sins is the sin of pride;
it shares this evil distinction with hatred for God.”
After a repeatedly-failed-in-business, thrice-divorced, “reality” television personality lost the popular vote for president the second time and the Electoral College vote for the first time, he tweeted his followers “Big protest… Be there, will be wild.”
U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, writing in The New York Times (July 10, 2022) helps us understand that sin is social:
“I am an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, a U.S. Army veteran and a sergeant who has worked on the force for 16 years, but I’ve never witnessed anything like the Jan. 6 attack — even in combat in Iraq. I was sure I was going to die that day, trampled by the hordes of President Trump’s supporters trying to stop the official transfer of power on his behalf…
“The nine people who died as a result of that horrific day — including the four officers who died by suicide after the attack — weren’t so lucky. Neither was I. At the West Front of the Capitol, I was attempting to hold a tactical police line along with about 60 members of my team, as we were taught at the academy, to keep the invaders at bay. We were savagely beaten and easily overpowered. I would later learn that the mob was estimated to be 10,000 strong…
“My right foot and left shoulder were so damaged that I needed multiple surgeries to repair them. My head was hit with such force with a pipe that I no doubt would have sustained brain damage if not for my helmet…
“I have spent a year and a half in physical therapy for chronic pain that I have been told will never go away. My young son almost lost his father and my wife had to quit medical school, owing to the stress and demands of my ongoing recovery…”
By mid-July 2022, more than 840 men and women had been charged with federal crimes related to the January 6, 2021 insurrection and attempt to impede the peaceful transfer of power. Over 330 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors, and over 200 of them have been sentenced; to date the longest sentence has been five years and three months for a Florida man who pleaded guilty to attacking police officers. Trial date have been set for more than one-hundred others.
Among those awaiting sentencing is Guy Wesley Reffitt, who was convicted of storming the U.S. Capitol with a holstered handgun, carrying zip-tie handcuffs and wearing body armor and a helmet equipped with a video camera. Trial evidence showed that Reffitt planned for weeks to travel from his home in Texas, where he was a leader of a militia group, to Washington “with the specific intent of attacking the Capitol and taking over Congress.”
According to U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nesler, Reffitt told militia group members that he planned to drag House Speaker Nancy Pelosi out of the Capitol building by her ankles, “with her head hitting every step on the way down.”
On returning to Texas, Reffitt threatened his 19-year-old son, Jackson, and 16-year-old daughter, telling them that they would be traitors if they reported him to authorities and “traitors get shot,” Jackson recalled.
Now Nestor Reffitt’s family has been destroyed and he is facing a 15-year prison sentence, because he responded to the promise of a man too proud to admit he had lost the 2020 presidential election – “…will be wild!”
Sin nis always social.