Pope Francis and Social Sin

Jorge Mario Bergoglio as a teenager in Buenos Aires

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"We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most, yet reduced misery the least," Bergoglio said during a gathering of Latin American bishops in 2007. "The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers."

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Christian conservatives oppose the concept of social sin because once sin is defined as social, repentance-and-amends take on social dimensions which in turn, are amenable to government intervention. 

Traditionally, conservatism has defined sin as an individual act of moral "rebellion." 

Denial of collective responsibility exculpates economic systems - indeed all "systems" - since systems are, by definition, impersonal, and therefore beyond moral reproach. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/08/ted-talk-algorithms-and-anti-christ.html

We cannot fault what doesn't exist. People exist as moral agents. Systems do not.

And so, systemic carte blanche has enabled Cowboy Capitalism to metastasize unchecked.

Although Pope Francis is a conservative fellow, his Latin American upbringing forces recognition of social sin whose structure is responsible for evils that are more vicious and more insidious than most individual sin.