Sin and Mental Illness

ABCNews.com has an article about a man who is obsessed with trains—so much so that he has been arrested over 20 times for various acts involving trains, none of which were intended to harm anyone. (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AutismNews/story?id=5483969&page=1) On June 14 Darius McCollum was arrested for the 14th time in NYC for criminal trespassing in the subways. Since the age of four McCollum has been fixated on trains, says his mother: "He knew about tracks, and could tell you about yardage and everything. It's unbelievable. ... He knew that underground system better than he knew his name." McCollum has been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a condition that “’is a close cousin of autism,’ says Ami Klin, director of the Autism Program at the Yale Child Study Center at Yale University School of Medicine.” Klin adds that the “disorder makes it difficult for people to judge others' feelings, thoughts and intentions.” The question asked in the headline of the piece, “Can Stealing Buses, Trains be a Sickness?” is an appropriate one considering how today’s scientific advancements have blurred our ability to distinguish between sin and mental illness.

The word sin is judgmental and in today’s climate that label is akin to wearing the Scarlet Letter. But the truth is that sin is very real and it is important that we define it correctly. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says,

“Unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense. But no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man. The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest.” (Catechism, 1860)

So how do we determine imputability? In the case of a kleptomaniac who feels an irresistible urge to steal a blouse from Walmart, the stakes aren’t high. However, there are instances when an individual’s soul hangs in the balance between eternal torment and eternal happiness. As an extreme example, take the cases of madmen like Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Most would consider these men psychotics or psychopaths. Would these men have done what they did if they’d had access to the psychiatric drugs available today? Or were these men simply evil and regardless of psychiatric assistance they would have still committed their crimes against God and humanity. Years ago I read a book by Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler, in which various historians and journalists tried to explain why Hitler became the man he did. The problem many of these intellectuals found is that it is almost impossible to explain Hitler without in some way excusing Hitler. As Emil Fackenheim says, “There will never be an adequate explanation . . . The closer one gets to explicability the more one realizes nothing can make Hitler explicable.” (Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of his Evil - Random House, 1998, pg vii)

I don’t know how to determine imputability. Nevertheless, I do believe that finding the solution is probably the greatest ethical and moral challenge of our time because without it we are left morally adrift, as can be seen today by the virtual absence of all-too-real concepts like sin and evil. How can we expect people to walk the straight and narrow path if we can’t even locate the path?


Donald Tremblay