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Notes -
A pre-Lenten post that's been in the works for a while.
On April 10, 1947, a man named Rudolf Hoss went to confession, six days before his execution. Hardly a particularly unusual course of events, but Hoss had left the Catholic Church in his teens over an incident involving confession, joined the Nazi party, and would shortly therafter issue the following declaration:
He was not the only war criminal to seek absolution following WWII. On the other side of the world, Yasuhiko Asaka would convert to Catholicism in 1951. While his connection to the imperial family would prevent his being charged for war crimes, he gave the order beginning the rape of Nanking. His immediate superior, general Matsui, who was executed for the crime, spent his retirement after the massacre promoting devotion to the Buddhist goddess of mercy and advocating for full independence for captured territories, and his last request was for his family to adopt a maid, presumably a large favor in postwar Japan.
On a lesser scale, I have spoken to missionary priests who talk movingly of impoverished third worlders walking hundreds of miles, often barefoot, to go to confession, often with no interest in the faith beyond it(especially in west Africa, it seems many had been baptized by Pentecostals but wished to confess transgressions rather than simply trust in the mercy of God- He may forgive, but does your ancestor spirit?). The early Spanish missionaries in Mexico noticed the same thing- Indians clamored for confession, they clamored for baptism, for release from their sins, but before the Guadalupe apparition had few interested in the practice of the faith.
The natural state of man is to fear retribution from the immaterial- will the ancestors punish me? Is the river angry with my conduct, will it flood? Have I cursed the whole village? How can I appease them? Will there be retribution on me, or maybe on my whole clan?
We have not moved past this. WEIRD Americans speak of Karma, of what comes around goes around, of 'garbage people getting what's coming'. It's been noted that the SJW brigade seems not to forgive; transgressions contaminate you, your works, your associates... forever. I don't know any SJWs so I have to take the motte's word for it.
Scott noted new atheism as a failed hamartialogy, but he focused mostly on the question of 'why do bad things happen to good people'- there's another aspect to hamartialogy, the question of 'how can I, as a person, move past my sins? How can I end the contamination?'. In Catholicism there's a simple answer- confess to a priest, do whatever penance he gives you. There might be purely natural consequences, like health problems from drug use, but the contamination is gone. As far as I know there is no other answer, anywhere, ever. Notice general Matsui, above, never seemed to regard himself as having atoned for the rape of Nanking- and he said, at the time:
Even if you are a secular materialist, the time to think about what you have done wrong is nigh. And it's the time to remember that guilt is real, very real. How does your society remove guilt? I suspect for many, the answer is 'it doesn't'. And removing guilt serves a vital and important function. We see it, so I am told, in the internecine warfare of SJWs over being too closely associated with wrongthinkers- without it you can't reintegrate into the community. We see it in the man weighed down with guilt over his past behavior, unable to move on. And I suppose we see it more controversially with the post-religious right, hanging a sword of damocles over the heads of converts from all sorts of degenerate behavior. Former abortion doctors and homosexuals are minor celebrities in Christian spaces; I suspect many of these people would have committed suicide without the ideas of Christian mercy.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/03/03/how-things-even-out
This comedy piece sort of encapsulates how I feel about karma. In the long run, things even out. Maybe a bunch of bad stuff is happening, but good things will happen eventually. Maybe innocent people are being punished now, but in the long run guilty people will get away with stuff, and innocent people will get away with stuff too, and the guilty people will be punished for other stuff, and every permutation thereof.
Except if the human race goes instinct, ofc. Then all bets about future karma are off, so to speak.
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