![]() ![]() Enquiring into the causes of sin’s disappearance, Dr Menninger notes first that ‘many former sins have become crimes’, so that responsibility for dealing with them has passed from church to state, from priest to policeman (p.50), while others have dissipated into sicknesses, or at least into symptoms of sickness, so that in their case punishment has been replaced by treatment (pp.74ff.). Does that mean’, he asks, ‘that no sin is involved in all our troubles.? Has no-one committed any sins? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?’ (p.13). ‘It was a word once in everyone’s mind, but is now rarely if ever heard. He has written about it in his book, Whatever Became of Sin? Describing the malaise of western society, its general mood of gloom and doom, he adds that ‘one misses any mention of “sin”’. ![]() One acute observer of the human condition, who has noticed the disappearance of the word, is the American psychiatrist Karl Menninger. “Perhaps it is a deep-seated reluctance to face up to the gravity of sin which has led to its omission from the vocabulary of many of our contemporaries. ![]()
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