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Catholic Theology on How Sin Affects God:

As noted earlier, God is a very personal Being. When personal beings are offended, the offender must reciprocate to propitiate the offended; to make a satisfactory rectification; to assure the insulted party that his honor will be preserved; that he is not being taken for granted and that his worth is irreplaceable, and as such, demands the highest respect and recognition.

This should not surprise us. In almost all of the apparitions with which Our Lady has blessed us, especially those of Fatima, she constantly told the seers that mankind was "offending" God by its sins. At various times she said "They must not offend Our Lord any more, for He is already too much offended.....But if people do not stop offending God, another even worse, will begin in the reign of Pius XI," and "stop offending God, Our Lord, Who is already very offended." Needless to say, the word "offend" is one of the most prominent in all Marian apparitions.

Moreover, although it is certainly true that a cessation of sin will help to reverse the offense, without a personal demonstration of sorrow, humility and sacrifice directed to the one offended, the effort to rectify cannot even begin. Personal beings first require a recognition of their worth. In a word, God must be propitiated so that sin can be expiated. Thus, the Catechism of the Council of Trent stated:

...that the Church might have a perpetual sacrifice, by which our sins might be expiated, and our heavenly Father, oftentimes grievously offended by our crimes, might be turned away from wrath to mercy, from the severity of just chastisement to clemency.⁽²⁴⁾

We see this same theme all over Catholic theology. In another place Trent's Catechism states: "...our heavenly Father, oftentimes grievously offended by our crimes, might be turned away from wrath to mercy."⁽²⁵⁾ Ludwig Ott reiterates the same:

By atonement in general is understood the satisfaction of a demand. In the narrower sense it is taken to mean the reparation of an insult: satisfactio nihil aliud est quam injuriae alteri illatae compensatio (Roman Catechism, II, 5, 59). This occurs through a voluntary performance which outweighs the injustice done...Thus Christ's atonement was, through its intrinsic value, sufficient to counterbalance the infinite insult offered to God, which is inherent in sin.⁽²⁶⁾

Representative of many traditional Catholic theologians, M. C. D'Arcy writes: "Calvary was a propitiatory sacrifice. As the name implies, it is the attempt of man to placate an offended God and to give satisfaction."⁽²⁷⁾ The Catholic Encyclopedia adds:

...Redemption has reference to both God and man. On God's part, it is the acceptation of satisfactory amends whereby the Divine honor is repaired and the Divine wrath appeased....The judicial axiom 'honor est in honorante, injuria in injuriato' (honour is measured by the dignity of him who receives it) shows that mortal sin bears in a way an infinite malice and that nothing short of a person possessing infinite worth is capable of making full amends for it....'For an adequate satisfaction,' says St. Thomas, 'it is necessary that the act of him who satisfies should possess an infinite value and proceed from one who is both God and Man'" (ST, III, Q. 1, a. 2, ad 2um).⁽²⁸⁾

The Encyclopedia continues: "Satisfaction, or the payment of a debt in full, means, in the moral order, an acceptable reparation of honor offered to the person offended and, of course, implies a penal and painful work."⁽²⁹⁾

Many of the popes caught this truth as well. As representative of their consensus are the words of Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis:

That he completed his work on the gibbet of the cross is the unanimous teaching of the holy Fathers...through his triumph on the cross...he won power and dominion over the Gentiles...by his blood shed on the cross God's anger was averted and all the heavenly gifts...could then flow from the fountains of our savior for the salvation of men.⁽³⁰⁾

Although just in its beginning stages, many of the Fathers understood the propitiatory atonement of Christ as well. Cyril of Jerusalem states:

For if a king were to banish certain who had given him offence, and then those who belong to them should weave a crown and offer it to him on behalf of those under punishment, would he not grant a remission of their penalties? In the same way, when we offer to Him our supplications for those who have fallen asleep, though they be sinners, weave no crown, but offer up Christ sacrificed for our sins, propitiating our merciful God for them as well as for ourselves.⁽³¹⁾

Augustine adds:

But what is meant by 'justified in His blood'?....Was it indeed so, that when God the Father was wroth with us, He saw the death of His Son for us, and was appeased towards us? Was then His Son already so far appeased towards us, that He even deigned to die for us; while the Father was still so far wroth, that except His Son died for us, He would not be appeased?⁽³²⁾

Conclusion:

In the end, we must realize that Gibson's brutal portrayal of Christ's crucifixion is not exaggerated or superfluous in the least. Every ounce of blood spilt, every blow to the head, every spit in the face, every thorn in the forehead, every nail and spear in the body, were all calculated, expected and necessary to serve as a propitiatory sacrifice to God the Father, to avert His wrath and preserve His honor. If anything, Christ's gruesome sufferings show us how supremely and majestically high God is above us (Is 6:1-6; 55:9).

One of the most brutal scenes in Gibson's film is the scourging at the pillar. The Roman soldiers are in a virtual frenzy, first whipping Christ with flogging rods and, after Christ appears to have miraculously sustained it, they mercilessly flail him with the famous Roman cords containing bone chips or iron pellets at the ends. After they leave not an inch of flesh on his back unstained with gapping wounds, they untie one of his hands and turn him over to whip him the same way on the front side. As the soldiers are beating him they are laughing and cavorting with one another, reveling in the intense sadistic pleasure this act of violence is apparently creating for them. Gibson chose to make this scene so gruesome because of his reading of the Dolorous Passion from the visions of the nineteenth century German mystic and victim soul Anne Catherine Emmerich, who wrote that, at the moment the soldiers began beating Jesus, Satan entered into each one of them, which made them scourge Jesus all the more intensely.

In the Pieta Prayer Booklet, of which so many traditional Catholics are familiar, we find that St. Elizabeth, St. Matilda and St. Bridget speak of a letter written by Christ himself. In April 1890, the letter received the approval of Pope Leo XIIII. In it, Christ reminisces over each of His sufferings. It reads as follows:

Be it known that the number of armed soldiers were 150; those who trailed me while I was bound were 23. The executioners of justice were 83; the blows received on my head were 150; those on my stomach, 108; kicks on my shoulders, 80. I was led, bound with cords by the hair, 24 times; spits in the face were 180; I was beaten on the body 6,666 times; beaten on the head, 110 times. I was roughly pushed, and at 12 o'clock was lifted up by the hair; pricked with thorns and pulled by the beard 23 times; received 20 wounds on the head; thorns of marine junks, 72; pricks of thorns in the head, 110; mortal thorns in the forehead, 3. I was afterwards flogged and dressed as a mocked king; wounds in the body, 1000. The soldiers who led me to the Calvary were 608; those who watched me were 3, and those who mocked me were 1008; the drops of blood which I lost were 28,430.⁽³³⁾

As you can see in your mind's eye, the above details of His torture are even more graphic than Gibson's movie. In any case, we can rest assured that God the Father required no more from Christ than what was absolutely necessary to appease His wrath and preserve His honor, and by the same token, did not miss, or consider incidental, any suffering which Christ underwent. From now on, whenever God is confronted by our sin, He can look at the sufferings of His Son and be appeased, and this happens at every Catholic Mass.

In the end, the problem is not the graphic portrayal of Christ's suffering in Gibson's film. The problem is that men have lost sight of the seriousness of sin and how much it offends a holy and almighty God. They don't understand Gibson's graphic film because they have little notion of what it takes to appease an angry God. Unfortunately, those who refuse to understand it now, will be forced to discover it when they meet Him at Judgment Day.

Robert Sungenis
Catholic Apologetics International
3-02-04

Footnotes:

1) National Review, February 25, 2004, "Caught in the Crossfire: Gibson and his movie."
2) Andy Rooney to Don Imus, on The Don Imus Show, courtesy of the Matt Drudge website.
3) Origen on Romans 3:24 in PG 14, 945; PG 13, 1397; Ambrose on 1 Peter 1:18 in PL 16, 1299; an implied agreement by Jerome in PL 26, 480; Augustine in one oblique instance, De Trinitate 13, 15 (PL 42, 1029; NPNF I, vol. 3, p. 178.
4) Ibid., p. 187.
5) Cur Deus Homo, ii, xix.
6) Cur Deus Homo i, xiii...i, xiii...ii, xiv.
7) Summa Theologica III, Q. 49, Art. 4, emphasis added; See also ST 1a, 2ae, 87, 1-6; 3, 48, 2; De Veritate, 28, 2.
8) From the Hebrew in the Hitpael verb form indicating intense pain experienced by the self. The same form appears in Genesis 34:7. The Piel form, which is just as intensive, appears in Isaiah 63:10, "they...grieved His Holy Spirit").
9) This Hebrew text appears in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, p. 760. The LXX renders part as Christ "seeing light" through His suffering. In the above translation, the Hebrew "nephesh" is translated both "life" and "soul." Shaba is the normal Hebrew word for "satisfied" and is also used by Isaiah in 9:20; 44:16, and 66:11.
10) Operatio in Psalmum 22 (21), 1583 Wittenberg ed., III, 331-334. Cited in Sin, Redemption and Sacrifice by S. Lyonnet and L. Sabourin, p. 229.
11) Institutes 2:16:10 and 2:16:12.
12) This interpretation was held by the Fathers in consensus, beginning with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, through Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory of Nanzianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, et al., and through the Middle Ages. See S. Lyonnet and L. Sabourin, "Sin, Redemption and Sacrifice," pp. 189-224, for a thorough documentation of the patristic and mediaeval witnesses. Augustine, for example, states: "Those who know the Scriptures of the Old Testament ill approve of what I say. For not once but very often 'sins' there are called 'sacrifices for sins'" (Sermon, 134, IV, 5, PL 38, 745). Aquinas writes: "God made him to be 'sin,' that is, he made him suffer the penalty of sin, when he was offered up for our sins" (Epistle to the Galatians, III, 5). Conversely, Martin Luther held that Christ personified sin. On Galatians 3:13 he wrote: "And all the prophets saw this, that Christ was to become the greatest thief, murderer, adulterer, robber, desecrator, blasphemer, etc., there has ever been anywhere in the world....In short, he has and bears all the sins of all men in his body." (WA 2, 517). The extent of his belief is noted here: "Whatever sins I, you, and all of us have committed or may commit in the future, they are as much Christ's own as if he himself had committed them. In short, our sin must be Christ's own sin, or we shall perish eternally" (WA 40, 434). John Calvin held the same. Of 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Isaiah 53:6 he writes: "...That is, he who was about to cleanse the filth of those iniquities was covered with them by transferred imputation" (INT 2:16:6).
13) 1911 edition, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 58.
14) Weimer edition of Luther's Works (WA) 15, 774, and Smalcald Articles, P. II, Art. 2.
15) WA 8, 517, 24f.
16) WA 8, 517, 17.
17) Latin-English Booklet Missal, Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei, Second Edition, November 1992, p. 3.
18) Ibid., p. 13.
19) Ibid., pp. 21, 23.
20) Ibid., p. 25. We should also mention that the Eucharistic Prayer is the only place that the Novus Ordo Missae speaks of offering God a sacrifice. It also has no references to such terms as propitiation or appeasement.
21) Ibid., pp. 27-29.
22) Ibid. p. 31.
23) Ibid. p. 35.
24) The Roman Catechism: The Catechism of the Council of Trent, p. 255.
25) CCT, p. 255.
26) Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, pp. 186, 188.
27) The Mass and Redemption, p. 43.
28) 1911 edition, vol. 12, p. 678.
29) Ibid., p. 678.
30) AAS [1943], 205f, emphasis added
31) Catechetical Lectures, 23, 10.
32) On the Trinity, Book XIII, Ch. 11. See also; Book IV, Ch. 14. Added to these are the early liturgies of the Church, which are saturated with propitiatory language.
33) The Pieta Prayer Booklet: The 15 St. Bridget Prayers (MLOR Corporation, 1998), p. 28.

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