In 1968, teaching a fourth-grade religion class in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana, Father Edward J. Ruetz pinned a $20 bill above the chalkboard and told the class it would go to the student who could name a sin that wasn’t also a failure to love.

Despite a cavalcade of guesses, the prize ultimately went unclaimed.

More than half a century later, this example still offers insight for many Catholics when it comes to their grasp of what sin actually is and how it works. Many Catholics remember the definitions and distinctions learned in religion class or Sunday School: venial (less serious) sins vs. mortal sins, sins of commission vs. omission (“in what I have done and in what I have failed to do”), the seriousness of sexual sins, and of course the seven deadly ones. They might also recall that the church requires them to go to confession once a year. But these scattered details do little to elucidate what Ruetz, who died in 2021 at the age of 95, was trying to impart to his fourth graders.

The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) realigned Catholic understandings of revelation, grace, and salvation around a radically relational and Christ-centered vision. Despite this effort, sin is still an area in which people in the pews can fall short in their understanding.

“I think most people are trained to think of sin as breaking the rules or coloring outside the lines” and “as something very private,” says Marcus Mescher, associate professor of Christian ethics at Xavier University in Cincinnati. He adds that rugged individualism leads people to think that sin is between them and God alone. “I really don’t think people understand sin as social or structural.”