A Nation of Murderers?

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 13, 2026

Among the first directives Jesus gives His first priests after His glorious resurrection is to forgive sins in His name. He institutes the Sacrament of Penance. Jesus saves us by forgiving our sins. Sinful corruption has both personal and institutional dimensions.

Penitents confess their sins to the priest, and the priest grants the absolution of Christ through the Church. The Church’s inviolable “seal of confession” safeguards the confession of sins, thereby protecting our natural secrets and upholding the Eighth Commandment.

The Catholic understanding of sin is essential to our understanding of human corruption. Original Sin did not obliterate us, but it wounded our souls and robbed us of our right to heaven. Baptism washes away the stain of sin and directs us on the path to heaven. However, sinful inclinations remain. We feel the tug of temptation because of our fallen human nature. When we freely consent to temptation, we are guilty of sin and need God’s forgiveness. Venial sins disfigure our souls. Mortal sins disfigure and kill our souls.

The guilt of venial sin is removed with repentance, especially during the Penitential Rite as Mass begins or during an examination of conscience before retiring at night. Mortal sin, such as deliberately missing Mass on Sunday without a sufficient reason, is removed with perfect contrition. Perfect contrition is sincere sorrow for offending God out of love for Him. How can we be certain? Hence, a thoughtful encounter with Christ in the Sacrament of Penance forgives mortal sin with certainty.

As we examine our consciences, we identify the sins that corrupt our hearts. Violations of the Ten Commandments are a good place to start. What are my false gods, where have I used the name of God in vain, or failed to attend Sunday Mass? How have I disrespected my parents and lawful authorities, consented to murderous thoughts, and committed internal or external acts of impurity? How have I abused the lawful property of others, gossiped, lied, or unjustly revealed the secrets of others?

We may prefer the listing of the seven capital sins as an examen. Have I been sinfully proud, vain, unjustly angry, abusive in anger, lustful in thought and deed, gluttonous in food and drink, sinfully lazy, greedy, or envious? Perhaps the cardinal virtues can help us identify our vices. How have we neglected the virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage?

Personal sins also corrupt institutions. Normally, a law-enforcement organization that polices its internal affairs is not corrupt. However, a police force becomes corrupt when authorities overlook or tolerate the corruption of its occasional bad actors. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has the most serious responsibility to teach and guard the pristine teachings of the faith. However, when bad actors—including priests and bishops—are not disciplined for egregious sins, the organization becomes corrupt. Thus the Church’s hierarchy is in continual need of holy reform.

The Church’s hierarchy is hardly alone. The public-school system in this country is also vulnerable to institutional failure of this kind. But the centralization of the Church, its prominence, and the grandeur of Catholic teaching make it an especially visible target for public scrutiny.

Similar institutional corruption takes place in our workplaces. Typically, the bigger the organization, the more intractable the corruption is. Money—as in so-called non-disclosure agreements—can obscure the extent of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, confronting such institutional corruption requires the virtues of prudence and courage.

In the following remarks, do not make the mistake of suggesting a priest is dabbling in politics. He is not. He is invoking principles of moral theology drawn from solemn Church teaching. In the documents of Vatican II, the post-World War II Council Fathers taught this:

Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.

In the same section, they (not the priest!) also state:

Genocide, as well as any action designed to exterminate entire peoples or ethnic groups, is a crime against God and man himself. It must be condemned as such.

So when the President recently made statements threatening Iran with devastating consequences if it didn’t comply with US demands, he entered morally grave territory as judged by the Church’s just-war teaching.

The President said Iran would be “living in Hell” if it did not submit, and he warned of attacks on infrastructure like bridges and power plants. In one statement to reporters around Easter events, he said if Iran didn’t give in, “they’ll have no bridges… no power plants… no anything.”

Around the same time, President Trump also used inflammatory language on social media, threatening effectively to “blow up the whole country” and return Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” He warned: “A whole civilization will die… never to be brought back again” if Iran didn’t meet his demands.

These statements cross a serious moral line in their content and public effect. Measured against the Fifth Commandment and the Church’s tradition of just-war reasoning, such language (even if bluffing) recklessly contemplates and popularizes indiscriminate harm and total destruction as instruments of policy.

Of course, judgment of the President’s interior disposition belongs to God alone. We judge not the man, but we must judge his words. If left uncontested, such words shape a wider culture of moral indifference—and even of mass murder as a legitimate instrument of state policy. The words also corrupt the moral culture of government institutions. Whether such patterns are corrected or quietly absorbed into institutional patterns of thought is a matter of serious moral responsibility.

The President’s assertions and the ambiguity surrounding the attack on the school of little girls early in the war undermine confidence in official explanations. We of the Catholic hierarchy know something about institutional equivocation and cowardice.

After the Resurrection, Jesus addressed Mary Magdalene by name. He knows and loves each human being by name. We are Christians. We must not become a nation of murderers.