I believe this. It’s a struggle, but I do. One of the most difficult aspects of Catholic moral theology to hold on to, and perhaps one of the most revolutionary, is that it forbids us from identifying the human person with evil. Insofar as we are creatures made by God we retain the goodness he put into us. Indeed, this holds true even for Satan. There can be pure goodness, but there cannot be pure evil, because to exist at all is a good and, in rational creatures, to retain things like will and intellect is to retain goods, even when they are perverted against God.
For human beings, this means that it is a lie to say of somebody who sins that we are seeing what they “really are” or that “the mask is off”. Sin is the mask. When we sin, we are not revealing “what we are really made of”. We are hiding what we are really made of, because God made us and he does not create evil. It is (as a priest friend used to delight in saying) when we make a good confession and repent and receive the forgiveness and love of God that the mask comes off and our true face (invariably a good face) is seen again because now we are no longer hiding.
This is hard to live and believe when somebody sins against us and, most especially, when they chronically sin against us. But it remains true anyway and I find that adopting the divine perspective–namely, that God is good and does not create sin–helps me to remember that. It also helps me to remember that when I sin, that is not a revelation of what I truly am but a revelation of what I truly am not and therefore, like Scrooge, God would not show me these things if I am past all hope.
I regard it as a species of temptation (one to which I have succumbed many times) to think or speak of those who sin against me as though they are identical with their sin or that sin constitutes who they are. To do so is to say that they cannot be saved. I reject that utterly. The Son of God died for every single human being who ever lived or will ever live. It is not certain that every human being will accept the gift. But it is absolutely certain that the gift has been offered to all and therefore all are capable of receiving it. Nothing at all is gained by lying to myself that somebody who has sinned against me is “intrinsically evil”. It is to insult God as the Author of Evil and to insult the sacrifice of Christ as a lie. I refuse to do that.
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