Responsibility should therefore be assigned proportionately rather than either universalized or denied. Knowledge matters. Power matters. Role matters. Capacity matters. A corporate executive bears obligations different from those of an entry-level employee; a pastor bears responsibilities different from those of an occasional attendee; a legislator possesses capacities different from those of an individual voter. Benefit is not identical to guilt, and people may inherit advantages they did not choose. But once a harmful pattern is known, present beneficiaries and decision-makers can acquire responsibilities to correct what they now have power to maintain or change.2 John Paul II’s language of “structures of sin” is useful precisely because such structures remain rooted in personal acts even after they become durable social environments.3

If sin becomes institutional,........

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