A Line Through the Human Heart On Sinning and Being Forgiven

We were saddened to hear of the death of author Fr. James Schall, S.J., on April 17, 2019. Thank you for your interest in his book. Please take a moment to pray for his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed. Thank you.

Who does not long for a “sinless” world where nothing we do goes wrong, nothing we do has dire consequences for others, nothing we do need make us sorry? But we do not live in such a world. Furthermore, if we give the matter some thought—as is done in these pages—we come to see that in such a world we would not even really want to live.

Rather than talking endlessly of mercy, helping the poor, legislating ever more and newer “rights,” we will find it most refreshing to become—for a time at least—realists. If we turn a clear eye inward, we find that the source of most human ills lies, not surprisingly, within our own souls, in our habits, in our conception of what we are.

A Line Through the Human Heart is not a systematic treatise on sin and all its consequences. It is, rather, a compilation of many short reflections upon the issues that never fail to arise for all people, especially those fully aware that they are living in an imperfect world. This is a book of quiet insight that enables us to look at the reality of this world, a reality we ourselves have too often abused, for only in this way may we come to see it as something flawed, which we can begin to repair simply by our act of acknowledging what is right, what ought to be, what we want to be—beings whose sins are forgiven.