Did The Boys Just Get Something Really Wrong about Penance, or Something Really Right about Sin?

In what will for many be a largely forgettable moment in the utterly absurd episode 5 of season 4 of Amazon’s provocative, satirical, action, dark comedy The Boys, two characters going through existential crises (though who isn’t on that show) have an honest and sobering conversation about faith, sin and forgiveness. Annie and “Frenchie,” as he’s called, are walking on a pathway of this abandoned farm-turned-secret-experiment-super-serum-virus-lab when she sees him clutching his Rosary. Annie, who has her own complicated background with Christianity in the show due to her Evangelical spokeswoman superhero roots, is surprised and says “I didn’t know you were a Catholic.” Having watched enough media that includes characters holding Rosaries, especially when the character had not been shown with one once prior to this episode, I fully expected the usual reference to his grandmother or his culture as the real reason why he held onto it, not that he actually believed any of that stuff. 

I have to say I was taken for a bit of a ride when I heard his response, which was that despite everything, we'll get into his past in a moment, he believes. And he doesn’t just say he believes “in faith” or “in people,” though he does first say “something about the drama of it appeals,” which could be considered a sort of write-off, but there is a case to be made that the deeper appeal to the heart in our postmodern world is going to be precisely through the channel of story, or drama one could say. This element, however, is not the main point of this article so I don’t want to be distracted by it. In a surprising turn, he actually uses the phrases “with all my heart” and “all of it” as part of his response. Still expecting some totally misinformed version of Christianity, especially Catholicism, I am again surprised when he actually starts listing things like “the Trinity” and “the Resurrection,” concluding with the “sacraments.” It was here, however, when the other shoe dropped as he followed with “well except for…penance,” and began to give a very distasteful description of the sacrament. 

I could have just rolled my eyes and wrote him off as yet another example of Hollywood taking another shot at the Church, but I continued listening because I was intrigued. Of all the Sacraments to attack, why Penance? It seems like, for his character, this would be the one sacrament he would actually at least want to believe in.

I said earlier we would get into this character's past. Not a lot of detail is necessary but his character, before we meet him on the show, had a past that included drugs, taking, selling and smuggling, and murder-for-hire, and not just “other bad guys” but innocent people, including families. Some of these sins are coming back to haunt him especially in this season, which is what makes this conversation important to his character arc. 

Annie, reminded of her own continued but complicated attachment to Christianity, responds that, “Forgiving is important.” And Frenchie agrees, but adds, “Forgiving yes, but being forgiven?” This is when we start to see the reality behind his struggle. His cynicism is not actually directed toward Penance, sinful priests or even the Church, it is directed toward himself. 

Again, I am shocked by the next two phrases he utters for the raw emotion behind them and for the hard reality they convey. He first says, “Some sins God should not forgive.” Now, pause for a moment to reflect on this. He did not say “cannot forgive” or “would not forgive,” but “should not.” Should is the language of duty, of pure justice, of the law. He follows up with an even more punishing line, “Some sins deserve eternal damnation.” This is not the comfortable, acceptable version of Christianity that is *supposed* to be presented. Christians in media are not even allowed to believe in hell, much less an eternal one, and damnation is such an ugly word. To say that God does not owe us forgiveness, that our sins deserve hell, this is as close to a fire-and-brimstone sermon as one can get.

One hears from various modern Catholic and other Christian writers and speakers that before we can really hear “the Good News” of Jesus and salvation we need to first really hear “the Bad News,” of sin and death. This is simply Romans 3:23 that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” It has become unfashionable, antiquated, “not pastoral” for Christians to preach the bad news. Ironically, in The Boys it is the one who feels furthest from that opportunity for grace that recognizes the need for it so clearly. 

This illustrates so painfully well the truly destructive nature of sin. It destroys our purity, it destroys our relationship with God and others, but beyond these it even destroys our hope. Here we see a character, who to a less dramatic degree represents all of us with any history of sin, who knows he has fallen short. Because of this he knows that this cannot stand, that this sin must be reckoned, but sees no way through that reckoning. He sees justice without mercy, the very mercy that flows from the Resurrection he claimed earlier to believe in. It is also the very mercy he says he is responsible to give to others, remember he had no problem with “forgiving,” just with “being forgiven.”

Fittingly, Annie suggests he discuss this with another friend from their group who shares a similar dark past and with whom he has bonded more closely in the time of the show. While Annie, and presumably the showrunners, do not realize it, she is illustrating the essential role of the “Body of Christ,” the Church in supporting each other and bearing other’s burdens. Without getting into a whole theology of it, but this is the fitting, and beautiful, benefit of indulgences in that the graces and virtues of Christ and the Saints are shared even when we do not have the strength to participate in them perfectly. He cannot, at least psychologically at the moment, open himself to the grace of Confession, but he can open himself to her. It is not perfect nor is it a replacement, but it is a start. It is an opening God can use not just for Frenchie, but for everyone who feels isolated from God, the Church and/or the Sacraments. 

Frenchie, holding his Rosary, does not stand in the place of the Pharisee, but kneels in the place of the tax collector. He lies on the ground as the woman caught in adultery. He is washing the feet of Christ with his tears. He is looking downward where he only sees the “eternal damnation” he says his “sins deserve.” It is but a starting point, until his head can be drawn up by the wounded Hand to the face of Christ, the face of mercy, looking back at him.