A splendid Dostoevskyan passage from Bonhoeffer’s ethics speaks for itself.

“The place where this recognition of guilt becomes real is  the Church. . . .If my share in this  is so small as to seem negligible, that still cannot set my mind at rest; for now it is not a matter of apportioning the blame,  but I must acknowledge that precisely my sin is to blame for  all. I am guilty of uncontrolled desire. I am guilty of cowardly  silence at a time when I ought to have spoken. I am guilty of  hypocrisy and untruthfulness in the face of force. I have  been lacking in compassion and I have denied the poorest of  my brethren. I am guilty of disloyalty and of apostasy from  Christ. . . . It is not a morbidly  egotistical distortion of reality, but it is the essential character  of a genuine confession of guilt that it is incapable of apportioning   blame and pleading a case, but is rather the acknowledgement   of one’s own sin of Adam.”

Using the Ten Commandments as a guide, he then analyzes the guilt of the church:

“The Church confesses that she has not proclaimed often  and clearly enough her message of the one God who has  revealed Himself for all times in Jesus Christ and who suffers  no other gods beside Himself. She confesses her timidity, her  evasiveness, her dangerous concessions. She has often been  untrue to her office of guardianship and to her office of  comfort. And through this she has often denied to the outcast  and to the despised the compassion which she owes them.  She was silent when she should have cried out because the  blood of the innocent was crying aloud to heaven. She has  failed to speak the right word in the right way and at the  right time. She has not resisted to the uttermost the apostasy  of faith, and she has brought upon herself the guilt of the  godlessness of the masses.

“The Church confesses that she has taken in vain the name  of Jesus Christ, for she has been ashamed of this name before the world and she has not striven forcefully enough against  the misuse of this name for an evil purpose. She has stood by  while violence and wrong were being committed under cover  of this name. And indeed she has left uncontradicted, and  has thereby abetted, even open mockery of the most holy  name. She knows that God will not leave unpunished one  who takes His name in vain as she does. . . .

“She  has incurred the guilt of restlessness and disquiet, and also of  the exploitation of labour even beyond the working weekday,  because her preaching of Jesus Christ has been feeble and  her public worship has been lifeless. . . .

“[She is] guilty of the collapse of parental   authority. She offered no resistance to contempt for  age and idolization of youth, for she was afraid of losing  youth, and with it the future. . . .

“”[She] has witnessed the lawless  application of brutal force, the physical and spiritual suffering   of countless innocent people, oppression, hatred and  murder, and that she has not raised her voice on behalf of  the victims and has not found ways to hasten to their aid. She  is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenceless brothers of Jesus Christ. . . .

“She has found no word of advice   and assistance in the face of the dissolution of all order  in the relation between the sexes. She has found no strong  and effective answer to the contempt for chastity and to the  proclamation of sexual libertinism. . . .

“The Church confesses that she has witnessed in silence the  spoliation and exploitation of the poor and the enrichment  and corruption of the strong. . . .

“[She is] guilty towards the countless  victims of calumny, denunciation and defamation. She has  not convicted the slanderer of his wrongdoing, and she has  thereby abandoned the slandered to his fate. . . .

“She has not bridled the desires of men  but has stimulated them still further. . . .”

He meets the protests head on: “Had the Church the right to jeopardize her last remaining asset, her public worship and her parish life, by taking up the struggle against the anti-Christian powers? This is the voice of  unbelief, which sees in the confession of guilt only a dangerous moral derogation and which fails to see that the confession of guilt is the re-attainment of the form of Jesus Christ  who bore the sin of the world.”