Are all mortal sins equal

[Sheryl_Ann]

I have been under the belief that if you die with unconfessed mortal sins on your soul, you will go to hell. Period. However, some mortal sins such as missing mass occasionally, or occasionally having a few too many drinks,don’t compare to murder or adultery. Will God send those of us to hell for missing mass just like those who commit murder?. It just doesn’t seem right. I’ve heard God doesn’t sent us to hell, but it’s our choice if we don’t accept God. However, I believe many people do accept God, but just might have a time where they are a little lazy or get caught up in life, they still love God. What do you think?

 

[thistle]

I have been under the belief that if you die with unconfessed mortal sins on your soul, you will go to hell. Period. However, some mortal sins such as missing mass occasionally, or occasionally having a few too many drinks,don’t compare to murder or adultery. Will God send those of us to hell for missing mass just like those who commit murder?. It just doesn’t seem right. I’ve heard God doesn’t sent us to hell, but it’s our choice if we don’t accept God. However, I believe many people do accept God, but just might have a time where they are a little lazy or get caught up in life, they still love God. What do you think?

In the first place God does not send anyone to Hell. Anyone dying in a state of mortal sin has freely chosen to reject God’s love and go to Hell.
Second, while some mortal sins have more gravity than others it makes no difference. If you die in a state of mortal sin (whether it was missing Mass or committing murder) you go to Hell.

 

[Tarpeian_Rock]

In the first place God does not send anyone to Hell. Anyone dying in a state of mortal sin has freely chosen to reject God’s love and go to Hell.
Second, while some mortal sins have more gravity than others it makes no difference. If you die in a state of mortal sin (whether it was missing Mass or committing murder) you go to Hell.

I have trouble with the concept that someone who skips Mass occasionally ( or who, in the old days, had a hot dog on a Friday) receives the same judgment as a life-long abortionist.

 

[Operations66]

Remember God, Jesus, and our guardian angels want us to go to heaven. It is highly possible, and even likely in my opinion, that at the moment of death we are offered a last chance to repent for our sins.

Living a Catholic life in a state of grace is a good way to make sure we get to heaven, but let’s give God a little credit, please. There is no reason to think He will not reach out to us at the end.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I have trouble with the concept that someone who skips Mass occasionally ( or who, in the old days, had a hot dog on a Friday) receives the same judgment as a life-long abortionist.

I think we just had this discussion on some thread where a guy was saying that eating a ham sandwich on Friday shouldn’t be the same as committing a murder.

The answer, as I see it, is that it’s probably unlikely that skipping Mass occasionally or even eating the hot dog is a “mortal sin” meeting all the elements of mortal sin:

• Its subject matter must be grave.
• It must be committed with full knowledge (and awareness) of the sinful action and the gravity of the offense.
• It must be committed with deliberate and complete consent.

There are people who skip Mass “occasionally” because they get too caught up in some family or social commitment, or eat a hot dog on abstinent Friday because they forget or got so hungry they just had to have something. Many of them don’t think of an occasional missed Mass as “grave” because they weren’t trained to think that and don’t sit around reading CAF all day. As for the hot dog, they may have forgotten, may not think that one hot dog is “grave” or may have gotten so hungry they felt compelled to eat the first thing that looks good. All of these are grounds on which God might say this isn’t a mortal sin at all.

That doesn’t make it good to take a chance but I do feel that people sometimes really overemphasize sins to the point that almost everything becomes “grave matter” and the “full knowledge” and “deliberate and complete consent” elements get ignored. These last two elements could even, conceivably, be used for God to forgive something like a murder, much less a hot dog on Friday.

A lot of people have a very rule-oriented law-and-order approach to Catholicism and want to have mortal sins very clearly defined so they can say “That’s a mortal sin and you are definitely going to hell”, etc. But in practice, and in view of a loving God, it doesn’t work that way.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

By the way, I myself don’t believe that having a few too many drinks with husband or friends, as I do maybe 1 to 3 times per year, making sure that I have a designated driver or am drinking at home, and making sure not to lose control of myself to the point that I do other sinful things like go home with a sailor, is a mortal sin. If it is, guess I’ll have to throw myself on God’s mercy

 

[Tantum_ergo]

I have trouble with the concept that someone who skips Mass occasionally ( or who, in the old days, had a hot dog on a Friday) receives the same judgment as a life-long abortionist.

There is a difference. If the person does so deliberately and died unrepentant, or ate the meal deliberately, and dies unrepentant, that is mortal sin.

The whole point is ‘unrepented at death". Even the abortionist could repent at death and be forgiven, right?’

I mean, think of it. “Mortal” is deadly, right?

If you have killed your relationship with God deliberately, then you have chosen Hell.
Whether you chose to ‘kill the relationship’ with a deadly sin that doesn’t ‘appear’ to be so ‘big’ to Joe Average, or whether you decided to do it with a deadly sin that everybody (right now) accepts as a bad thing, doesn’t matter.

It would be like complaining that it isn’t fair that one person dies from a painful long drawn out disease, and another dies quickly and painlessly. . .they’re BOTH dead, aren’t they?

How about taking the abortionist, letting him repent at the point of death, and then letting him into heaven right next to Mother Teresa.

Does it seem ‘fair’ that somebody who did so much evil and then repented at the last possible second gets to share the same eternal fate as somebody who did so much GOOD in life?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Does it seem ‘fair’ that somebody who did so much evil and then repented at the last possible second gets to share the same eternal fate as somebody who did so much GOOD in life?

No, it doesn’t seem fair, but then neither does the tale of the Prodigal Son seem fair, yet that is how God operates.
That abortionist is the Prodigal Son, and Mother Theresa is the good, responsible son; but because she’s a saint, she probably would not have said “this is unfair” but instead would have been the second person in line after the Father to welcome the prodigal abortionist.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

No, it doesn’t seem fair, but then neither does the tale of the Prodigal Son seem fair, yet that is how God operates.
That abortionist is the Prodigal Son, and Mother Theresa is the good, responsible son; but because she’s a saint, she probably would not have said “this is unfair” but instead would have been the second person in line after the Father to welcome the prodigal abortionist.

Exactly. And that was my point to Tarpeian Rock: It’s not about what seems to be fair in our eyes, it is what God sees in the heart.

We don’t see 'deliberately eating a hot dog on Friday, and saying to God, “I will do what I want, the heck with your rules” as being anything but a childish tantrum, and so we don’t want to see that person treated as a responsible adult. We want God to say, “Oh that’s all right, it’s certainly not like that abortionist, it doesn’t matter that you’re stamping your foot at me and saying you won’t obey me, it’s such a ‘petty thing’, come on in to heaven”. . .

but that would not be right, despite our perception. I can’t imagine God’s perfection, because I’m not perfect, but if HE accepts a person who is defying Him as being capable of doing so with all the ‘bases’, i.e. grave matter, full knowledge, full consent, even if I think it’s NOT grave, no big deal. . .well, He knows better than I.

 

[Crusaderbear]

Hell is a choice, not a sentence. I think it would take more than simply saying ‘sorry about that…’ To truly repent, and probably considerable time on purgatory…

 

[Tis_Bearself]

From what I have read (I think from Padre Pio, maybe others as well) God takes people who are dying through their lives and shows them things and gives them a chance to repent and be with him before he just chucks them in the pit.

Most believers are going to at least be having God in mind as they start to give up the ghost, and therefore will be open to this kind of “review” with him, like a performance review. If someone is really so far gone that they’d say “get lost God, I don’t want any part of you” then off to Hell they go.

We should not just commit sins assuming “God will forgive this” or “I can repent on my deathbed” but neither should we assume that a loving God will chuck someone into Hell over one hot dog…more likely he’d look to see if there was a pattern of offenses, or a lack of love of God in some respect, and then maybe off to Purgatory for a while.

 

[Nigel7]

thistle:

If you die in a state of mortal sin (whether it was missing Mass or committing murder) you go to Hell.

God sends people to hell for willingly missing church once on Sunday, huh?
This is such a blanket misrepresentation of Church teaching and scripture.

Sheryl Ann, while we are expected to grow in our faith, in strength and discipline, and to always strive with all our might to follow after Him, God is not looking for a reason to damn us or to be apart from us forever, to catch us in a slip before we die and then damn us for all eternity.
It’s ridiculous to think of someone who loves God with all their heart and strives to live a life according to their faith yet stumbles once again and then dies before confession that God would send them to hell.
As if at the great judgement, considering everything that took place in a person’s life, good and bad, and the mercy of Christ and a person’s relationship with Him, and that God’s going to say to them “You missed church that one Sunday before you died so into the furnace with you along with the rest of the chaff!”
What a waste and utter nonsense. It is simply not sound Catholic theology, and not Church teaching. Do not listen to fear mongering.

Some folks on an internet forum will see things in terms of absolutes, everything black and white. “You did THIS, and so you’re going to HELL!”.

There’s a lot more going on there in a person’s life than that they for whatever reason talked themselves out of going to mass one Sunday.

God knows our hearts and every fiber of our being and every variable in our worldly and spiritual universe that plays into our every personal action, variables which we cannot even conceive of which are effecting us for better or worse.
God see’s it all and knows it all. A person on an internet forum only see’s that a mass was missed and that under certain conditions this is considered a mortal sin and so automatically results in eternal damnation. Period.
That’s nonsense, false, and a destructive ideology to propagate.

God is not bound by sacraments. While the sacraments are for our benefit God is free to operate outside of them, to forgive a sinner who is repentant before they get to formal confession. Our actually going to confession provides us the assurance of our forgiveness and our standing in Grace and restores us to the sacramental life of the Church.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

God sends people to hell for willingly missing church once on Sunday, huh?
This is such a blanket misrepresentation of Church teaching and scripture.

Sheryl Ann, while we are expected to grow in our faith, in strength and discipline, and to always strive to follow after Him, God is not looking for a reason to damn us or to be apart from us forever, to catch us in a slip before we die and then damn us for all eternity.
It’s ridiculous to think of someone who loves God with all their heart and strives to live a life according to their faith yet stumbles once again and then dies before confession that God would send them to hell.
As if at the great judgement, considering everything that took place in a person’s life, good and bad, and the mercy of Christ and a person’s relationship with Him, and that God’s going to say to them “You missed church that one Sunday before you died so into the furnace with you along with the rest of the chaff!”
What a waste and utter nonsense. It is simply not sound Catholic theology, and not Church teaching. Do not listen to fear mongering.

Some folks on an internet forum will see things in terms of absolutes, everything black and white. “You did THIS, and so you’re going to HELL!”.

There’s a lot more going on there in a person’s life than that they for whatever reason talked themselves out of going to mass one Sunday.

God knows our hearts and every fiber of our being and every variable in our worldly and spiritual universe that plays into our every personal action, variables which we cannot even conceive of which are effecting us for better or worse.
God see’s it all and knows it all. A person on an internet forum only see’s that a mass was missed and that under certain conditions this is considered a mortal sin and so automatically results in eternal damnation. Period.
That’s nonsense, false, and a destructive ideology to propagate.

God is not bound by sacraments. While the sacraments are for our benefit God is free to operate outside of them, to forgive a sinner who is repentant before they get to formal confession. Our actually going to confession provides us the assurance of our forgiveness and our standing in Grace and restores us to the sacramental life of the Church.

I think you’re misread a bit here.

Nobody is saying (except you) that “Mass was missed, under certain conditions this is a mortal sin and so automatically results in eternal damnation period”.

 

[Nelka]

I have trouble with the concept that someone who skips Mass occasionally ( or who, in the old days, had a hot dog on a Friday) receives the same judgment as a life-long abortionist.

A man eating his wife half to death and committing adultery are completely different but both would drive his wife to leave him.

 

[Nigel7]

I think you’re misread a bit here.

Nobody is saying (except you) that “Mass was missed, under certain conditions this is a mortal sin and so automatically results in eternal damnation period”.

riiiight ^^

If you die in a state of mortal sin (whether it was missing Mass or committing murder) you go to Hell.

 

[po18guy]

Equal only in mortality. Adultery is not genocide, but both earn eternal punishment.

 

[wild_thing]

No, not all mortal sins are equal. Some sins are more serious than others, depending on the disposition of the person, circumstances, history, etc. God is a just judge. He takes everything about the person into consideration and judges them fairly. No one will be protesting His judgement in their personal circumstance because they will know that He sees their souls correctly. There are considered to be different “levels” of hell, which goes back to the writings of the Church Fathers all the way through to saints like St. Faustina.

The Union Councils of Lyons and of Florence declared that the souls of the damned are punished with unequal punishments . . . This is probably intended to assert not merely a specific difference in the punishment of original sin and of personal sins, but also a difference in the degree of punishment for personal sins [cf. Matt. 11:22; Luke 20:47]. . . . St. Augustine teaches "In their wretchedness the lot of some of the damned will be more tolerable than that of others. Justice demands that the punishment be commensurate with the guilt."

~ Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma

Some biblical basis for this as well:

Matthew 23:14, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; Therefore you will receive greater condemnation,”

And:

Luke 12:47-48, “And that slave who knew his master’s will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes, 48 but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.”

Lastly:

John 19:11, " . . . for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the greater sin."

I could go on, but you probably get the point.

 

[Le_Bonvivant]

Man I love many of the discussions about saints and scripture etc on this forum, but man oh man, the obsession with ‘sinning’ here is absurd.

Going to hell for skipping church… even in the darkest days of the dark ages, people didnt come up with such bull poop

 

[Wesrock]

I have trouble with the concept that someone who skips Mass occasionally ( or who, in the old days, had a hot dog on a Friday) receives the same judgment as a life-long abortionist.

Well, the Church does teach that the paina of Hell will vary with the severity of the unrepented sins.

 

[Wesrock]

Man I love many of the discussions about saints and scripture etc on this forum, but man oh man, the obsession with ‘sinning’ here is absurd.

Going to hell for skipping church… even in the darkest days of the dark ages, people didnt come up with such bull poop

(1) You might wish to take the Church’s teaching more seriously, claiming to be Roman Catholic and all.

(2) It’s grave matter. That doesn’t mean it’s always mortal.