Both this answer and TeachCCD’s answers seem to imply that in order to commit a mortal sin, you must WANT to alienate God. That seems a rather strong formulation.
The three conditions for mortal sin are:
a) Grave matter
b) Knowledge that the matter is a sin - not knowledge that it is a mortal sin.
c) Consent of the will - this means consenting to the grave sin (a), not consenting to anger God. It just means not being asleep or under duress in some way. You don’t have to WANT the action to be sinful, you just need to know it is sinful and choose to do it anyway.
So, in that situation, if I have committed these acts, believing them to be mortal sins, can I breathe a sigh of relief knowing now that they are only venial, or are they the same as mortal sins because I committed them in the (presumed) knowledge that they were.
It was a priest I saw for my first confession, an Opus Dei priest who is very well versed in Church doctrine, who said that all sins against the 6th and 9th commandment were grave matter, so I should confess them all. Admittedly, in context, in my first confession I was confessing much graver sins than these, so maybe he just meant all of the sins of the type I was confessing against the 6th and 9th commandments were grave matter. I’m confused.
I don’t really think you have to WANT to alienate God…not very many people want that I would guess. I was just saying that if you think it is a mortal sin and you fully consent to it, it is a mortal sin. At least according to what I’ve read. I was thinking that maybe it wasn’t always the action itself that makes something a mortal sin. Like maybe if you thought something like…looking at your reflection was a mortal sin. The action itself isn’t a mortal sin, but it’s thinking it is that makes it one if you fully consent to doing it.
This is what my copy of the Baltimore Catechism says about this (in case you want to see what I’m referring to for yourself and make your own conclusion):
What three things are necessary to make a sin mortal?
To make a sin mortal these three things are necessary: first, the thought, desire, word, action, or omission must be seriously wrong or considered seriously wrong; second, the sinner must be mindful of the serious wrong; third, the sinner must fully consent to it.
(a) Things seriously evil are known to be such from Sacred Scripture, Tradition, the teachings of the Church, or from the nature of the acts themselves.
(b) The sinner is mindful of the serious wrong if at the time he commits the sin or places a cause from which he foresees the sin will follow, he either is clearly aware or at least thinks that the action is grievously sinful.
(c) A sinner fully consents to the wrong when he freely chooses to do evil, although he is entirely free not to do it. A person who deliberately consents to do something grievously sinful is guilty of mortal sin although he never actually does it, because his will has chosen evil in preference to good.
Some of the stuff in this Catechism could be pretty old since it says it’s the “official revised edition 1949”, but it was printed in 2001. So I’m not sure if this is what the Church still teaches on the subject…but I’m just sharing the information I have cause maybe it can help.
