@BA11
In your opinion?
Your opinion?
Sorry, I’ll keep following the humble opinion of the Church Fathers and in general of 20 centuries of saints and theologians that have saved countless souls.
You can, of course, go ahead and not believe in mortal vs. venial sins. When orthodox Christian Sacred Tradition is “remarkably weak in someone’s opinion”, their opinion is as solid as their knowledge of that Tradition they refuse to believe in.
A “born again” Christian is a Christian that has been baptized. Baptism is rebirth by water and spirit. And there are two aspects to that justification: one being a free gift from God (causa efficiens), merited by Christ (causa meritoria); the other being an interior sanctifying quality or formal cause (causa formalis) in the soul itself, which it makes truly just and holy in the sight of God. St. Paul emphasizes the fact that grace is purely gratuitous; that no merely natural good works can merit grace; but he does not state that no other acts in their nature and purport predisposing are necessary for justification over and above the requisite faith. Whenever faith justifies it is not faith alone, but faith made operative and replenished by charity (Galatians 5:6, “fides, quae per caritatem operatur”). Scripture declares that we must work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12), it is impossible to regard our individual salvation as something fixed and certain. Why did St. Paul (1 Corinthians 9:27) chastise his body if not afraid lest, having preached to others, he might himself “become a castaway”? He says expressly (1 Corinthians 4:4): “For I am not conscious to myself of any thing, yet am I not hereby justified; but he that judgeth me, is the Lord.”
In the Protestant system, however, remission of sin is no real forgiveness, no blotting out of guilt. Sin is merely cloaked and concealed by the imputed merits of Christ; God no longer imputes it, whilst in reality it continues under cover its miserable existence till the hour of death. Thus there exist in man side by side two hostile brothers as it were — the one just and the other unjust; the one a saint, the other a sinner; the one a child of God, the other a slave of Satan — and this without any prospect of a conciliation between the two. In a man who is at once sinful and just, half holy and half unholy, we cannot possibly recognize a masterpiece of God’s omnipotence, but only a wretched caricature, the deformity of which is exaggerated all the more by the violent introduction of the justice of Christ.
Due to the nature of this sanctifying grace, of this gratia actualis, it can be lost by an act of infidelity towards God. This act must necessarily be on a grave matter, with full knowledge and deliberate consent. This is what St. John the Evangelist, the beloved disciple and guardian of the Blessed Virgin, begins to tech us in his First Letter, when he teaches: “
All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death” - in the original Christian Bible translated from the original into Latin by Church Father Jerome, “
omnis iniquitas peccatum est, et est peccatum non ad mortem”.
Thus, disbelieving in the difference between mortal and venial sin is not so much to reject the teaching authority of the Church, but
to reject the teaching of the apostles. We all know what that means. Christ taught us so in the Holy Gospel according to s. Luke, 10:16.
Thank to God’s mercy, the Father remitted all judgment to the Son, and the Son made sure to tell us time and again: “I do not judge anyone, I did not come to condemn the world, but so that the world may be saved through me. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”. And those who, out of faith in some odd novelty, call themselves righteous, should be very careful indeed, lest they be like the blind man claiming that he could see.
Christ taught Peter that God does not forgive once, but seventy times seven, or as many times as needed. What is lost after Baptism (though only partially lost, since we are well aware of the temporary gift of gratia actualis) can be recovered through the valid, legitimate successors of the Apostles, those who can trace the laying of hands all the way back throughout the 20 centuries of the Church, back to the Apostles, the same Apostles to whom Christ taught in life to pray to the Father: “forgive us our sins” and after His resurrection:
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.
Those whose sins you remit, are remitted.
Those whose sins you retain, are retained.
In this, Christ granted them a power that was extraordinary, for the teachers of the Law were right in saying: “only God can forgive sins!”, and yet Christ taught: “I have the authority to forgive sin”, thus - as his accusers said - “making himself equal to God”. It is this extraordinary power that He gave not to all, but to the Apostles and to their successors. This is what we read in the writings of the Apostles and of the Church Fathers. This is what the Church of Christ has done for almost two thousand years.
But of course, you can hold on to your opinion (which, of course, is not yours, but a teaching you received from someone) and not do what the Church does. Who knows…perhaps you are right and Holy Church has done it all wrong for 20 centuries, and Christ has let His Church go astray in such horrible ways, and the Holy Spirit has kept away from it. I’ve heard this, too, said by some Christians, and with a broad smile they’ve showed me the Biblical passages supporting their opinion, and with unchanged smile they’ve told me: “Catholics, as you see, are hellbound.”
Perhaps in my astounding weakness and sinfulness I may not win the race I am running. But I’d rather not despair, not judge, not condemn, but “hold on to the Tradition that was passed unto us, either in writing or by word of mouth”.
Most of our protestant brethren have the odd error of imputed, exterior justification in their doctrine, according to which salvation cannot be lost because it was merited by Christ…but that’s wrong, unsound, and unscriptural.
