Determining if someone is in a state of Mortal Sin

[comrade1789]

Understanding that mortal sin requires both grave matter, and full knowledge and consent, why do I see so often people skirt calling someone out as living in mortal sin by saying that it is almost impossible to determine if someone is in mortal sin? Am I missing something or are these folks so smart and clever that they trick themselves into thinking this?

A person learns that what they are doing is a sin, involving grave matter. They learn the Bible’s teaching on it and still reject it and do not repent. They are a conscious and functional human being, who makes a decision to commit the grave sin. And yet, I still see quite often others in these forums that it is too complicated a matter to determine if someone is in a state of mortal sin.

Is this true?

 

[promethius]

Understanding that mortal sin requires both grave matter, and full knowledge and consent, why do I see so often people skirt calling someone out as living in mortal sin by saying that it is almost impossible to determine if someone is in mortal sin? Am I missing something or are these folks so smart and clever that they trick themselves into thinking this?

A person learns that what they are doing is a sin, involving grave matter. They learn the Bible’s teaching on it and still reject it and do not repent. They are a conscious and functional human being, who makes a decision to commit the grave sin. And yet, I still see quite often others in these forums that it is too complicated a matter to determine if someone is in a state of mortal sin.

Is this true?

No one can determine if someone’s actions make them guilty of mortal sin. It is up to the person who is in full knowledge of their actions and the grave matter they have violated to determine their state of grace.

The ONLY thing you can KNOW objectively is if the matter being violated is sinful and/or grave matter. You cannot judge whether or not it is mortal sin because you do not know the circumstances which the person is in. In other words, you can judge the ACTION as sinful, and judge that it deals with GRAVE MATTER, but you CANNOT judge and have no authority to declare someone as being culpable for mortal sin.

 

[Barbkw]

I personally believe it comes from the relativism of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

And my goodness, is it so tough to sit down and write out a guidesheet before people slip into deeper and deeper acts that are contrary to what God expects of us?

Thankfully the computer age is helping:

catholicparents.org/oxcart/Examination%20of%20Conscience.pdf

This priest Fr. Altier in 2001 as Spiritual Director, typed out 10 pages of an adult examination of consciense and in it he lists the actions that produce mortal sins AND then he typed out a sheet on the venial sins. With a directory of what is necessary for the mortal.

If you read between the lines, most of the mortal sins are acts of commission. The venial sins are acts of omission.

These Reconciliation guides & site addresses need to be included on Church bulletins, Church websites, the Vatican website, etc.

Freeing us from our sin, is the reason Christ came, so that we might live more abundantly.

 

[jmcrae]

Understanding that mortal sin requires both grave matter, and full knowledge and consent, why do I see so often people skirt calling someone out as living in mortal sin by saying that it is almost impossible to determine if someone is in mortal sin? Am I missing something or are these folks so smart and clever that they trick themselves into thinking this?

A person learns that what they are doing is a sin, involving grave matter. They learn the Bible’s teaching on it and still reject it and do not repent. They are a conscious and functional human being, who makes a decision to commit the grave sin. And yet, I still see quite often others in these forums that it is too complicated a matter to determine if someone is in a state of mortal sin.

Is this true?

It’s not “too complicated” - it’s just that it’s none of your business. It is God’s job to judge other people’s souls; not yours.

It is quite enough responsibility to look after your own soul - and you probably wouldn’t like it if someone else came along, pronounced judgement on you based on something they saw you do or heard about you from someone else, and damned you to Hell. Only God is allowed to do that.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

In addition to minding one’s own business [excepting when the other person is one’s own minor child], some people are arguably mentally ill … legitimately suffering from one or another diagnosable mental illness, whether or not it has been formally diagnosed. Some people are mentally ill, but are high-functioning.

People suffering from mental illness would not normally be in a state of mortal sin, again depending on the specific circumstances.

We are obligated to examine our own consciences, not the consciences of other people.

bible.cc/luke/6-42.htm

 

[comrade1789]

It’s not “too complicated” - it’s just that it’s none of your business. It is God’s job to judge other people’s souls; not yours.

It is quite enough responsibility to look after your own soul - and you probably wouldn’t like it if someone else came along, pronounced judgement on you based on something they saw you do or heard about you from someone else, and damned you to Hell. Only God is allowed to do that.

I would want to know if I were living a life that would damn me to hell, you better believe it. I would conidere it a grave negligence at best if someone didn’t love me enough to be willing to help me see that. Don’t we run the risk of saying there is no possibility of living in mortal sin if we refuse to identify examples of living in mortal sin? Would you say that there is a danger of developing “an anything goes” mentality to the actions of others? So the church has no guidelines on this?

 

[comrade1789]

No one can determine if someone’s actions make them guilty of mortal sin. It is up to the person who is in full knowledge of their actions and the grave matter they have violated to determine their state of grace.

The ONLY thing you can KNOW objectively is if the matter being violated is sinful and/or grave matter. You cannot judge whether or not it is mortal sin because you do not know the circumstances which the person is in. In other words, you can judge the ACTION as sinful, and judge that it deals with GRAVE MATTER, but you CANNOT judge and have no authority to declare someone as being culpable for mortal sin.

This makes sense. It just semse a bit confusing that we should even have a definition for mortal sin but no way to objectively identify it in the world around us, only on some subjective level in regards to my own person. So a priest or fellow Christian could not tell me I was living in mortal sin if I am involved in an adulterous relationship?

 

[promethius]

This makes sense. It just semse a bit confusing that we should even have a definition for mortal sin but no way to objectively identify it in the world around us, only on some subjective level in regards to my own person. So a priest or fellow Christian could not tell me I was living in mortal sin if I am involved in an adulterous relationship?

Oh, it’s an objective measure… just one that persons cannot judge against others because you are not privvy to all the information needed to determine if one is in a state of grace or not.

We can clearly tell when someone is violating grave matter… and Catholics are CLEARLY taught to avoid such violations as they are the basis for mortal sin. However, in order to be culpable for the full weight of mortal sin, one must:

1. Know it is grave matter
2. Have the freedom of will and ability to choose
3. Willfully do it anyway.

I think you’d be hard pressed to find an adulterer who didn’t meet these requirements, but even so you CANNOT know what the person was going through at the time of their choice. Perhaps they have a mental problem that makes them less free in their ability to make decisions like this… and addiction to sex or some other condition which renders them less culpable.

So, by all means counsel those who are violating grave matter that what they are doing is a horrendous act and is grossly offensive to God… but you CANNOT determine if they are culpable of mortal sin and you CANNOT determine their state of grace as a result. That objective determination is ONLY God’s purview.

 

[comrade1789]

Oh, it’s an objective measure… just one that persons cannot judge against others because you are not privvy to all the information needed to determine if one is in a state of grace or not.

We can clearly tell when someone is violating grave matter… and Catholics are CLEARLY taught to avoid such violations as they are the basis for mortal sin. However, in order to be culpable for the full weight of mortal sin, one must:

1. Know it is grave matter
2. Have the freedom of will and ability to choose
3. Willfully do it anyway.

I think you’d be hard pressed to find an adulterer who didn’t meet these requirements, but even so you CANNOT know what the person was going through at the time of their choice. Perhaps they have a mental problem that makes them less free in their ability to make decisions like this… and addiction to sex or some other condition which renders them less culpable.

So, by all means counsel those who are violating grave matter that what they are doing is a horrendous act and is grossly offensive to God… but you CANNOT determine if they are culpable of mortal sin and you CANNOT determine their state of grace as a result. That objective determination is ONLY God’s purview.

Awesome! Thank you, that makes absolute sense.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

One of the things you CAN do is to pray to the Holy Spirit for the wisdom and guidance to know when to keep your mouth shut and when to speak up and on those occasions, what words to use.

And sometimes, you can “lead by example” … I was blasted for years … I used to disappear at lunch time. One day, someone came to me and whispered they knew what I did on my lunch hour. * But you can’t be “self-satisfied”, because the temptations are ALWAYS there. And sometimes you will never know if you are doing the right thing or not, or acting impolitely or rudely. Once in a rare while, you do find out.

Ask the Holy Spirit to put the right words on your tongue [or in your pen] [or keyboard].

I was having lunch with a work-friend and out of nowhere he says he doesn’t see why if he lives a good life he has to go to Mass. I said “THE PRAYER” to the Holy Spirit and what came out was … “You have to do both”.

Well, we had lunch again a while later and in passing he referred to some event in which he was coming out of Mass and described some traffic thing at the parking lot. So, something clicked … and he was going to Mass. And living a good life.

So, you just don’t know.

Pray to the Holy Spirit, get into the habit of praying to the Holy Spirit.

There are some people who will resist every “blandishment” and fight back to the point where your own faith is challenged.

But, then you read about Saint Monica who prayed for her dissolute son for DECADES … and he finally came around …

We celebrate their feast days right one after the other. Saint Monica and Saint Augustine.

Pray to the Holy Spirit daily.

There was one guy who was terrible. After he died, his widow passed the message to me that on his death bed, he consented to see a priest … and he did.

You just never know.*

 

[jmcrae]

I would want to know if I were living a life that would damn me to hell, you better believe it. I would conidere it a grave negligence at best if someone didn’t love me enough to be willing to help me see that. Don’t we run the risk of saying there is no possibility of living in mortal sin if we refuse to identify examples of living in mortal sin? Would you say that there is a danger of developing “an anything goes” mentality to the actions of others? So the church has no guidelines on this?

The Church certainly has guidelines, but they are aimed at the sinner himself. The Church does not teach us to go around accusing one another.

Naturally, if your child is committing sin, you have the responsibility as a parent to guide your child. If you are giving religious instruction, you have the duty to teach your students what sin is, and how to avoid it - and to take aside privately students who seem to be getting themselves into trouble, and give them guidance.

But we are never to accost people at random and tell them that they are definitely going to Hell - this normally has the opposite effect of that intended, and hardens people’s hearts rather than making them more open to listening.

 

[promethius]

One of the things you CAN do is to pray to the Holy Spirit for the wisdom and guidance to know when to keep your mouth shut and when to speak up and on those occasions, what words to use.

This is such good advice!

Too often in the western world, Christians seem to think that WE can save people from their sinful lives… that if only we could argue with them and get them to see the logic we see, that they would abandon their actions.

This is utterly false. We have no power to save people from sin! We must, in the battle against sin, throw ourselves on the guidance of the Holy Spirit and entrust the power of prayer to ask God to reach out and open their hearts to the path of grace.

When we counsel those who are violating grave matter, we should ALWAYS pray vigorously before hand, willing that the Holy Spirit be the one to lead us in saying or doing the right thing at the right time and place… otherwise by our human errors and sins of pride and lack of charity we stand to drive the sinner further from God by accident.

We MUST learn to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to inspire change in peoples’ hearts and lead them to truth. All we have to do is to live out the love of God and open ourselves to His guidance.

 

[comrade1789]

I am confused a bit though, because listening to recordings of lectures given by the late Fr. John Hardon, S.J. in regards to homosexual acts, he says we can always say it is a mortal sin. For those who don’t know who Fr. John Hardon was, according to a short bio from hardonsj.org/biography besides having doctorate in theology,teaching moral theology and many other subjects, he authored “The Catholic Catechism (1975). This work stands as a defining contribution to Catholic orthodoxy, written at the request of His Holiness, Pope Paul VI, with whom Fr. Hardon had a close working relationship. Fr. Hardon also wrote the Modern Catholic Dictionary (1980), a detailed Catholic reference dictionary. He served as the executive editor of The Catholic Faith magazine, editor of Gospel Witness, and a contributing editor of Challenge magazine, London and Canada. Fr. Hardon also served as a consultant for the drafting of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, written by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and promulgated by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II in 1992.”

This being said, you can listen to his lecture at therealpresence.org/archives/MP3/0023/0023014.mp3 lectures Series 023 - Catholic Morality and Homosexuality (1997) Lecture # 014 – May 18, 1997 Part 2 - (46:58)

He stated: “According to the church’s infallible teaching, a person engaging in homosexual behavior acts immorally, contrary to the will of God. Through the centuries the Church has never questioned the moral varity, the mortal sin of deliberate, conscious homosexual acts.”

 

[jmcrae]

I am confused a bit though, because listening to recordings of lectures given by the late Fr. John Hardon, S.J. in regards to homosexual acts, he says we can always say it is a mortal sin. For those who don’t know who Fr. John Hardon was, according to a short bio from hardonsj.org/biography besides having doctorate in theology,teaching moral theology and many other subjects, he authored “The Catholic Catechism (1975). This work stands as a defining contribution to Catholic orthodoxy, written at the request of His Holiness, Pope Paul VI, with whom Fr. Hardon had a close working relationship. Fr. Hardon also wrote the Modern Catholic Dictionary (1980), a detailed Catholic reference dictionary. He served as the executive editor of The Catholic Faith magazine, editor of Gospel Witness, and a contributing editor of Challenge magazine, London and Canada. Fr. Hardon also served as a consultant for the drafting of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, written by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and promulgated by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II in 1992.”

This being said, you can listen to his lecture at therealpresence.org/archives/MP3/0023/0023014.mp3 lectures Series 023 - Catholic Morality and Homosexuality (1997) Lecture # 014 – May 18, 1997 Part 2 - (46:58)

He stated: “According to the church’s infallible teaching, a person engaging in homosexual behavior acts immorally, contrary to the will of God. Through the centuries the Church has never questioned the moral varity, the mortal sin of deliberate, conscious homosexual acts.”

Father is giving instruction to persons who are making their own Examination of Conscience - I am sure that he in no way intends for you to point your finger at someone else and damn them to Hell on your own authority - and unless you were doing it with him, you can’t know what (if anything) goes on behind someone else’s bedroom door.

 

[promethius]

Break his statement into it’s two respective parts and you will see why his statement is OK…

He stated: "According to the church’s infallible teaching, a person engaging in homosexual behavior acts immorally, contrary to the will of God.

This is correct. We can only judge that something is sinful. It is immoral to commit homosexual acts, no matter what. Likewise, we know that homosexual acts are grave matter.

Through the centuries the Church has never questioned the moral varity, the mortal sin of deliberate, conscious homosexual acts."

Look here how he distinguishes: That homosexual acts (grave matter) are mortal sins when they are deliberate (made with free will), conscious (made will full knowledge of the gravity). He does not advocate that you can know the person has committed grave sin, only that you can know it is immoral and POTENTIALLY a mortal sin if it were deliberate and conscious (something we can’t judge from the outside)

 

[puzzleannie]

. And yet, I still see quite often others in these forums that it is too complicated a matter to determine if someone is in a state of mortal sin.

Is this true?

There is no way, except for the priest during confession, to determine if another person is in a state of mortal sin and that should concern no one except that penitent and that priest. There is no occasion for anyone else to attempt such a judgement. We have all we can manage to judge the state of our own soul. Most of the time the difficulty comes not from Church teaching, but from obstinate refusal to accept that teaching. In other words, it is not complicated. The words of the commandments are direct and unambiguous, as are the explanations Jesus offers most notably in the Sermon on the Mount. A no-brainer. God says it is wrong. Jesus says it is wrong. The Church says it is wrong. All the commentary and confusion is self-justification and making excuses, most of the time.

 

[comrade1789]

Father is giving instruction to persons who are making their own Examination of Conscience - I am sure that he in no way intends for you to point your finger at someone else and damn them to Hell on your own authority - and unless you were doing it with him, you can’t know what (if anything) goes on behind someone else’s bedroom door.

No, I don’t believe that Father was giving instuctions on persones who are making their own Examination of Conscience, I think you are wrong in that assumption, since the whole lecture series this is taken from is dealing with homosexuality and the context it is put in never once makes mention of people Examining their own conscience. This is not about pointing finger, or putting people down. You are absolutely right in that Father in no way intends for me to point my finger at someone and tell them they are going to hell, that deals with his other talks on charity and prudence. But he in no way intends for you or anyone else to make light of one the 4 sins that “screams to heaven.” As one person put it, The theoretical idea that one could commit murder or any other such matter and retain invincible ignorance is just that. Far more likely is the idea that it is culpable ignorance at play, which easily retains the problem of mortal sin and should bear much more discussion than theoretical abstracts that could easily serve to hide my own equally deadly, but ‘so much more acceptable’, mortal sins. Besides that, imagine the idea of walking around saying, “I’m not just ignorant, I’m ‘invincibly’ ignorant.” It just doesn’t make sense, but that is another sign of deadly sin: a lack of true reason.

 

[jmcrae]

No, I don’t believe that Father was giving instuctions on persones who are making their own Examination of Conscience, I think you are wrong in that assumption, since the whole lecture series this is taken from is dealing with homosexuality and the context it is put in never once makes mention of people Examining their own conscience. This is not about pointing finger, or putting people down. You are absolutely right in that Father in no way intends for me to point my finger at someone and tell them they are going to hell, that deals with his other talks on charity and prudence. But he in no way intends for you or anyone else to make light of one the 4 sins that “screams to heaven.” As one person put it, The theoretical idea that one could commit murder or any other such matter and retain invincible ignorance is just that. Far more likely is the idea that it is culpable ignorance at play, which easily retains the problem of mortal sin and should bear much more discussion than theoretical abstracts that could easily serve to hide my own equally deadly, but ‘so much more acceptable’, mortal sins. Besides that, imagine the idea of walking around saying, “I’m not just ignorant, I’m ‘invincibly’ ignorant.” It just doesn’t make sense, but that is another sign of deadly sin: a lack of true reason.

And these are all things that we take account of in our own walk with God, and which we pass on to those who are under our spiritual authority - meaning, our own children, and those to whom we give religious instruction.

In no way are we ever called to look at our neighbors and comment aloud on the state of their souls - this is called “detraction.” We are never called to “know” how someone else is doing in the sight of the Lord - only ourselves. Even in the case of our own children, we are not permitted to say, “You did this, and therefore you are in a state of mortal sin,” but rather, “If a person does this on purpose, he might be in a state of mortal sin.” And then at another time (so that the child does not feel that he is being accused) “If you want to go to Confession, you must let me know to take you with me when I go myself.”

 

[comrade1789]

And these are all things that we take account of in our own walk with God, and which we pass on to those who are under our spiritual authority - meaning, our own children, and those to whom we give religious instruction.

In no way are we ever called to look at our neighbors and comment aloud on the state of their souls - this is called “detraction.” We are never called to “know” how someone else is doing in the sight of the Lord - only ourselves. Even in the case of our own children, we are not permitted to say, “You did this, and therefore you are in a state of mortal sin,” but rather, “If a person does this on purpose, he might be in a state of mortal sin.” And then at another time (so that the child does not feel that he is being accused) “If you want to go to Confession, you must let me know to take you with me when I go myself.”

I am going to have to dive further into this, you can understand the trouble I am having reconciling the good points you are making with scriptures like 1st Corinthians 6:9-10 that state drunkards and sodomites and revelers and adulters etc shall not inherit the Kingdom, and then on the other hand some saying that we don’t know that they won’t inherit the kingdom. I am not trying to get to the bottom of this so i can say to somoeone “Ahha! You are going to hell!” I am trying to reconcile strong statements made by Christ, by Paul, by one of Catholicisms greatest catechists, with what I am failing to see as anything separate from a moral relativism. I understand that I am not the one who can say with authority who goes and who doesn’t (praise God!) but I am worried about open doors that lead to a slippery-slope that eventually end with us sanctioning sodomy and other mortal sins that desecrate human dignity.

 

[illmatic]

No one can determine if someone’s actions make them guilty of mortal sin.

I came in this thread to post this. Its a case of ‘mind your own business’ I think.