Does anyone ever know what they are doing when they sin?

[jcm2017]

That’s NOT the sense of condescension in Catholic Theology. That’s the point. You pick the worst case motivations behind the words, not the good faith ones.

And so
A working definition of insanity is doing (or saying, or arguing) the same things over and over…

 

[OneSheep]

A professional, NOT the individual in question, having the difficulty, needs to assess the person’s deficit, if one exists.

Are you saying that we have to be professionals in order to understand people?

Through prayer and awareness, we can find our own deficits. In addition, we can, through the gift of Understanding, see the deficits of others.

 

[steve-b]

steve-b:

A professional, NOT the individual in question, having the difficulty, needs to assess the person’s deficit, if one exists.

Are you saying that we have to be professionals in order to understand people?

Through prayer and awareness, we can find our own deficits. In addition, we can, through the gift of Understanding, see the deficits of others.

I’m saying, many people if given the chance dumb down the rules in their own favor. And use every excuse in the book for why they aren’t guilty for what they do. All of a sudden everybody becomes their own lawyer. Serious wrong gets reduced to mere misdemeanor.

 

[OneSheep]

That’s NOT the sense of condescension in Catholic Theology. That’s the point. You pick the worst case motivations behind the words, not the good faith ones.

I did not “pick”, friend. I did not know your definition, so I was confused. Now who might not be giving the benefit of the doubt?

This is what I do: I criticize others for the same things I do, even at the moment!

A working definition of insanity is doing (or saying, or arguing) the same things over and over…

Perhaps. However, an investigation is not an argument. What I was hoping for from my post was an investigation.

 

[OneSheep]

I’m saying, many people if given the chance dumb down the rules in their own favor. And use every excuse in the book for why they aren’t guilty for what they do. All of a sudden everybody becomes their own lawyer. Serious wrong gets reduced to mere misdemeanor.

Well, what I am observing is that when people do this, they do not know what they are doing.

One has to start with the question “why is he doing this”, and try to refrain from answers that express condemnation of the person instead of investigating what is actually going on in his mind.

 

[OneSheep]

It would make sense, but that is not how it happened. You are still twisting around my situation. I didn’t sin because I saw good in it, I sinned because I wanted to, and I was disregarding the bad.

You are right, I don’t know how it happened. I apologize for not defining, “saw good in it”. I was using “good” the way that St. Augustine and others did, it has to do with getting some perceived fulfillment or pleasure.

And I don’t not go to confession because I want to keep punishing myself. It is wrong to continue to punish myself, I don’t go to confession because I can’t. My parents won’t allow it.

I apologize for the assumption. Desire to stay with guilt is very common, but is certainly not always the case.

It is a rare time that I suggest disobedience to one’s parents. This is one of those times. I know a person who disobeyed her parents by going to catechism. She never regretted it. Her parents were blind to their sin.

Your parents want the best for you Brittany. We can still honor them in our disobedience.

You could find a Catholic priest who will hear your confession even if you are not Catholic. If you find one who refuses, keep looking. I really doubt you will find one who refuses.

I don’t see any point in continuing this, you will continue to twist my situation falsely in order to support your beliefs.

I am not talking about my “beliefs”. I am talking about my observations. Did you forget the question about choosing the same sin while you were in a state of regret? That is the state of knowing, when one is feeling the guilt. If my regret is not enough to stop me from repeating the sin, if it not right there at the forefront, then there is still something missing in my awareness. I don’t know what I do not know, even when I think I know everything.

I hope you have a good day, God bless

You too! And I hope you can forgive me for making a few incorrect assumptions.

 

[lotus1922]

The observation I am making is that this is always the case when people sin.

I respectfully disagree. While I think it is exceedingly rare that someone would knowingly choose to commit evil, if it was not possible then there would be no need to distinguish mortal from venial sin. Consider this scenario: A doctor gives a patient an inherently dangerous drug at a lethal dose. By his medical training, he knows that the drug is dangerous and that the dose is invariably lethal. Knowing this, he freely decides to do it anyway. The patient dies. He met all the necessary conditions of sin (full knowledge of grave matter, full consent, and free will), he is indisputably morally culpable for murder, and would be accordingly punished for such by the law.

Vs. this scenario:

A doctor, based on his training and the compendium of medical knowledge known at that time, makes his best judgement that a medication with known risks is necessary for a patient with a certain medical condition . The risks are deemed acceptable because the patient will certainly die without the treatment.

But there’s a mixup at the pharmacy, the pharmacist returns a prescription for a dose that is incorrect but still within the normal therapeutic range and thus not suspicious. Through a series of unfortunate misunderstandings, the doctor unwittingly gives the medication to the patient. Maybe he’s just worked two 24-hr shifts back to back because the hospital is understaffed, he’s tired and not performing at optimal capacity and doesn’t realize the error. The patient dies.

The pharmacist and the doctor could not be morally culpable for murder because the conditions aren’t met: the death of the patient was not the intention of the treatment and neither the doctor nor the pharmacist intended to kill the patient. Since there was no reason to suspect that the dose, while not inherently lethal in itself, would be harmful to this particular patient, they were not acting with full knowledge of the situation. And neither the pharmacist nor the doctor had a gun to their head forcing them to give the patient a lethal dose of medication.

BUT, they would be guilty of some degree of manslaughter or negligence. The pharmacist should have verified with the doctor that the prescription was correct no matter how routine it seemed. The chain of command should ensure that there are multiple redundancy systems in place to verify that the prescription remains unchanged from the moment the doctor orders it until it arrives to the patient. And the doctor should have realized the mistake, or recognized that in his state of fatigue he was not capable of safely performing his duties and should have excused himself from such in order to rest sufficiently.

 

[OneSheep]

Good Morning Lotus

BUT, they would be guilty of some degree of manslaughter or negligence. The pharmacist should have verified with the doctor that the prescription was correct no matter how routine it seemed. The chain of command should ensure that there are multiple redundancy systems in place to verify that the prescription remains unchanged from the moment the doctor orders it until it arrives to the patient. And the doctor should have realized the mistake, or recognized that in his state of fatigue he was not capable of safely performing his duties and should have excused himself from such in order to rest sufficiently.

Here we have a case where we see what can be imputed correctly. The players were negligent. Did they know what they were doing? Certainly not, they did not know what the ramifications of their negligence would be. Had they known, they would have stayed on top of things.

This thread is not about judgment or penalties, but of course they would be appropriate as determined, hopefully.

A doctor gives a patient an inherently dangerous drug at a lethal dose. By his medical training, he knows that the drug is dangerous and that the dose is invariably lethal. Knowing this, he freely decides to do it anyway. The patient dies. He met all the necessary conditions of sin (full knowledge of grave matter, full consent, and free will), he is indisputably morally culpable for murder, and would be accordingly punished for such by the law.

Is the doctor aware of the infinite value of the life of the patient, such that he knows such destruction is harmful both to the person and society?

What was going on in the mind of this doctor? What was he thinking?

 

[PJM]

Gen 1:26-27 teaches that humanity ALONE is in His Very IMAGE for a precise reason; Isaiah 43 & & 21

You aren’t saying that people are omniscient, right? I don’t see how my observation, based on Luke 23:34, is the least bit contradicted by those verses and chapters. Perhaps you are reading something into my words?

Jesus made the observation that people did not know what they were doing when they were sinning against Him.

RIGHT, read on and I further explain that humanity ALONe emulates God in that He Gifts every human Soul with a mind, intellect and freewill.which HE attaches to the human Soul.

BUT they could have know BUT rejected the offered grace to know. The Primary grace-BLOCKER [clearly in evidence today] is pride!

That friend is why heaven, hell and purgatory exist [PJM quote]

“Not sure what the “that” refers to. I’m not trying to be the least bit “smart” here, I am far from high intellect. There is an introspective approach here, a spiritual approach, and it sort of transcends all the judgment”

God GIFTS every human Soul with a mind, intellect and freewill to enable us to freely choose to love God in humble obedience; or hate him in prideful ignorance

IF GOD HAD CHOSEN NOT TO DO THIS; THEN THERE WOULD NOT IN AN ABSOLUTE SENSE A NEED FOR HEAVEN, HELL OR PURGATORY; BECAUSE THERE WOULD NO GROUNDS FOR GODS JUDGMENT BASED ON OUR LIFE CHOICES.

GOD WILL, BECAUSE GOD MUST, PASS JUDGMENT UPON EACH SOUL NOT BASED ON WHAT THEY CHOOSE TO BELIEVE AND LIFE; NO, IT WILL BE BASED UPON WHAT HE HAS MADE POSSIBLE FOR EACH SOL TO KNOW AND LIVE

Continued Blessings,
Patrick

 

[steve-b]

I’m saying, many people if given the chance dumb down the rules in their own favor. And use every excuse in the book for why they aren’t guilty for what they do. All of a sudden everybody becomes their own lawyer. Serious wrong gets reduced to mere misdemeanor.

OneSheep:

Well, what I am observing is that when people do this, they do not know what they are doing.

One has to start with the question “why is he doing this”, and try to refrain from answers that express condemnation of the person instead of investigating what is actually going on in his mind.

steve:

Just an observation of my own

Enabling = providing excuses or making it possible for a person to avoid the consequences of their behavior .

 

[steve-b]

steve-b:

I hope you got to confession

While @Brittany identifies as Catholic, from what I recall she is 17 and has not begun RCIA yet. She is being raised by Baptist parents and plans on going through RCIA when she moves out.

Ah

That makes sense. I was going to ask her why she couldn’t go to confession. I didn’t know the background. Thanks for the answer

 

[steve-b]

steve-b:

The mentally challenged, or insane, depending on degree of deficit

Hmm, okay, I see this too. Can you see that all of us are subject to the deficit?

We are born essentially ignorant (lacking awareness) and we are all subject to blindness. Try to create a scenario where someone knows what they are doing when refusing to be sorry. I don’t see it.

1776 "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."47

1777 Moral conscience,48 present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil.49 It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking.

1778 Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law:

To your other question,
The unforgivable sin = Catechism of the Catholic Church - Paragraph # 1864

no need to warn anybody about something that can’t happen

Augustine addresses those who try and excuse themselves of sin on account of ignorance

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1510.htm see Ch 5 but don’t stop there

OneSheep:

Augustine does not address the reason why a person would try to excuse themselves (avoid penalty) on account of ignorance, that such a person going this route does not know what they are doing.

Augustine does have a great section of his book Confessions when he talks about “why men sin”. It is excellent.

Augustine DOES address the person who tries to excuse them self of sin / blame etc …even from God. see ch 3 in that link
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1510.htm

 

[BarbTh]

I don’t think we can know fully what sin is. We can know sufficiently.

 

[lotus1922]

A doctor gives a patient an inherently dangerous drug at a lethal dose. By his medical training, he knows that the drug is dangerous and that the dose is invariably lethal. Knowing this, he freely decides to do it anyway. The patient dies. He met all the necessary conditions of sin (full knowledge of grave matter, full consent, and free will), he is indisputably morally culpable for murder, and would be accordingly punished for such by the law.

Is the doctor aware of the infinite value of the life of the patient, such that he knows such destruction is harmful both to the person and society?

What was going on in the mind of this doctor? What was he thinking?

That is the definition of a psychopath. Psychopaths are fully aware of right and wrong, but have zero regard for it. They lack empathy for other people which is why they are able to commit such horrible, gratuitous, gruesome violence against them with no remorse. They are usually highly intelligent and thus tend to be “white collar” type criminals in positions of prestige or power (ie, doctors, lawyers, etc) and have very charming and persuasive personalities.

They are typically NOT mentally ill and their sense of reality is intact. Their crimes are meticulously planned ahead of time to the finest detail, covering all their bases, and leave very little if any evidence in their wake. Their methods are highly methodical and precise. And they typically remain completely unrepentant of their crimes despite being fully aware of the seriousness of their freewill actions. They may even brag or boast about them and take pride in their ability to evade capture and dumbfound law enforcement.

 

[OneSheep]

RIGHT, read on and I further explain that humanity ALONe emulates God in that He Gifts every human Soul with a mind, intellect and freewill.which HE attaches to the human Soul.

BUT they could have know BUT rejected the offered grace to know. The Primary grace-BLOCKER [clearly in evidence today] is pride!

Well yes, the mind and soul are there, but intellect develops over time, with experience. Do you remember that Jesus grew in wisdom? We all do.

And what we call “pride” (which is mostly the desire for status) does indeed blind us, the desire itself compromises the efficacy of the conscience. It is really good to be aware when this is happening in the mind. It is rather an automatic phenomenon.

IF GOD HAD CHOSEN NOT TO DO THIS; THEN THERE WOULD NOT IN AN ABSOLUTE SENSE A NEED FOR HEAVEN, HELL OR PURGATORY; BECAUSE THERE WOULD NO GROUNDS FOR GODS JUDGMENT BASED ON OUR LIFE CHOICES.

Isn’t hell chosen, though, not a place that God “sends” people? God wants all of the lost sheep, right?

GOD WILL, BECAUSE GOD MUST, PASS JUDGMENT UPON EACH SOUL NOT BASED ON WHAT THEY CHOOSE TO BELIEVE AND LIFE; NO, IT WILL BE BASED UPON WHAT HE HAS MADE POSSIBLE FOR EACH SOL TO KNOW AND LIVE

Are you saying that God judges people instead of forgiving? That is going to depend on the image we have, right?

btw: Are you yelling?

The lost sheep does not have a clue what he is doing, that is my observation.

Continued Blessings,

Patrick

Blessings on you also!

 

[OneSheep]

Good Evening Steve!

Enabling = providing excuses or making it possible for a person to avoid the consequences of their behavior .

I see your point, but there are some trade-offs here. For example, when Jesus said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” was he providing excuses for people? Well, perhaps some people might find such a statement a new “out” for themselves. However, we can take the observation to the next level and observe that if a person is looking for excuses (trying to dodge responsibility) in the first place, they do not know what they are doing.

Jesus takes the risk of providing means for people to do this (understanding lack of awareness) because he is promoting the greater good: forgiveness, and the use of the gift of understanding as a means to such forgiveness. Yes, people don’t know what they are doing. Should they have known? Well, yes, that would have been ideal, and if we as a society condemn ignorance, then hopefully we can motivate people to get on the ball. But regardless all the “should”, people do not know what they are doing.

In the mean time, Jesus provides us an example, a way to live. He shows us how to understand, how to “turn the cheek”, how to love our enemies and our neighbor. He decided that the possible pitfalls of expressing forgiveness based on understanding people’s ignorance are definitely worth the benefit of showing people how to forgive.

 

[OneSheep]

1776 "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey…

Key word: “must”. 1776 is addressing “ought” not “is”. Nothing in 1776 contests the observation that people do not know what they are doing when they sin.

1777…When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking…

Nothing in 1777 contesting the observation that people do not know what they are doing when they sin. Why do people not listen to their conscience? Well, people’s emotions and drives can temporarily block not only empathy, but the functioning of the conscience itself. Generally speaking it is a subconscious occurrence, not willed. When it is willed, it can be observed that the will to block out the conscience and/or empathy is done by people who do not know what they are doing.

1778 … In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right…

key word: “obliged”. Nothing in 1778 contests the observation that people do not know what they are doing when they sin.

To your other question,

The unforgivable sin = Catechism of the Catholic Church - Paragraph # 1864

Here it is:
1864 “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss.

The way it was explained to us, again, is that God always forgives, but if a person refuses to accept such forgiveness, reconciliation cannot happen. In this very specific case, “repentance” itself is repenting from the refusal to accept forgiveness. The person is trapped. It is not that there is some limit on God’s forgiveness, but people cannot be reached that refuse to be reached. If a person is convinced that God will never forgive him and refuses to believe otherwise, he is stuck.

Augustine DOES address the person who tries to excuse them self of sin / blame etc …even from God. see ch 3 in that link

That chapter is about a person blaming God for their sins. I can’t think of how a rational person could blame God for their sins. We make the choices to behave, not God. We are not puppets.

People do “blame” God for human nature, as if it is a scourge, but it is not. Our nature is beautiful, functionally beautiful.

 

[OneSheep]

I don’t think we can know fully what sin is. We can know sufficiently.

Yes, we know “sufficiently” enough to be able to blame ourselves saying that we should have known better.

The way that I see it, the more a person knows (including all relevant knowing), the less likely they are to sin. Yes, if a person knows enough about a certain situation, and is not blinded by desire or resentment or some other human drive or emotion, they simply won’t sin.

Do you see what I mean?

Thanks for responding! Blessings to you.

 

[OneSheep]

That is the definition of a psychopath. Psychopaths are fully aware of right and wrong, but have zero regard for it. They lack empathy for other people which is why they are able to commit such horrible, gratuitous, gruesome violence against them with no remorse. They are usually highly intelligent and thus tend to be “white collar” type criminals in positions of prestige or power (ie, doctors, lawyers, etc) and have very charming and persuasive personalities.

They are typically NOT mentally ill and their sense of reality is intact. Their crimes are meticulously planned ahead of time to the finest detail, covering all their bases, and leave very little if any evidence in their wake. Their methods are highly methodical and precise. And they typically remain completely unrepentant of their crimes despite being fully aware of the seriousness of their freewill actions. They may even brag or boast about them and take pride in their ability to evade capture and dumbfound law enforcement.

Hi Lotus,

Well, in an all-inclusive use of the word “knowing”, there is no way that a psychopath can ever know what he is doing concerning other people. Because he does not know the value of others, he is coming from a huge deficit in knowledge.

The crowd that Jesus addressed were temporarily in the condition of the psychopath. When we feel resentment toward someone, we have great difficulty empathizing with the person, our empathy is automatically blocked. Indeed, with resentment we can see that destruction of the other, or certainly their experience of misfortune, is “good”. When we experience resentment, we have the opportunity to know a little about what it is like to be a psychopath.

Is it mental illness? Well, it certainly is a deficit, a huge one. Psychopaths cannot recognize emotion in people’s faces. Their ability to empathize is hindered.

So, the psychopath is one of the “easier” examples of such a doctor doing what you describe. The more difficult examples have to do with cases where the patient really wants to die, but it can still be shown that people do not know what they are doing when they sin.

 

[lotus1922]

Well, in an all-inclusive use of the word “knowing”, there is no way that a psychopath can ever know what he is doing concerning other people. Because he does not know the value of others, he is coming from a huge deficit in knowledge.

You are rather mistaken in your understanding of what a psychopath is. As I stated in my previous reply, psychopathy is an especially serious and dangerous personality disorder precisely because the person has an intact sense of right and wrong, has full knowledge of their actions, yet has no remorse for their actions. They literally do not care about the difference despite being fully aware of it. Think of it as the secular equivalent of the sin of final unrepentance.

The nature of a psychopath’s crimes is of extreme premeditation, carried out with high precision and meticulousness and is often thought of by themselves as some sort of accomplishment or complex riddle. They often derive, and readily admit to deriving, great pleasure from their crimes and are usually very forthcoming about taking credit for their crimes when caught (which they are usually able to evade for quite some time owing to the meticulous planning of their actions). They are cool as a cucumber both during their crimes and when discussing them afterward. They are such extremely high functioning and clever such that to the ordinary lay person they would not appear to be abnormal in any way, the kind of person of which it is said afterward “I never would have thought he could do such a thing!” OTOH a sociopath or mentally ill person would usually appear off or disturbed in some way; they’re usually very poor at forming and maintaining social relationships and typically unable to maintain a stable lifestyle (transient, unable to keep a job for very long, acts erratically, etc).

The crimes of psychopaths are not the spontaneous, haphazard hackjobs (no pun intended) of a sociopath or a mentally ill person or a “crime of passion”. In fact it is rare that a defense attorney for such a person would even bother to make an “insanity” defense precisely because a psychopath doesn’t fit the criteria of mental illness— they are fully in touch with reality the entire time. A mentally ill person lacks the organizational thought and ability to plan such an elaborate course of action, and they are usually too emotionally unstable to commit their crimes so “neatly” and without emotion.

It is thus considered extremely difficult in the mental health and law enforcement fields if not impossible to rehabilitate a psychopath precisely because they have absolutely zero qualm about their actions despite having full comprehension of their heinousness.