How do you justify

[SwizzleStick]

Just FYI, CAROLOFTHEBELLS, the precepts of the Church:

1. You shall attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation and rest from servile labor.
2. You shall confess your sins at least once a year.
3. You shall receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at least during the Easter season.
4. You shall observe the days of fasting and abstinence established by the Church.
5. You shall help to provide for the needs of the Church.

 

[ChristianWAB]

Receiving communion after not putting in anything in the collection plate. Isn’t the 5th precept of the Church to contribute to its support? Now I’m not even talking 5 or 10 or 20%. I’m talking putting something, however little; at least not give bad example by ignoring the collection basket altogether.

I read the statistics are like 80% don’t put anything at all in the collection plate. When you have low Mass attendance, how are the priests supposed to live on that? Are we always supposed to look for huge donors to pay our way at Mass? Is this fair to us and to them?

I can’t speak for the rest of the country (or the world for that matter), but I live in Massachusetts and the sex abuse scandal turned a lot of people off to Catholicism. Several churches had to be closed and liquidated just to cover the HUGE settlement the victims won.

I can tell you this is a HUGE reason why people don’t give as much as they used to around here because it’s starting to feel like blood money; like whatever we donate will just be used to pay for the sex abuse settlement.

 

[CAROLOFTHEBELLS]

Thank you SwizzleStick (cute name, by the way). Does not keeping one or more of these precepts constitute a mortal sin? I was raised by parents of different denominations, Catholic and Episcopal, and went to cateticism classes every Saturday and Mass every Sunday, but I think my learning might have gotten a bit muddled! Anyway, I don’t think it should be a *mortal *sin if it is.

I also want to address the idea of not giving because of the scandal. I don’t know if this has anything to do with not giving, but I remember when the Diocese of San Diego filed bankrupcy last year I felt very bad for all the staff members and good priests and nuns. Not giving doesn’t demonstrate your ethics, in my opinion, it only destroys the good things and the livelihood of many innocent people.

Remember Watergate? What if all stopped paying our taxes when we found out about the laundered money? How about Iran-Contra? Should we have stopped paying taxes then?

 

[Pug]

The point, I guess, is that if we deliberately and knowingly break the 5th commandment of the church, if we know we can afford to contribute to the church and don’t at all, either in the collection plate or by banking order, or by giving our spare time, or anything at all, then we are committing a mortal sin, same as if we miss Sunday mass, and shouldn’t receive communion until we’ve made a good confession.

Could some folks report back on their experience with printed examinations of conscience and catechisms in regard to the fifth precept of the Church, specifically? The exam that I have lists “failure to support the work of the Church monetarily and/or with time and ability” as a *venial *sin, not a grave one. I’d dismiss this if I thought the exam were trying to cut down most mortal sins into venial ones, but it isn’t. (Yes, it has imprimatur, etc.) I’d also dismiss it summarily if under grave/mortal sins it had a corresponding entry about the fifth precept, but it doesn’t, not that I can find.

Does the CCC detail it as a grave or serious sin to fail in this particular obligation? I can’t immediately think of a passage where it does.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

usccb.org/catechism/text/pt3sect1chpt1art8.htm

Here is the definition of mortal sin from the CCC:

1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: “Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.”

So, in not contributing to the support of the parish, it would be really a rough way to make it mortal in my opinion, but possible.

 

[CatholicCajun]

My friend does not always put in the collection basket, she is probably judges for that, yes she does work, but at 60 she just had to buy a house she really cannot afford (long story as to why and not my place to tell) and I know the reason she does not put is that she simply cannot afford it.

When we were growing up we were VERY poor, for most of my childhood we were without a car, going to Mass was difficult, yet I remember for years my mom mailing $5.00 a month to the Catholic Church because my dad and us were Catholic and the same amount to her Methodist church.

So, even though you don’t see them put money in the basket, that does not mean they are not supporting the church.

 

[SwizzleStick]

Thank you SwizzleStick (cute name, by the way). Does not keeping one or more of these precepts constitute a mortal sin?

My Examination of Conscience booklet with Imprimatur indicates that “Failure to support the work of the Church monetarily and/or with time and ability” is a venial sin (against the first of the ten commandments). So, it appears that it is not a mortal sin to not support the Church monetarily or with time/talent, but it is sin if one is able and chooses not to do so.

 

[Crumpy]

Matthew 6:1-4
3But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

I’m still reading *The Cost of Discipleship *by Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In its 25th anniversary year issue in 2006, Christianity Today magazine had an article on the 50 most influential books, as rated by its readers. This book is one of the 50 such books.

In it, Bonhoeffer has a particular interpretation of this verse. How are our “hands” not supposed to know what the other is doing?

Well, he explains, this means that our acts of righteousness are supposed to be so spontaneous and, for that matter, immediate, that we don’t stop to think about them in relation to our selves or to others. I guess part of this means that we don’t live at two standards, righteous and non-righteous. We, as disciples, obey Jesus immediately and every day, and we have only one standard of living. It is no longer we that live, but Christ lives in us. And, Jesus is constant, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Someone always sees such an act of righteousness toward the needy, even if it’s just the needy themselves. I think the earlier verse is meant to teach us not to be deliberately ostentatious. It is not we (disciples) we are helping the needy, it is still Christ in us who does so.

To the original post: we cannot judge and we should not judge by even asking such a question “how do you justify…” There is one day of judgment, just one. It will come for each of us. all too soon (Lutheran, anti-Catholic Bonhoeffer notes).

 

[Pug]

1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: “Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.”

So, in not contributing to the support of the parish, it would be really a rough way to make it mortal in my opinion, but possible.

Your post makes me think about would it be a grave sin to leave your pastor starving in the hedgerows when you have plenty of resources and no reason not to employ those resources to feed him. This, I think, might well be what you have in mind? It would be unlikely, but possible to encounter such a situation.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

Your post makes me think about would it be a grave sin to leave your pastor starving in the hedgerows when you have plenty of resources and no reason not to employ those resources to feed him. This, I think, might well be what you have in mind? It would be unlikely, but possible to encounter such a situation.

That was my thought. However, I have seen it as people who also pull the good old Ananias and Sappirah number. I cannot judge their hearts, and they did not fall down unpon the ground dead, but they gave a parish property, made a production number out of the amount, and then turned around and not only wanted control of the amount through the parish, but it wasn’t exactly what they said said they planned to do. The parish was counting on the revenue, and it made some bad press for the people who did it.