How serious was this?

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I know that looking with lust is a sin, but if I do it before I think about it is it still one? For example, I was on a dating website, and looked at several girls who posed in scanty clothing, but I justified it in my mind because it was a dating website. Is that a mortal sin? I didn’t fully think about it being a grave matter and deliberately consent to committing a sin that estranged me from God.
 
JC125 said:
I know that looking with lust is a sin, but if I do it before I think about it is it still one? For example, I was on a dating website, and looked at several girls who posed in scanty clothing, but I justified it in my mind because it was a dating website. Is that a mortal sin? I didn’t fully think about it being a grave matter and deliberately consent to committing a sin that estranged me from God.
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Was the purpose to get sexually aroused?

Lust is defined as “An inordinate desire for or enjoyment of sexual pleasure.”
Also Masturbation is via external object (which includes the eyes) and psychic (thoughts):
“Direct stimulation of the sex organs outside of sexual intercourse. The self-stimulation can be physical, by means of some external object, or psychic, by means of thoughts and the imagination. It is a grave misuse of the procreative faculty and when done with full consent and deliberation is a serious sin. The sinfulness consists in setting in motion the generative powers while preventing them from achieving, their natural, divinely intended purpose.”

( Reference: Modern Catholic Dictionary)
 
We cannot help looking once, for we do not know, but can help looking twice. Now that you know the type of website this is, avoid it if it is an occasion of sin.

However, the comment is vague. What makes you think you were looking lustfully? Just because someone is scantily clothed, and you happen to see it, doesn’t mean you were looking with lust. For that to happen, it involves an interior state of lust. I can’t tell you how you were on the inside.

But if you quickly realized that you shouldn’t be looking and stopped, that doesn’t sound grave to me, if I understand everything correctly (I may not). However, if you looked and continued to look, knowing that this had a decent chance of eliciting lust in you, then this could maybe be an occasion of sin, though I dunno the gravity of such a specific offense I’d say probably venial if you stopped right after realizing you probably shouldn’t be there.

Ultimately a lot depends on your inside state (which we online may not know too well).
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Why are you looking for a girlfriend on a website full of ladies in scanty clothing?
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I mean, if he’s on a dating site, he can’t really control what people use for profile pictures. They might not even be real women; they could just be porn bots fishing for credit card numbers.

OP, kinda sounds like you’re stressing about nothing.
 
I guess I find it odd that a guy who is presumably Catholic and concerned about morality is going to visit a website with girls who are dressed immodestly. Of course, there’s the possibility that he has different standards for “scanty” than the average, or that this was only 3 girls out of 100 profiles, etc. Just the way he wrote it sounded like he was on Tindr or something.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Just the way he wrote it sounded like he was on Tindr or something.
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I mean, maybe. Obviously, I’m not on Tinder, but from what I’ve gleaned from single friends it’s become much more of a mainstream dating site and less of a “casual encounters” type deal.

But I agree if there are a ton of scantily clad ladies, as opposed to the odd one or two, it might not be the best place to look for a real relationship.
 
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