…For those Catholics who do not personally believe that mass attendance is a matter of such supreme importance, they have an easy option. Don’t go to mass…Lines for the Eucharist are long. Lines for reconciliation are short… …
Ay, ay, ay!! Not quite.
(CCC: underline mine):
***Hope **
2090 When God reveals Himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love Him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity. Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God; it is also the fear of offending God’s love and of incurring punishment.
**2091 **The first commandment is also concerned with sins against hope, namely, despair and presumption:
By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God’s goodness, to his justice - for the Lord is faithful to his promises - and to his mercy.
**2092 **There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God’s almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit). *
Now, let’s turn to the section treating the Sacrament of Reconciliation:
***Contrition **
**1451 **Among the penitent’s acts contrition occupies first place. Contrition is "sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed, together with the resolution not to sin again."50
**1452 **When it arises from a love by which God is loved above all else, contrition is called “perfect” (contrition of charity). Such contrition remits venial sins; it also obtains forgiveness of mortal sins if it includes the firm resolution to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as possible.51
1453 The contrition called “imperfect” (or “attrition”) is also a gift of God, a prompting of the Holy Spirit. It is born of the consideration of sin’s ugliness or the fear of eternal damnation and the other penalties threatening the sinner (contrition of fear). Such a stirring of conscience can initiate an interior process which, under the prompting of grace, will be brought to completion by sacramental absolution. By itself however, imperfect contrition cannot obtain the forgiveness of grave sins, but it disposes one to obtain forgiveness in the sacrament of Penance.52 *
It is a sacrilege to commit a sin with the intention of later availing oneself of the Sacrament of Reconciliation insincerely, which is to say with the intention of confessing without contrition and especially without any intention of amendment. You don’t have to feel bad–the Church does not require us to manufacture feelings–but you do have to renounce sin by an act of will when you confess. Therefore, you are not suggesting an “easy option” but unfortunately are suggesting a foolish one. I do not know how else to put it without putting on a sugar coating that does not belong. I am sure I am not alone in this opinion, so I will put it this way: Do not use the confessional in this manner, we implore you.
…If an individual sincerely believes that a given doctrine or rule is in error, and is prepared to accept whatever consequences God chooses to inflict, then there is really nothing preventing said individual from following dictates of said conscience. …
When I hear someone talk flippantly of “whatever consequences God chooses to inflict”, my heart sinks and jumps into my throat at the same time. We are talking about having received the grace to appreciate the greatness of God and then choosing lukewarmness, ingratitude, indifference, or neglect with the attitude of “hey, so what if God deserves worship and I refuse it–I’ll take what I get for that.”
Yes, we follow our consciences, but we are bound to form our consciences properly, we are bound to pay attention to our religious superiors and to discern a conflict between their teachings only after great effort to find a way to be entirely obedient, and we are bound to act according to what our informed consciences and honest desire for obedience dictate, not according to what spiritual faults like pride or sloth tell us we can probably get away with. The OP’s case is one matter–that is, if she were to have missed Mass, it would have been out of an honest desire to make a personal sacrifice out of love for her husband and yet without any intention to indulge in sloth towards her obligation to worship God in the highest manner possible–but you are implying a very broad dispensation that the faithful would allow themselves only at great peril. Do not recommend that, please.
A Catholic who is struggling with a conflict in conscience has an obligation to form his or her conscience properly. We cannot go priest shopping until we find one who will tell us what we want to hear, either. We need to do our best to learn how moral law applies to our choices according to the teachers that were given to us by God, and if we have the ability to choose what we want or to choose obedience to our religious superiors, we need to choose to be obedient. Disobedience, if it is ever necessary at all, needs to be a very last resort, and taken in the face of what seem to be conflicting moral imperatives without redress, and not for matters of “I don’t think I have to, and so you can’t make me”. Rather, it ought to be a matter of “I cannot see how I can meet both this moral obligation and this other one, so I am forced to choose, and having educated myself to the best of my ability about the weightiness of the alternatives, this is what I feel I must do.” It is never be chosen lightly.
