Someone else gave a good reply, but I’ll add my two cents.
HB, the question for you is, have you been previously baptised in a ‘recognized’ Christian religion, i.e. one the Catholic church recognizes as a valid baptism. If the answer is yes, you will have to go to confession. Before you go, you should examine your conscience and confess all sins you can remember, and which you are contrite about.
Now we start getting into venial and mortal distinctions.
Consider if I were to set up a deadly trap on my doorstep that I needed to reset each day to be sure it was in working order. I set the trap to kill whatever solicitor or JW showed up, but no one shows up that month, so I then disable the trap. Have I sinned? Yes. I had murderous intent, which is a sin, even if no one was successfully killed by the trap. I set the trap hoping that it would do its job if a person were to show up. My intent is what it is long before any person shows up or not, so whether someone in fact shows up is not relevant to my intent.
hmm, so then by that definition, NFP, would also fall under the category of sin because if we intentionally search out if one is ovulating with the intent to not have sex if conception is a greater possibility, then we sin in doing this.
You are right, what I wrote is slanted in that direction, but I didn’t assume it was your intent. I’ve taken it as hypothetical, and not representative of you as in actually YOU. I was trying to illustrate the lack of connection between intent and what happens later, no matter what kind of intent it was. Also, I was trying to pick a situation/intent that involved sin, since the snippet I was responding to seemed to encourage hypothetical pondering about how it could be a sin. Thus I provided one scenario in my last sentence, although I know that was not given in your first post. I’m sorry it came off like I thought that was your actual intent. I was trying to accomodate the suggestion of making it be a sin. This motivated me to add an intent that was undisputably sinful. I think perhaps I misunderstood the snippet I quoted in my previous post.
P.S. I suspect I may still not be “getting” it.
If you consciously decide and plan that you’re going to rob a bank, and are prevented or unsuccessful through chance rather than through a conscious decision not to do it, it’s a sin.
You would say, “I took birth control pills for 28 days for the purpose of preventing a pregnancy because I thought that I might be having sex during that period of time,” or else you would say, 'I went on the birth control pill for one month without a good medical reason to do so, because I was thinking that I might have sex, and I didn’t want to end up pregnant."
This is still a really bad idea, because the birth control pill cannot prevent AIDS or STDs, which are a far more likely outcome than pregnancy, in this situation.
I have an outline that may be of use to you, when the time comes. You can bookmark it HERE.You have to have numbers?
I’m in RCIA and was on BC for two years(no never married, very bad I know) How am I supposed to know how many sins I commited there? I mean, it was definitely a lot.
I’m honestly very nervous about confession. Like, what to say and how and such. Then again, I have 20 years of confessing to do.
Not trying to jack the thread or anything. Just confused I guess about the…what has to be done/said.
Very good question BTW OP!
