Is impure thoughts mortal sin?

[Canvas]

Furthermore, according to Doctor of the Church St. Alphonsus, there may exist a number of sins beyond which God pardons no more. Reach into your heart and tremble lest a single fully consented to lustful thought should reach this limit.

First of all, from the context of the whole sermon, St. Alphonsus was mainly talking about presumption and that we could die at any time.

QUOTE: You have sinned, trusting rashly in the divine mercy: the punishment of your guilt shall fall suddenly upon you, and you shall not know from whence it comes. What do you say? What resolution do you make? If, after this sermon, you do not firmly resolve to give yourself to God, I weep over you and regard you as lost.

QUOTE: O folly of sinners! If you purchase a house, you spare no pains to get all the securities necessary to guard against the loss of your money; if you take medicine, you are careful to assure yourself that it cannot injure you; if you pass over a river, you cautiously avoid all danger of falling into it: and for a transitory enjoyment, for the gratification of revenge, for a beastly pleasure, which lasts but a moment, you risk your eternal salvation, saying: I will go to confession after I commit this sin. And when, I ask, are you to go to confession? You say: On tomorrow. But who promises you tomorrow? Who assures you that you shall have time for confession, and that God will not deprive you of life as He has deprived so many others, in the act of sin? " Diem tenes " says St. Augustine, " qui horam non tenes ." You cannot be certain of living for another hour, and you say: I will go to confession tomorrow. Listen to the words of St. Gregory: “He who has promised pardon to penitents, has not promised tomorrow to sinners” – Hom. 12 in Evan. God has promised pardon to all who repent; but He has not promised to wait until tomorrow for those who insult Him. Perhaps God will give you time for repentance, perhaps He will not. But, should He not give it, what shall become of your soul? In the meantime, for the sake of a miserable pleasure, you lose the grace of God and expose yourself to the danger of being lost forever.

It IS NOT the teaching of the Catholic Church that there is a sin quota for a repentant sinner.

Some say, “I have done too much evil; the good God cannot pardon me.” My children, this is a great blasphemy; it is putting a limit on the mercy of God, which has no limit – it is infinite. You may have done enough to lose the souls of a whole parish, and if you confess, if you are sorry for having done this evil, and resolve not to do it again, the good God will have pardoned you.’

St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney, the Cure of Ars

My God, why is it that scrupulous and anxious souls treat You as if You were a tyrant who demands nothing more from Your subjects than fear and trepidation? The result is they think that God gets angry at every thought that passes through their minds and at every word that slips involuntarily from their lips and wishes to cast them into hell.

St. Alphonsus

 

[alphonsus1]

“There is no sin quota for a repentant sinner.”
First, the fact that the Church has not declared something does not make it untrue. The church did not develop its unitive theory of sex until 1900 years after Jesus! Was it untrue for the first 1900 years! No. And the fact that we do not know something means it is prudent (but not obligatory) to be conservative.

Second, St. Alphonsus is a Doctor of the Church. In fact, no other theologian has gotten more affirmation than St. Alphonsus. Pope Gregory XVI even ruled that St. Alphonsus’s Moral Theology could be quietly accepted just by virtue of him having held the opinion.

Is God’s mercy infinite? Yes. But so is his justice! God’s justice is also infinite!
What are some other quotes from St. Alphonsus, so that people do not go away being misled by one out of context quote.

From the Sermons of St. Alphonsus:
“And if it be necessary to abstain from looking at females, it is much more necessary to avoid conversation with them.”

“But the unchaste are guilty of an unceasing torrent of sins, by thoughts, by words, by looks, by complacencies, and by touches; so that, when they go to confession they find it impossible to tell the number of the sins they have committed against purity.”

“Hence St. Thomas says, that there is no sin in which the devil delights so much as in this sin; because there is no other sin to which nature clings with so much tenacity.”

“Hence, as soon as temptation against chastity presents itself, the remedy is, to turn instantly to God for help, and to repeat several times the most holy names of Jesus and Mary, which have a special virtue to banish bad thoughts of that kind.”

" ‘But God is merciful.’ Behold another common delusion by which the devil encourages sinners to persevere in a life of sin! A certain author has said, that more souls have been sent to hell by the mercy of God than by his justice."

MOST IMPORTANT quotes of St. Alphonsus.
“Hence you should tremble, lest, if you commit a single additional mortal sin, God should abandon you, and cast you into hell.”

" ‘Evil doers shall be cut off.’ (Ps. xxxvi. 9.) The wicked shall be cut off by the divine justice. ‘For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap.’ (Gal. vi. 8.) He that sows in sin, shall reap eternal torments. ‘Because I called and you refused, I also will laugh in your destruction and will mock when that shall come to you which you feared.’ (Prov. i. 24, 26.) I called, says the Lord, and you mocked me; but I will mock you at the hour of death. ‘Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time.’ "

How does St. Alphonsus end his sermon?
“Dearly beloved Christians, enter into yourselves, and tremble; for this sermon may be the last of Gods mercies to you!”

 

[alphonsus1]

Please do not be misled. St. Alphonsus does not believe that presumption, that is, thinking that death is not imminent, is the only delusion of the enemy of salvation.

Saint Alphonsus also states that the delusions of sinners include:

1. " I hope to recover God’s grace by making a good confession.”
2. "I cannot at present resist this passion.”
3. " ‘But God is merciful.’ Behold another common delusion by which the devil encourages sinners to persevere in a life of sin! A certain author has said, that more souls have been sent to hell by the mercy of God than by his justice."
4. " ‘But’ ; you say, ‘as God has shown me so many mercies hitherto, I hope he will continue to do so for the future.’ "
5. " It is true that, by this sin, I lose the grace of God; but, even after committing this sin, I may be saved"

St. Alphonsus states that:
" ‘But after all, it may happen that I will save my soul.’ I answer: ‘What folly is it to trust your salvation to a perhaps?’ How many with this ‘perhaps I may be saved,’ are now in hell? Do you wish to be one of their unhappy companions? "

Please, anyone reading this, I absolutely implore you, I beg of you, to not be deceived by the quote above about God’s mercy. It is clear as day that St. Alphonsus believes that overconfidence in God’s mercy is a deceitful artifice of the enemy of salvation. It is not from God. It is from the enemy.

 

[joseie]

As long as they are ‘thoughts’ only, don’t much bother.Humans have been given the power of thinking and dreaming without any limit by God purposely.Just remember ,what a boring it would have been if one can think only about what one can actually do at that time!

 

[emergency0126]

Yes, I think thoughts are a gift, but also a temptation at times. I guess how we act with the temptations are more important.

 

[alphonsus1]

Yes, just because we should flee from sin does not mean all thoughts are bad. Many thoughts are loving. Just think of this life as a voyage, with our ultimate destiny being heaven. That is, going home to Jesus! That thought right there should put tears in your eyes and shows how amazing the gift of thoughts actually are

 

[Truett]

You say: “Sexual thoughts about anyone other than your future wife are disordered desires, period. They are not natural. Sexual thoughts are only “natural” and a “gift” from God within the narrow confines of marriage. Outside of marriage, any sexual pleasure sought is ALWAYS isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes. Extramarital sexual thoughts are temptations to mortal sin. If you deliberately and knowingly consent to those thoughts, it is then objectively a mortal sin, period.”

If I had no thoughts about the desire to be with a Woman or even of my lack of such desire, how would I determine who was to be my wife? or whether I even was interested in getting Married?. You seem to be saying that we are unable to have a sexual thought without then choosing to seek sexual pleasure. we could, theoretically choose to seek sexual pleasure in the thought, or with the person about whom we are thinking, or we could resist that temptation --but no! look, it is already too late.
This is an interesting Idea but does not seem to me to be the way God designed us. Rather, he seems tome to have designed us to seek information and to make a choice based on a discernment of what the evidence presented to our senses means or is likely to mean to us.

I had sexual thoughts about my future wife, and yet I was not yet certain that she was my future wife. was thinking about marrying her a sin? was considering whether i would be interested in procreating with her a sin? I also had sexual thoughts about others who were not my future wife. Those thoughts, about others, did not give me consolation – as Ignatius would have said, but rather desolation. It was in considering the possibility of a romantic and physical relation with others that I recognized that those potential relationships were not for me and was led to my commitment to the wife with whom I shared my life for the next thirty years in practices that were unitive and procreative.

You suggest that we should reject and flee from anything that might be the near occasion of sin which is a recommendation we all grew up with. But no, you actually seem to be suggesting that we flee from the near occasion of temptation. And you imply that simply being tempted is a mortal sin. You say that we are not able to judge our thoughts and actions, and that we must fear our thoughts and run from them. But that is not what I read in the Catechism. NO what i read is: “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:”

And the catechism says that Chastity is an apprenticeship in self mastery. and in all apprenticeships some errors are likely to be made as we learn the boundaries. Yet it is difficult to learn mastery if we hide in a cave and do nothing for fear that we may make a mistake and be cast into the void by a vengeful master.

 

[alphonsus1]

“If I had no thoughts about the desire to be with a Woman or even of my lack of such desire, how would I determine who was to be my wife?”

The very fact that you have to throw off those thoughts shows that you are attracted to your girlfriend, no need to dwell further! If you had no desire to be with a woman, then marriage is not for you. I am claiming you should throw off carnal thoughts that pop into your brain as soon as those thoughts come into your mind, Instantly. Flee, flee, flee! I said sexual thoughts were temptations to mortal sin, not that they were mortal sin. The posters here keep saying things that I never said. Let me repeat, so no one can distort what I say, a mortal sin is DELIBERATELY CONSENTING to carnal pleasure in those thoughts.

“You seem to be saying that we are unable to have a sexual thought without then choosing to seek sexual pleasure.”

I never made this claim! In fact, I made the opposite claim. I said that even in the case that the vast majority of your thoughts do not translate into lust, you could still be culpable of a torrent of mortal sins. You should still tremble! This is because even if only a small percentage of our sexual thoughts actually translate into acts/ mortal sins, the sheer number of our thoughts is so enormous that you could still very well be culpable of hundreds of mortal sins every month (or even week)! So many that you cannot count how many sins you committed!

was thinking about marrying her a sin?
No, unless it was deliberately consenting to sexual thoughts. That is, thinking about carnal pleasure with her.

was considering whether i would be interested in procreating with her a sin?

You can know this information by the fact that you have to resist temptations to her. Just like you do not have to “test try” your wife and have pre-marital sex with her to know whether you want to have sex with her, so too you do not have to “test try” any lustful thought WHATSOEVER about her to know whether you want to marry her.

But no, you actually seem to be suggesting that we flee from the near occasion of temptation.

No, I am suggesting that sexual, carnal thoughts that pop into your brain are themselves temptations. They are not near occasion of temptation, like you say, because those thoughts themselves could very well translate into sins with at least some of those thoughts (given the hundreds that many people have every day). Therefore, sexual thoughts themselves are temptations. Failing to throw them off instantly is voluntarily putting yourself into near occasion of sin. Finally, a single fully consented to mortal sin is too much, since a single thought can lead to hell.

Your last point about conscious can be discarded. Conscious cannot make an act contrary to the moral law, lustful thoughts, into something moral. Neither can conscious turn near occasion of sin into something else. Failing to throw off sexual thoughts is near occasion of sin, period. You are obligated to follow a properly formed conscious. But any conscious that contradicts the infallible Magisterium is certainly wrong, and any conscious that contradicts the non-infallible Magisterium is almost certainly wrong.