Is impure thoughts mortal sin?

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emergency0126

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Sometimes, I find my self sitting down, and thought of sinning suddenly appear or impure thoughts. I try to pray it out or get rid of it, but it is really hard to for some reason.
Any advice on getting my mind back to normal (in the event of the thought coming back)? Is it a mortal sin?
 
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Impure thoughts usually means sexual thoughts. When you have these thoughts, stop and thank God for either the person you are thinking about or simply say “Thank you, God for the gift of marriage. Bless all marriages and please bless my future spouse.”

It is amazing how fast temptations disappear when they spur you to prayer.
 
So prayer does help. I guess I was using the wrong prayers 😑 Thank you.
 
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emergency0126 said:
Sometimes, I find my self sitting down, and thought of sinning suddenly appear or impure thoughts. I try to pray it out or get rid of it, but it is really hard to for some reason.
Any advice on getting my mind back to normal (in the event of the thought coming back)? Is it a mortal sin?
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If your brain drifts towards sexual thoughts, they are not impure thoughts. They are sexual thoughts.

If you embrace those thoughts and ruminate on them, then they are impure thoughts.
 
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Human willpower is inadequate. A forced reaction will usually make those thoughts more persistent.

Focus on love & gratitude. If you have persistent sexual thoughts towards a real person or an imaginary person in your head, thank God for creating your siblings (brothers and sisters) and think about how that person has a mother and father, and how Jesus suffered and died for us, and how much he loves them, and how much you should also love them. Love and lust are incompatible with each other so the more love you have the less room there is for objectifying people.

But if you do have reoccurring sexual thoughts, be patient and continue to live your life and continue to pray continually. St Catherine of Sienna once experienced immense sexual temptation for three days straight. At the end of the 3 days it finally passed and she asked Jesus, “Where were you?” Jesus said, “I was with you the entire time, otherwise you would have fallen”.
 
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Perhaps try not to give fuel to impure thoughts, take stock of. what your watching and reading ,and when you’re in public nip any straying thoughts in the bud 🤔
 
Pray the Rosary! It is a powerful armor against mortal sin! It is also your sword against the devil!
 
The thought or temptation crossing your mind isn’t a sin. Dwelling on the thought and entertaining it is. If you’re asking if it is a mortal sin you need to figure out if it meets the criteria for mortal sin. Grave matter: Yes Full Consent: I don’t have that information, only you do. Full Knowledge: if you are asking if something is a mortal sin I might presume that you didn’t have full knowledge. But again, I don’t have access to your thoughts and what you know so once again I don’t have all the information.

In my own experience of battling with sins of a lustful nature, even just dwelling on an impure thought, I’ve found Confession to be wonderfully helpful. Get into the habit of frequent Confession. We were given the Sacrements to help us overcome sin and become more like Christ. Take advantage of that gift.
 
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I used to worry about this all the time when I was younger. We were taught by the nuns that thoughts were just as bad as actions.

The reality is that I had to get to a point where I no longer believe this. In fact, I believe God may even give you additional graces if you have bad thoughts but then use self-restraint to not turn them into physical actions. This goes for sexual thoughts as well as any other kind of thought (wanting to cause someone harm, etc.). Once I realized this, I became a much better person because I wasn’t wasting time worrying about this thought or that thought. I allow myself to have the thought, but then I require myself to replace it with a more wholesome thought of gratitude or hope or a prayer for someone else (or myself if I feel I need it).

Now if you are having obsessive thoughts, that is a problem on its own (but not a moral problem; just a psychological problem). If it is costing you quality of life, then it is time to address it with a professional who can help you with that issue.
 
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If unwanted thoughts linger around in your head without your consent, and you continually try to get rid of them, you are not sinning mortally.

Also, if you prayed to get rid of the temptation immediately when it came to your head, you can be sure that you did not commit a mortal sin.
 
There is a lot of erroneous advice here.

Claim 1: Lust is not grave matter.
The former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Muller, says that any sin against the sixth commandment is a mortal sin. Jesus himself says a man looking at a woman with lust in his heart is the equivalent of adultery. There is no doubt that lust is grave matter.

Claim 2: You are likely not culpable
To the contrary! It is not enough to claim that you had insufficient knowledge and consent for any one particular thought. Since if the devil does not gain victory the first time he will the second, or the fifth, or the 100th time. You could still be culpable of a torrent of mortal sins. Simply, you want NONE of these hundreds of thoughts to be mortal sins, because any mortal sin that you are fully culpable of could potentially send you to hell. But God is merciful? True, but God is also just. And as St. Alphonsus said, more people go to hell because of overconfidence in God’s mercy than by his justice.

So many thoughts might go through a person’s brain in a day, that even if he was only culpable of say 1 in 20 thoughts every hour times 16 hours in a day, so 16 thoughts in a day, that totals to 112 fully culpable mortal sins in a week. Let me repeat that again, you could potentially be fully culpable of so many actual mortal sins of lust that you cannot count the number of sins that you committed, the next time you go to confession!

Does the murder commit so many murders that he cannot count the number of people that he has murdered? Does the chronic masturbator commit so many masturbations that he cannot count the number of times that he has masturbated? Does the pedophile priest commit so many child rapes that he cannot count the number of rapes that he has committed? Let me repeat this again. Because of the unceasing torrent of temptations and thoughts for which deliberately consenting, with sufficient knowledge, to just one of those thoughts puts you in a state of mortal sin, lustful thoughts is most likely the worst sin Catholics men aged 15-40 face today. It is worse than abortion. It is worse than murder. It is worse than theft. It is worse than sexual abuse.

Claim 3: God is likely lenient on this one sin.
To the contrary! You are not God and you do not know how God will judge. Therefore, it is precisely this uncertainty that should make you tremble. Would you really trust your salvation to a “perhaps?” The fact that you do not know how God will judge is precisely why you should flee and sprint from this sin as fast as you can possibly sprint away.

Finally, conservatives are inconsistent! Just as many factors weigh against people’s will when they commit sins of fornication, masturbation, and adultery. And yet those same conservatives will tell people to flee from sins of exterior actions, and not commit any of those sins. Not even once! They do not say: hey, watching pornography only once a week is good enough. Or adultery only once a week is good enough. So too, a single fully consented to lustful thought is too much. It should be fled from!

No caution can be to great! Flee! Flee! Flee!
 
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Why not debate with sophisticated logical argumentation? The reason the position of not fleeing from lust will always fail, every time, is because:
  1. We cannot downgrade lust from a mortal sin to a venial sin with time. If it was grave matter in the past, then it is grave matter now. The advice to not care too much about thoughts is hard to reconcile with those same thoughts being mortal sins and a single mortal sin being capable of sending you to hell.
  2. It is 100 percent Truth that so many thoughts go through our brains every day, that its not enough to say any one specific thought did not have culpability. This is because even if you were only fully culpable of a very small percentage of your lustful thoughts, the sheer number of them means 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!
  3. Lustful thoughts have a spectrum of consent and knowledge. And in fact most of the time you are not entirely devoid of any consent whatsoever. You claim it is not sufficient consent? Stop playing God! You do not know how God will judge, there is uncertainty. And like I said above, it is precisely this uncertainty that should make you tremble. Do not leave your salvation to a “perhaps.”
The remedy?
As soon as a temptation against chastity presents itself, turn instantly to God and implore his assistance. Do not argue with the temptation, but immediately throw it off. And that means immediately. Not two seconds later, not 10 seconds later, immediately. Cry out and beg his assistance: “I need you God RIGHT NOW! I need you God RIGHT NOW! Please. Please. Please.” Cry out the name of our Blessed Lord (or Mary) and tell him how much you need him then and there.

Constant vigilance! It is true, paradoxically, that thinking about resisting temptation can put more temptations into your brain. However, 5 thoughts with no vigilance is 5 thoughts with some consent, and potentially 5 culpable mortal sins. If resisting meant more thoughts may come into your brain, say 20 thoughts now that you’re resisting, constant vigilance will still win because it means throwing off every one of those thoughts immediately. It implies absolutely no consent and no sins committed for any of those 20 thoughts! Also, you can develop a habit of resisting sin such that it becomes second nature and is just what you do immediately. The solution is to strive to get to this point, where it does not take as much effort and there is not an increase in temptations, and yet your vigilance has not decreased whatsoever!

You must have constant custody of your eyes whenever you are around attractive females. You must learn to look away whenever you see yoga pants. If a movie, yoga pants, the beach, billboards, etc cause you to sin, then identify the trigger and flee from it. While you cannot eliminate temptations entirely, and while the the advice to not even look at women is too far in that it conflicts with Christian charity to love our neighbor and bring Christ’s presence to society, one can/should still flee!!! Still sprint away from near occasions of sin! Avoid lust! Flee, Flee, Flee!
 
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In The Good of Marriage (401 A.D.) Augustine held that “male and female were from the creation made both to desire one another and to live in friendship and physical intimacy, Sexuality is a gift from God, and when understood and dealt with within the virtue of Chastity is not a sin. Having an attraction, or interested sexual thought is therefore natural and need not be sinful. It may include temptation, to lust, which is a sin. Whether you give in to it and engage in lust, or respond in a chaste way is your decision, and that decision determines whether or not you sin.

Lust is a disordered desire for …sexual pleasure. (Catechism 2351). Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.

Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy. "Man’s dignity therefore requires him to act out of conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within, and not by blind impulses in himself or by mere external constraint. Man gains such dignity when, ridding himself of all slavery to the passions, he presses forward to his goal by freely choosing what is good. The virtue of chastity involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift of sexuality.
Mortal sin implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. One commits venial sin when, in a less serious matter, he does not observe the standard prescribed by the moral law, or when he disobeys the moral law in a grave matter, but without full knowledge or without complete consent.

The fact that n you experience sexual thoughts frequently does not make those sins worse than other sins. A sexual thought is not worse than murder and may not be sinful, depending on how you respond. A lustful thought is not worse than murder, and not worse than fornication, and not worse than abortion, though it may be more frequent. A lustful thought would be one of intentionally imagining fornication. Actually carrying it out involves another sin and leading another person into sin. It therefore harms others, not only yourself and is an even more grave matter. The important thing when these thoughts come is to focus on your apprenticeship in self-mastery. To resist lustful thoughts and think of not someone’s Body, but the actual person. Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one’s neighbor so turn your thoughts about another person to how you would treat that person as a friend.
 
Citing Saint Augustine will not make your case, he was extremely anti-sex.

Saint Augustine said any sex for pleasure is sinful (although he is wrong on this point):
"It is one thing not to lie with one’s wife except with the sole will of generating children: this has no fault. It is another to seek the pleasure of the flesh in lying, although within the limits of marriage: this has venial fault.”

St. Augustine also said:
“The thought follows the look; delight comes after the thought; and consent after delight.”
“It is certain that few are saved.”

Quote from the above post:
“Having an attraction, or interested sexual thought is therefore natural and need not be sinful.”

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.

“Whether you give in to it and engage in lust, or respond in a chaste way is your decision, and that decision determines whether or not you sin.”
I really dislike this advice. You utterly fail to mention near occasion of sin and that a single fully consented to mortal sin could potentially (God judges) send you to hell. For this reason, flee not only from sin but from near occasion of sin!

“A lustful thought is not worse than murder, and not worse than fornication, and not worse than abortion, though it may be more frequent.” …
"The fact that n you experience sexual thoughts frequently does not make those sins worse than other sins. "

A single lustful thought that is fully consented to is not worse than murder/rape, but it is POSSIBLE that an unceasing torrent of lustful sins is worse than murder/rape. The argument above is a poor straw man of my argument. The claim I am making is that you are not the judge, only God judges. Since you are not God, you do not know how He will judge. Is 1 act of fornication equal to 10, 100, 1000, or 10000 mortal sins of lust? We do not know, I claim it is POSSIBLE that it is worse than murder, fornication, and rape. To say otherwise with certainty requires playing God. It is precisely this uncertainty that should make you tremble! For the sake of our salvation, let us flee!

One final argument for why lust is worse than murder: we do not have a biological urge to murder, but we do have a biological urge to lust. Therefore, there is no sin for which the devil delights more than sins of impurity!

"A lustful thought would be one of intentionally imagining fornication. "
This is false, any deliberately/knowingly seeking sexual pleasure WHATSOEVER isolated from its unitive and procreative purposes is sinful.

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 further fully consented to lustful thought should reach this limit.
 
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Personally I feel you have scrupulosity and as long as you are not intentionally dwelling on these thoughts, I do not believe that is a mortal sin. Otherwise, if every bad thought that popped into our head was a mortal sin, I don’t fully understand how a lot of people would make it to heaven. Our thoughts are like dogs. We should do our best to control them and unify, but there’s not always too much we can do.
 
I never made the argument that all thoughts are mortal sins. Also, following the Moral Law is for everyone (not just for the isolated few that are deemed “scrupulous”).
Here is my argument from above:

Lustful thoughts have a spectrum of consent and knowledge. And in fact most of the time you are not entirely devoid of any consent whatsoever. You claim it is not sufficient consent? Stop playing God! You do not know how God will judge. There is uncertainty. And like I said above, it is precisely this uncertainty that should make you tremble. Do not leave your salvation to a “perhaps.”

Finally, the poster above who said:
" Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one’s neighbor so turn your thoughts about another person to how you would treat that person as a friend."

You mostly cannot control thoughts that randomly pop into your head. Therefore, you should throw off a disordered thought instantly, as soon as it comes into your mind. But sure, for the thoughts that you directly will, think of someone with love, and not as a mere object. You should employ constant and unceasing vigilance. Flee as soon as any temptation against chastity presents itself!!!
 
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