Is this a sin?

[5Cooliocumble92]

I said a bad word recently.I hate bad language,and before I said this I hadn’t said any bad words for well over a year.I said it because one of my classmates told me her boyfriend had tortured a pidgeon ,and I felt angry,exasperated and fed up.Is this a sin and do I need to go to confession?

 

[CarrieH]

It’s not a mortal sin, to be sure. You didn’t plan it in advance with a rebellious spirit, it just slipped out. You don’t need to go to confession unless you want to. But if I were you, I’d pray for that guy who tortured the pigeon, that he might learn to love and respect God’s creatures…and for that girl, that she might seek better company than that guy!

 

[JimR-OCDS]

I said a bad word recently.I hate bad language,and before I said this I hadn’t said any bad words for well over a year.I said it because one of my classmates told me her boyfriend had tortured a pidgeon ,and I felt angry,exasperated and fed up.Is this a sin and do I need to go to confession?

no, this is at most, a venial sin.

Jim

 

[Coreopisis]

I said a bad word recently.I hate bad language,and before I said this I hadn’t said any bad words for well over a year.I said it because one of my classmates told me her boyfriend had tortured a pidgeon ,and I felt angry,exasperated and fed up.Is this a sin and do I need to go to confession?

If I was you I probably would have done more than swear. Good job maintaining your composure as much as you did. I would’ve tracked that boy down and filed a police report to warn them that he tortures animals.

Did you know that it is well known by police and psychologists this is how serial killers start out? They are fascinated or something by the torture and eventually that fascination graduates to humans! Just something to keep in mind.

I can not, for the life of me, understand the torturing of innocent animals or people for that matter. How can people possibly do this? It hurts me to even think that an animal is hurting. No living thing deserves to suffer at our hands.

I am sickened.

I guess I am just not capable of understanding such a thing.

 

[CatholicCajun]

I think a venial sin if any, unless you took the Name of Jesus in vain then that would require Confession. God Bless.

 

[water]

If I used a foul language, I would go to confession even if it is venial sin for my mouth should be used to speak kind word and God gives me the ability to speak of love and of Him.

Going to confession is a great sacrament - we go to confess not just to confess our sins but through this act we receive more graces.

 

[BarbaraTherese]

I think your anger was entirely justified and the swearing at them simply an imperfection arising perhaps out of a previous bad habit the root of which remains. There is no moral obligation on you to confess imperfections, nor venial sins. However it can be spiritually very productive to confess them.
I think I could swear at a person in justified anger over a tortured animal which is unspeakable cruelty to put it mildly.

To commit sin we need* knowingly* and willingly consent to something which we believe is sinful - and this actually constitutes what is sinful - what is actually sin. At times we can inadvertently slip up without any sort of reflection whatsoever and after the event, as it were, and realize what we had done or have done…this is imperfection or fault in us. This could arise from an underlying spiritually negative disposition which, if I consent to that dispostion, makes the disposition itself sinful hence making “the fruit” of that disposition also sinful in that “the fruit” is completing my sinful disposition consented to. This is why it can be productive to get at what underlies faults, imperfections and certainly actual sins.
For example I may be very angry with someone and cling to that I have a right to my anger and in reality it is unjustified and I know it…if I then inadvertently swear at the person I am angry with, it is sinful.
Moral theology can be a mind bender!

Blessings and my regards…Barb