Living in Mortal Sin

[nomolos]

No one know’s the outcome, but it is always better to be safe than sorry. He is not sorry and has no intentions of reversing or doing what the priest would give him for penance which would be to abstain from sexual relations. I know of a woman who had her tube’s tide, so the priest stated if you don’t want children then don’t have sex, for penance it would be to abstain from sexual relations. I don’t know if she confessed or not, but you reap what you sow.
I would really like to know what his intentions are, he is not sorry nor remorseful, yet he is going to adult catechism. He say’s he is the why this?,why that? or shown me guy in class. I pray he finds his answers:thumbsup:

 

[dulcissima]

No one know’s the outcome, but it is always better to be safe than sorry. He is not sorry and has no intentions of reversing or doing what the priest would give him for penance which would be to abstain from sexual relations. I know of a woman who had her tube’s tide, so the priest stated if you don’t want children then don’t have sex, for penance it would be to abstain from sexual relations. I don’t know if she confessed or not, but you reap what you sow.
I would really like to know what his intentions are, he is not sorry nor remorseful, yet he is going to adult catechism. He say’s he is the why this?,why that? or shown me guy in class. I pray he finds his answers:thumbsup:

I’m not going to pretend that I can read his heart, but for all of his blustering, I think he is finally starting to feel something. That’s why he posted. Of course, I sort of have the habit of being too easy on people. God CAN read his heart though, and I have total confidence that God will know the right way to handle this.

Oh, and by the way, it is unlikely that the priest would ask him to abstain from relations. Incredibly unlikely.

 

[Katie1723]

. Yet he wants to be part of the Catholic community…??

If only perfect people were allowed to be “part of the Catholic community”…the Catholic church would be a might lonely place.

Kathy

 

[fix]

Well, I don’t know what God really thinks, but the CCC says if you know an act is grave and do it, you are guilty. However if you are not aware that an act is a grave sin and perform the act (in this post the example is a vasectomy) you are not guilty of grave sin.

This is contradictory to civil/criminal law where your knowledge of the law has nothing to do with the fact you committed a crime.

Therefore, by studying the CCC you have just increased your potential for eternal damnation, according to the CCC itself!

Actually, Cardinal Ratzinger spoke to this very charge:

In the course of a dispute, a senior colleague, who was keenly aware of the plight to being Christian in our times, expressed the opinion that one should actually be grateful to God that He allows there to be so many unbelievers in good conscience. For if their eyes were opened and they became believers, they would not be capable, in this world of ours, of bearing the burden of faith with all its moral obligations. But as it is, since they can go another way in good conscience, they can reach salvation. What shocked me about this assertion was not in the first place the idea of an erroneous conscience given by God Himself in order to save men by means of such artfulness—the idea, so to speak, of a blindness sent by God for the salvation of those in question. What disturbed me was the notion that it harbored, that faith is a burden which can hardly be borne and which no doubt was intended only for stronger natures—faith almost as a kind of punishment, in any case, an imposition not easily coped with. According to this view, faith would not make salvation easier but harder. Being happy would mean not being burdened with having to believe or having to submit to the moral yoke of the faith of the Catholic church. The erroneous conscience, which makes life easier and marks a more human course, would then be a real grace, the normal way to salvation. Untruth, keeping truth at bay, would be better for man than truth. It would not be the truth that would set him free, but rather he would have to be freed from the truth. Man would be more at home in the dark than in the light. Faith would not be the good gift of the good God but instead an affliction. If this were the state of affairs, how could faith give rise to joy? Who would have the courage to pass faith on to others? Would it not be better to spare them the truth or even keep them from it?..

The erroneous conscience, by sheltering the person from the exacting demands of truth, saves him …—thus went the argument. Conscience appeared here not as a window through which one can see outward to that common truth which founds and sustains us all, and so makes possible through the common recognition of truth, the community of needs and responsibilities. Conscience here does not mean man’s openness to the ground of his being, the power of perception for what is highest and most essential. Rather, it appears as subjectivity’s protective shell into which man can escape and there hide from reality. Liberalism’s idea of conscience was in fact presupposed here. Conscience does not open the way to the redemptive road to truth which either does not exist or, if it does, is too demanding. It is the faculty which dispenses from truth. It thereby becomes the justification for subjectivity, which should not like to have itself called into question…

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/RATZCONS.HTM

Consider reading it as it will help answer your questions.

 

[Pug]

If you attach other requirements, then the sacrament means nothing because then only God can truly forgive, and you have just denied the words, “what is bound on Earth is also bound in Heaven” and made the Church no more powerful than the preacher down the street!

This is an unusual objection. Taking it at face value, let’s make a hypothesis. Assume that God has given a fantastical “power of the keys” to the Church for a moment. Thus she may decide that she will only apply her power to forgive to a certain sort of person or a person who does certain things. This is no denial.

To be clear about basic Church teaching, if you go into confession with no repentance, no sorrow of any sort, you are going to walk out still in your sins. (Unless you suddenly start cooperating with grace while in the box, obviously). So no, you are not automatically forgiven just for having heard those words.

Presumption is a problem that is separate from Church/penitent relations. The point is that it is the wrong attitude to take with God.