As Catholics we believe in mortal and venial sins. Mortal sins are those as described as above, and venial sins are ones that have lesser value, such as telling a white lie (?) or hitting our brother (?). These sins are small, and do not necessarily have to be confessed. Mortal sins are something like murder, knowing that it is wrong and still committing it. Is committing murder really the same as missing mass once in a blue moon, because of something out of one’s control?
Is a single bullet to the head really the same as being knifed 25 times in the chest? Of course not. Will both things kill you? Absolutely. So it is with mortal sins - doesn’t matter how they rank compared to other mortal - or even venial - sins, they are deadly.
All it took for Adam and Eve was to eat the fruit that God told them not to eat and they were cast out of God’s presence - did they murder or do something that most people would think was serious? Of course not. Was it mortal? Absolutely.
Or quite often they reject it because of all the rules. God gave us the notion of right and wrong, so that we know when we are in a state of sin or not (our conscience).
Charles Manson or Hitler almost certainly would NOT have thought that they were sinning at all, let alone sinning seriously, if you’d asked them. Were their consciences doing the job of God-given guide then? Was their ‘sin radar’ functioning properly? On the contrary.
See, our consciences are fallible guides at best, and need to be properly formed (as the Catechism says) by the INfallible teaching of the Church, since Christ gave the Apostles and their successors the authority to bind and loose. He didn’t tell them to ‘do whatever you feel’ but ‘teach them all that I have commanded you’ and then tells US that ‘who hears you (the Apostles and their successors) hears Me, who rejects you rejects Me’.
I personally don’t believe that missing mass constitutes a mortal sin, unless it is truly for the rejection of Christ. To tell someone who is growing in their faith, a teenager, that this constitutes a mortal sin, seems unfair and absurd as they are doing their best to get closer to God, and should not have to feel any extra unnecessary burden as having the notion they are carrying a mortal sin on their soul, until they can confess it, or even having to go seek dispensation before hand.
The Catholic faith allows us to listen to our conscience, and let God’s will flourish. When we know we have committed grave sin, we can confess it. If we never know that we commit grave sin, then how are we suppose to know to confess?
And if you make no effort to learn what Christ through the Church teaches us about sin, then how can you hope to know anything? Because you ‘feel’? Everyone who commits adultery or robs a bank ‘feels’ that what they are doing is justified and not a sin for some reason or other. Doesn’t make their ‘feelings’ right.
Of course we first learn what sin IS, and what things are sins. And we must learn from the infallible teacher, the Church. Not from our (too often) easily misled and unformed or malformed ‘conscience’ or ‘feelings’. Only after we have learned as we should, then we can rightly judge whether we’ve sinned or not.
It is hard enough growing up in the light of Christ as a teenager in today’s society, but to have someone telling them that they have sinned equivalent to murder is absurd. That is all I am saying.
It’s not equivalent to murder, any more than the bullet is equivalent to the 25 stabs to the chest in my example. It IS nonetheless mortal sin if done deliberately.
