Mortal Sin and Full Consent of the Will

[Philip]

Friends,

I know that there are two conditions for committing a mortal sin. The first is that the sin must be a grave matter (as defined by the teachings of Holy Church). The second is that the sinner must have full consent of the will and full knowledge that the action is a sin.

So my question is, how do we know if we have full consent of the will? Can you have full consent if you question whether you did or not? I have heard opinions on the subject that vary from making it practically impossible to commit a mortal sin to making it impossible to get through the day without committing one.

Help! Can someone give me some “signs” or guidelines that work for them?

Philip

 

[Grayton]

You have identified two extreme views. Neither of them are the rule.

You have also asked a very good question, and I will be interested to read the comments people post in response.

One thing I can say is that we should consider our mental state when we committed the sinful act. If one wakes up in the morning with lustful thoughts, and realizes that one has been dwelling on those thoughts for some time in a semi-awake or semi-dreamlike phase, but the quickly resists those thoughts, then one would not have given full consent of the will to them.

Likewise, some things we may do in the middle of great stress without reflection may not involve the full consent of our will.

In any case, one should always bring doubtful matters touching upon a grave sin to the attention of one’s confessor.

 

[stbruno]

I just received this wonderful reflection on next Sunday’s gospel which has an implication in my view about consent of will.

Do you use an alarm clock to wake you up in the morning? A lot of alarm clocks have a button on them called a snooze alarm. When your alarm goes off, you can hit that button and go back to sleep. In about ten minutes, the alarm will go off again. You can just keep on doing this and go right on sleeping.

Maybe it is nice to get that exra sleep, but there are two problems with snooze alarms. The first is that if you keep on hitting the snooze alarm, you may be late or miss out on something completely. The second problem is that if you keep hitting the snooze alarm, you may get so used to the sound of the alarm that you don’t even hear it at all and you will sleep right through the alarm.

Did you know that God sometimes sounds a “wake up” alarm in our lives? He speaks to our heart and says, “It is time to wake up and follow me.” Some people hit the snooze button and say, “Not now Lord, call me again – a little bit later.” Some people hit that “snooze button” so many times that they get to where they don’t even hear God’s voice. When they finally wake up, they find out that it is too late. That is what happened in our Bible story today.

Jesus told a story about a rich man who wore the finest clothes and lived in luxury. A beggar named Lazarus lay outside the rich man’s gate. Lazarus was hungry and his body was covered with sores. He was hoping that the rich man might have pity on him and that he might be able to satisfy his hunger with the leftovers from the rich man’s table. But every day the Rich man passed by Lazarus without even giving him a thought. I imagine that he passed by Lazarus so many times that he eventually got to the point that he didn’t see him at all.

The Bible says that Lazarus died and went to heaven. The rich man also died, but he went to hell. In hell, he looked up and saw Lazarus in heaven with Abraham. He asked Abraham to let Lazarus dip his finger in water and come and touch it to his burning tongue, but Abraham said, “No.” Then he reminded the rich man how he had enjoyed such good things on earth while Lazarus had nothing.

The rich man then asked Abraham to allow Lazarus to go back to earth and warn his five brothers so that they would not end up in hell with him, but again, Abraham said, “No.” The rich man finally woke up, but it was too late.

**God is still sending “wake up” calls to people today. He is saying…You are committing mortal sins whether you want to believe or just rationalize it away! That’s what our culture does to us. Let us pray that they will listen to his voice and follow him before it is too late

 

[puzzleannie]

is somebody holding a gun to your head?

did you wilfully drink too much so you could use that as an excuse for any further misbehavior last Saturday night?

do you deliberately ignore any opportunity to learn full, accurate church teaching about moral areas that give you problems, such as contraception, abortion, masturbation, just treatment of employees, racism, or any other issue–in order to make excuses for sinning based on your “conscience”?

Come on give me a break, you know darn good and well when you are freely consenting to sinful thoughts and actions, and when you are deliberately getting into situations that will lead you into temptation.

 

[martino]

I tend to think like Puzzleannie. Full consent of the will is another way of saying, “did you do it on purpose, without the force of pressure by a another person?”

Any lesser meaning would give us all license to rationalize every sin that we commit.

 

[Prometheum_x]

puzzleannie:

Come on give me a break, you know darn good and well when you are freely consenting to sinful thoughts and actions, and when you are deliberately getting into situations that will lead you into temptation.

It isn’t that easy for some of us. Certainly we know it when we’ve boldly sinned against God. But for many other things, we are blessed or cursed (depending on how you look at it) with complex mental processes. I find myself analyzing my behavior, and then analyzing my analysis, and so on and so on. And, for those of us with a less than perfect grasp on moral theology, being told that it is really difficult and really easy to commit mortal sin only confuses the issue further. Now, if one is also plagued with scrupulosity in addition to the previous conditions, it becomes a tangled mess.

At that point, I confess everything to God, those things I know 100% to be mortal to a priest as soon as I can, and for everything else, I entrust myself to the mercy that gave me grace and new life in the first place.

 

[puzzleannie]

exactly right, the place to take all this questioning and confusion is to the confessional in all the humility you exhibit. right on.

 

[rfk]

puzzleannie:

Come on give me a break, you know darn good and well when you are freely consenting to sinful thoughts and actions, and when you are deliberately getting into situations that will lead you into temptation.

My mother was from the “keep it simple” school of theology. When I was a young boy, she taught on this issue with two questions: “Did I know it was a serious son, and did I decide to do it anyway?”

Part of her plain, straightforward, and midwestern common sense as taught to her by the Dominicans.

 

[Grayton]

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states at paragraph 1859 that a mortal sin requires “complete consent. … It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice.”

At page 58 of his 1943 book, “Moral Guidance” published by Loyola University Press, the Jesuit moral theology professor Father Edwin F. Healy wrote that one must give “full advertence” to a grave sin in order to be guilty of a mortal sin. (Advertence = attention.) Father Healy explained:

“'Full advertence means the attention that a businessman would give to an important business deal. Hence actions performed when one is half asleep, in a daydream, or half distracted would not be classified in this category.”

However, a person could give “full advertence” in a confused or general way, as when a sinner “commits crime after crime with little reflection on each occasion. His sins would be grave.”