One mortal sin sends you to hell forever?

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Ok, so I already know that grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent are the three conditions for sin to be mortal. But the real problem I have is the teaching that just one of these will send you to hell for all eternity I mean, wow, eternity is a long time!

Example: one Sunday, Jack, who goes to Church every Sunday, gets invited to play golf instead. He figures, ah, what the heck, I’ll just play and then go to Mass later in the evening. Well, he has a good time with his buddies, and they invite him for dinner after playing all day long. Jack selfishly decides to take them up on the offer (they are great cooks!) and skips the evening Mass too. “Mass just started,” he thinks to himself as he gets into the car to get to their house. He feels guilty…he knows that skipping Mass is a mortal sin, but he selfishly presses on–but does not explicitly ask God for forgiveness.

On the way to dinner, he gets hit by a car. Bam! He’s gone. Instantly. No time for an act of contrition.

Does he go to hell for ever and ever and ever and ever? I mean, he knew that it’s a mortal sin, skipping is grave matter, and he acted freely.
 
TheAdvocate said:
Ok, so I already know that grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent are the three conditions for sin to be mortal. But the real problem I have is the teaching that just one of these will send you to hell for all eternity I mean, wow, eternity is a long time!

Example: one Sunday, Jack, who goes to Church every Sunday, gets invited to play golf instead. He figures, ah, what the heck, I’ll just play and then go to Mass later in the evening. Well, he has a good time with his buddies, and they invite him for dinner after playing all day long. Jack selfishly decides to take them up on the offer (they are great cooks!) and skips the evening Mass too. “Mass just started,” he thinks to himself as he gets into the car to get to their house. He feels guilty…he knows that skipping Mass is a mortal sin, but he selfishly presses on–but does not explicitly ask God for forgiveness.

On the way to dinner, he gets hit by a car. Bam! He’s gone. Instantly. No time for an act of contrition.

Does he go to hell for ever and ever and ever and ever? I mean, he knew that it’s a mortal sin, skipping is grave matter, and he acted freely.
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God is the final judge, we don’t know if any particular person has gone “to” Hell.

But the Church does teach that Hell is eternal.
 
In the end all will be treated fairly and get exactly what they deserve. Our God is not looking for the one time a person does something wrong. It might not hurt to keep this on our lips at times like you mention. AMEN.

ACT OF HOPE
O my God, trusting in your promises and because you are faithful, powerful and merciful, I hope, through the merits of Jesus Christ, for the pardon of my sins, final perseverance and the blessed glory of heaven. Amen.
 
Let me turn this around for you. Tell me, is Jack, or anybody else who ‘lives a good life’. . .entitled to heaven?

Has Jack ‘earned’ heaven by not being a ‘bad’ guy?

IOW–do a few ‘good deeds’ and managing not to do anything ‘grave’ mean that said person gets to go to heaven for all eternity? Sure seems like a huge reward for basically doing what our atheist friends argue people will ‘naturally’ tend to do. . .
 
I will tell you something my former parish priest (who is now at the Vatican :D) said to me when I asked him about those kinds of situations.

He said that God is a JUST judge. God is fair to all people no matter what they have done with their lives.
 
Can a person who turns down a chance to go to Mass, which is in its essense a foretaste of Heaven, hope to be ready for the real thing? The thing about mortal sins is, if you commit them, you are not spiritually ready for Heaven or even purgatory. Hell is the natural destination of a person who knowingly and definitively goes against God’s will. There’s nothing God can do to make us repent- a person who commits a mortal sin does not provoke God into forcing them away, but instead pushes God away.
 
One unrepented mortal sin sends the sinner to hell - the forever part is redundant.

The thing you are missing in the whole principle is the “Choice”. A person must KNOW that this sin seperates them from God. They must KNOW that by so choosing they are choosing hell. They must Choose this anyway. So, if such a person dies in this frame of mind - that is accepting (unrepentant) this choice. Then they will Choose Hell.
God has provided us with free will and while He does not will any of us to go to hell, he will not interfere with our free choice.
So if Jack acts in a way that is consistant with what I outlined above, then Jack will Choose to go to hell for he has chosen seperation from God.
If on the other hand, Jack repents at the last minute and reaches out for God’s mercy and forgiveness, he will likely land in purgatory instead of hell.

Of course all of this is beyond our full knowledge. We can only surmise.

Peace
James
 
Basically: yup.

We’re supposed to take our spiritual responsibilities seriously.

The idea is to BE Catholic, not just to “join” the Catholic Church.

So, certain “issues” are kind of key.

Mass on Sunday [or Saturday evening] [unless you have a really good excuse]

No fornication or adultery.

No stealing.

Etc.

Follow the ten commandments.

Get a good guide for examination of conscience.

It means turning your life around.

God comes first.

God IS merciful. He does respond to acts of contrition. But you need to make going to Confession a regular part of your spiritual life.

[You actually NEED a spiritual life. Start small with basics and add to it, build it up from there.]

The first saint of the Catholic Church was … drum roll please: St. Dismas The “good thief”. He was not baptized. And what he did to “steal his way into Heaven” was to simply tell the world that Jesus was innocent and asked Jesus to remember him when He got to He got to His kingdom. That’s all it took.

But we need to take our salvation seriously.

Obviously, Dismas was tightly and highly focused because he was on the cross and would die shortly.

Anyway, say a daily Rosary. Visualize playing the role of Dismas in the film “The Passion of the Christ”.
 
GrahamAPhone said:
No one on earth can tell you if anyone will go to heaven or hell, and God is completely just. It’s not so cut and dry as a+b=c. its more like
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/images/equations/GoldbachConjecture/NumberedEquation2.gif
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Actually, according to Catholic teaching, canonized Saints are declared (taught) by the Church to be in Heaven. So, it seems, the Catholic Church claims the authority to say definitively that certain souls are in Heaven (so to speak).
 
diggerdomer said:
Actually, according to Catholic teaching, canonized Saints are declared (taught) by the Church to be in Heaven. So, it seems, the Catholic Church claims the authority to say definitively that certain souls are in Heaven (so to speak).
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Its different with hell
because God wants all he has created in heaven with him, so he would never send someone to hell who deserves to be in heaven. (not that he couldnt) So for all we know he could just put everyone to heaven if he wanted to. do you get what im saying?
 
You should remember that God is not a computer or a trap that mechanically activates when triggered. He is a personal being. The way he treats sinners would probably be similar to how our parents treat us when we do something wrong.

Oh yeah, maybe you are only thinking about the “Law”, don’t forget that there is also “Grace” from Jesus Christ who really doesn’t want anyone to go to hell (check out what he did to save the worst of sinners). Mama Mary is there too… so what happens to sinners when they die is more complicated than we think.

Analogy: (if i am saying anything unGodly here feel free to correct me)

The passing grade for concrete design is 50%, your tests only average at 48%. By the letter of the law you should fail. But your teacher is nice enough to give you a removal examination (you’re lowest score will be replaced by your score in this test); at his expense: Tomorrow is the deadline for the submission of grades, he will probably get salary deduction for submitting late. You can choose to study for this second chance or you can just ignore your teacher’s efforts to give you a passing grade. There is also your former soil mechanics teacher, Ma’am Beverly, telling your design teacher that you are a hardworking student and perhaps failed the finals because you got food poisoned.

All these things are taken into consideration in deciding whether you should pass or not.

(sorry for the long reply) 😃
 
GrahamAPhone said:
Its different with hell
because God wants all he has created in heaven with him, so he would never send someone to hell who deserves to be in heaven. (not that he couldnt) So for all we know he could just put everyone to heaven if he wanted to. do you get what im saying?
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Yes. I wasn’t saying anything about hell, only about the comment regarding no one on earth being able to tell you if anyone went to heaven.
 
TheAdvocate said:
Ok, so I already know that grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent are the three conditions for sin to be mortal. But the real problem I have is the teaching that just one of these will send you to hell for all eternity I mean, wow, eternity is a long time!

Example: one Sunday, Jack, who goes to Church every Sunday, gets invited to play golf instead. He figures, ah, what the heck, I’ll just play and then go to Mass later in the evening. Well, he has a good time with his buddies, and they invite him for dinner after playing all day long. Jack selfishly decides to take them up on the offer (they are great cooks!) and skips the evening Mass too. “Mass just started,” he thinks to himself as he gets into the car to get to their house. He feels guilty…he knows that skipping Mass is a mortal sin, but he selfishly presses on–but does not explicitly ask God for forgiveness.

On the way to dinner, he gets hit by a car. Bam! He’s gone. Instantly. No time for an act of contrition.

Does he go to hell for ever and ever and ever and ever? I mean, he knew that it’s a mortal sin, skipping is grave matter, and he acted freely.
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We know that dying in an unrepentant state of mortal sin means condemnation to Hell forever.
Therefore the person in your example would condemn himself to Hell.
 
thistle said:
We know that dying in an unrepentant state of mortal sin means condemnation to Hell forever.
Therefore the person in your example would condemn himself to Hell.
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Ouch. Jack will be in hell eternally right alongside with unrepentant murderers, rapists, adulterers, thiefs (*perhaps *Hitler, Stalin, Judas). Seems a bit disproportionate, no?
 
TheAdvocate said:
Ouch. Jack will be in hell eternally right alongside with unrepentant murderers, rapists, adulterers, thiefs (*perhaps *Hitler, Stalin, Judas). Seems a bit disproportionate, no?
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But, the measure is not being better than a killer. The measure is Christ.
 
TheAdvocate said:
Ouch. Jack will be in hell eternally right alongside with unrepentant murderers, rapists, adulterers, thiefs (*perhaps *Hitler, Stalin, Judas). Seems a bit disproportionate, no?
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Nope. It was Jacks Choice.

Peace
James
 
fix said:
But, the measure is not being better than a killer. The measure is Christ.
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Well said. People often forget that the tiniest sin against a perfect, eternal God is intolerable. That ANYONE is allowed to enter heaven is an incomprehensible act of mercy.

Peace,
Dante
 
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