Protestants and mortal sin

[Graceful_Lamb]

Do you believe that what the Roman Catholic Church defines as sinful for its members is sinful for, say, a Buddhist?

I don’t know what Buddhism teaches about sin. I would say that the Catholic Church’s view of sin would not apply to Buddhists.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

I don’t know what Buddhism teaches about sin. I would say that the Catholic Church’s view of sin would not apply to Buddhists.

It makes sense to me that it would not. Nor would it apply to Hindus, nor Wiccans, nor anyone else who is not Roman Catholic. But it is yours as Roman Catholic to claim and observe. I respect that to the fullest extent.

A good friend of mine keeps Kosher and when I am with her, I eat kosher too. I have such admiration for her discipline and obedience to the laws of the Covenant. Yet I don’t keep kosher in my own home; I don’t believe that God is asking me as a Christian to follow those Biblical laws.

I also don’t believe that God is asking me to follow the Roman Catholic laws. Is that difficult for you as a Catholic to understand?

 

[Graceful_Lamb]

It makes sense to me that it would not. Nor would it apply to Hindus, nor Wiccans, nor anyone else who is not Roman Catholic. But it is yours as Roman Catholic to claim and observe. I respect that to the fullest extent.

A good friend of mine keep Kosher and when I am with her, I eat kosher too. I have such admiration for her discipline and obedience to the laws of the Covenant. Yet I don’t keep kosher in my own home; I don’t believe that God is asking me as a Christian to follow those Biblical laws.

I also don’t believe that God is asking me to follow the Roman Catholic laws. Is that difficult for you as a Catholic to understand?

I do not have difficulty understanding that you don’t need to follow the Catechism of the Catholic Church, etc.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

I do not have difficulty understanding that you don’t need to follow the Catechism of the Catholic Church, etc.

Then why do I feel as if Catholics expect non-Catholics to adopt what you believe to be sinful? Am I mistaken?

 

[Graceful_Lamb]

Then why do I feel as if Catholics expect non-Catholics to adopt what you believe to be sinful? Am I mistaken?

You do not have an obligation to follow what the Catholic Church teaches.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

You do not have an obligation to follow what the Catholic Church teaches.

That is very reassuring to me. Thank you for saying that. What you consider sinful is not an obligation for those outside your Church.

 

[Wannano]

That is very reassuring to me. Thank you for saying that. What you consider sinful is not an obligation for those outside your Church.

To my simple way of thinking though if the Catholic Church is the only one true church that Jesus started and that God the Father desires then what is considered sinful within the Catholic Church is sinful for every human being in the world.

 

[SyroMalankara]

To my simple way of thinking though if the Catholic Church is the only one true church that Jesus started and that God the Father desires then what is considered sinful within the Catholic Church is sinful for every human being in the world.

Depends on what it is. If its something divinely established, every human is with full knowledge and mental capacity is liable; something ecclesially required is not necessarily bound on every non-Catholic because they are not aware of its significance.

 

[Wannano]

Depends on what it is. If its something divinely established, every human is with full knowledge and mental capacity is liable; something ecclesially required is not necessarily bound on every non-Catholic because they are not aware of its significance.

So if I understand correctly not all sin is divinely established, some sin is determined to be so by the determinations of man?

 

[Lenten_ashes]

To my simple way of thinking though if the Catholic Church is the only one true church that Jesus started and that God the Father desires then what is considered sinful within the Catholic Church is sinful for every human being in the world.

Hi Wannano

I’d say yes and no.

The church teaches that In order for a sin to be mortal, three conditions have to be met:

1.) Grave matter
2.) Consent
3.)** Full knowledge**

So if a protestant is taking birth control, to the best of her knowledge this is OK. So while the matter is serious and sinful, it’s not something
God will hold her to account for.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

Hi Wannano

I’d say yes and no.

The church teaches that In order for a sin to be mortal, three conditions have to be met:

1.) Grave matter
2.) Consent
3.)** Full knowledge**

So if a protestant is taking birth control, to the best of her knowledge this is OK. So while the matter is serious and sinful, it’s not something
God will hold her to account for.

But those categories of mortal sin are created by the Roman Catholic Church and no other group of people, religious or not.

How can non-Catholics be bound to that list? Even if the subject matter is agreed upon (for instance, honoring one’s father and mother), other faiths/cultures have different standards on how to enact this behavior and the penalties for not enacting this behavior.

 

[Lenten_ashes]

But those categories of mortal sin are created by the Roman Catholic Church and no other group of people, religious or not.

How can non-Catholics be bound to that list? Even if the subject matter is agreed upon (for instance, honoring one’s father and mother), other faiths/cultures have different standards on how to enact this behavior and the penalties for not enacting this behavior.

Greetings!

They most likely aren’t if they are ignorant::

847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.

As a protestant I could and did use contraception. Now that I am Catholic with full knowledge of the Truth, I am on the hook for the rest of my life.

And, BTW, as a protestant when I read passages like this I found the teaching be extremely rational as It recognizes the gray area of life that fundamentalism seems to neglect.

Pax

 

[clem456]

But those categories of mortal sin are created by the Roman Catholic Church and no other group of people, religious or not.

How can non-Catholics be bound to that list? Even if the subject matter is agreed upon (for instance, honoring one’s father and mother), other faiths/cultures have different standards on how to enact this behavior and the penalties for not enacting this behavior.

The Catholic Church does not create morality. Morality is the evaluation of human acts in the light of God’s love, wisdom, providence.
Morality points us to the only true good, which is right relationship with God himself. The Catholic Church does not create the good, obviously. The Catholic Church expresses the good, and expresses it to the fullest extent as revealed by God through Jesus Christ.

While you may not share the Church’s expression of morality, perhaps you can at least agree that morality expresses something, anything, that is objectively true, outside your own prerogatives.
If you can agree that God is the source and provider of all that is good, you might be led to wonder where the expression of that good is to be found. Christ is to be expressed and found somewhere, right? Or is Christ subject to the individual? That would seem to be problematic for a believing Christian.

Being on a Catholic apologetics blog and searching for true answers to these questions seems to be a good thing. As a person comes to fuller knowledge of Christ, we come closer to that “good”, and we also come to a fuller realization of how much distance there is, objectively, between what God asks of us and how we behave morally. We are all separated from Christ by sin, and he draws us back to him.

Not agreeing with a particular moral precept does not absolve a person who rejects it. Rejection is rejection. Knowing about it and rejecting it, is rejection of it, not an excuse from culpability under the authority of one’s own rejection.
It is no different that claiming that you have no responsibility to feed the hungry because “you do not believe” with the Catholic Church. You would be objectively wrong whether you excused it with your own beliefs or not.

Sin is rejection of the goodness that God offers us, a severing of the relationship in preference to ourselves. It is not a set of arbitrary restrictions.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

Sin is rejection of the goodness that God offers us, a severing of the relationship in preference to ourselves. It is not a set of arbitrary restrictions.

You seem to be moving into the entire realm of ethics and morality, which is a philosophical study I am not totally expert in.You present from one point of view, but there are many schools of thought in this discipline.

Sin, also, has many definitions and categories. It IS a set of arbitrary restrictions. If you look at the Biblical precedents, for example, which we as Christians should be doing, sin has three distinctions - khet, avon, and pesha (Hebrew terms).

Khet is inadvertent sin, or as some people like to explain, ‘missing the mark.’ Avon is intentional sin, or doing what you know to be wrong, or against God’s commandment. Pesha is more serious - it is rebellion against God.

Of course there is much more to this Biblical understanding of sin, including what is clean and unclean, but as you can see, it is purely defined for a certain set of people. No one outside the Covenant of God need to obey these certain commandments (Noahide laws being the exception.) So breaking the commandments is not considered sinful for those outside the Covenant.

Now if you want to get into social and cultural mores, that is a whole different conversation. It seems you want to root this in Biblical/Covenantal terms.

 

[KjetilK]

So if a protestant is taking birth control, to the best of her knowledge this is OK. So while the matter is serious and sinful, it’s not something
God will hold her to account for.

I wouldn’t say that it is OK. That God doesn’t hold the person accountable doesn’t mean that doing the deed is OK.

 

[Lenten_ashes]

I wouldn’t say that it is OK. That God doesn’t hold the person accountable doesn’t mean that doing the deed is OK.

It was OK as far as I understood it in my protestant faith. Our Churches had no objections to it.

God always saw it for what it was which is tampering with his creative process and making marital intimacy all about convenience and pleasure.

 

[KjetilK]

But those categories of mortal sin are created by the Roman Catholic Church and no other group of people, religious or not.

No, the category of mortal sin (vs. non-mortal sin) is right there in the Bible, in 1John 5:16-17:

If anyone sees his brother commiting a sin [lit. ‘sinning a sin,’ *ἁμαρτάνοντα ἁμαρτίαν] which isn’t deadly, he shall pray, and God will give him life, to those who commit sin which isn’t deadly. There is sin which is deadly; I do not say that you should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which isn’t deadly.

 

[clem456]

It was OK as far as I understood it in my protestant faith. Our Churches had no objections to it.

God always saw it for what it was which is tampering with his creative process and making marital intimacy all about convenience and pleasure.

No other person can claim to know another’s personal culpability before God. We can make general formulaic statements about what constitutes sin. We can promote Christian morality. But we do not exercise judgment that belongs to God.

What is -not- an excuse for sin is “I don’t agree with the morality”. If that were the case, anything and everything could be excused.

It’s hard to claim ignorance and lack of consent when you’ve
1 been told it’s wrong
2 consent to do it anyway

Incorrect belief does not excuse rejection

There’s also degrees of gravity. You can hardly compare OT dietary laws with things like abortion or birth control.
The Catholic Church’s fasting rules, for instance, are disciplines and precepts which are binding on Catholics under possible pain of sin, depending on the circumstances.
On the other hand, participation in abortion, for instance, is a direct assault against the life and dignity of a human being.
Birth control gets into a much more serious realm than “you eat pork and I do not” etc…because the object is the existence and flourishing of human beings.

I find the relativistic comparisons a little disturbing.

 

[SyroMalankara]

So if I understand correctly not all sin is divinely established, some sin is determined to be so by the determinations of man?

All sin is divinely established, the particulars of one’s time may allow for the church to clarify in individual or corporate situations where exceptions, derivations, or no sin occurs at all.

Example: stealing is a sin - DIVINE. stealing to feed a starving child, normally not a sin (Ecclesial Determination). Stealing ice cream because one likes it. PROBABLY a sin or not, but a small child or mentally ill person is not culpable, whereas a fully functional adult is completely culpable

 

[HelenRose]

Sir, I speak the word of god to the best of my ability even when its unpopular. I follow Gods orders not men’s.

Peace to you all!
God bless Pope Francis!!!

John 3:16

Don’t pass it off as Catholic teaching. This your interpretation.