question about mortal sin

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fangornforest

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Hi,

This is probably a dumb question.

If forgotten sins (mortal and venial, but especially mortal) are forgiven in confession, and if someone were to all of a sudden remember them in the future, do we confess them or do we just put them out of our mind and acknowledge that they’re forgiven from confession from before?

I never quite understood this one. 🤷
 
fangornforest said:
Hi,

This is probably a dumb question.

If forgotten sins (mortal and venial, but especially mortal) are forgiven in confession, and if someone were to all of a sudden remember them in the future, do we confess them or do we just put them out of our mind and acknowledge that they’re forgiven from confession from before?

I never quite understood this one. 🤷
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The only dumb question is the one that you don’t ask.

It is proper to mention a forgotten mortal sin so that any appropriate counceling or addtional satisfatction can be given. But, yes, your sin was forgiven and once you mention it whenever you go to confession again then forget it. Again, you don’t need to run to confession but you do need to confess it for the reasons that I stated. God Bless you and sustain you in His wonderful Sacrament of Reconciliation…teachccd 🙂
 
fangornforest said:
If forgotten sins (mortal and venial, but especially mortal) are forgiven in confession, and if someone were to all of a sudden remember them in the future, do we confess them or do we just put them out of our mind and acknowledge that they’re forgiven from confession from before?
Click to expand...
If we forgot to mention the sin in confession, it was still forgiven. But it is forgiven because the assumption is that we intended to confess it, that is, we would have confessed it if we had remembered. So this means that if we remember later, we would still need to have the intention to confess it, so we confess it in our next confession. If we didn’t do that, then we really don’t have the intention to confess it, right? But if we die before we can do this, it’s still forgiven by that first confession where we forgot it, because we have the intention.
 
Here’s my dilemma though:

The sin that I have is something that was serious from about a year ago. Since then, I just randomly remembered it a few days after my Confession.

From the information that both of you give me, I should confess the sin if it’s mortal to receive any type of advice for the sin so that it doesn’t happen again and also because it is my intent to confess it.

I have no problem confessing it, however, I’m very scrupulous. I understand the three pieces of information needed for the mortal sin criteria, but the Full Knowledge part is something that I lack. I really am torn if it’s a mortal sin because of this.

According to the 10 Commandments of the Scrupulous (from: mission.liguori.org/newsletters/scrupulosity.htm)), commandment number 2 says, “You shall not confess doubtful sins in confession, but only sins that are clear and certain.”

I was originally going to leave the sin in the past knowing that it’s forgiven and also because I would be confessing out of doubt of the severity of the sin, however, with the most recent post from Cam100 about the intentions to confess, I don’t know if this would be a bad thing to do.

I’m not sure if I should follow the guidelines for the scrupulous or if I should confess the sin out of fear and doubt. 🤷
 
In this particular case, I would confess this sin because it bothers you. You seem to doubt whether or not the sin was even a mortal sin due to lack of knowledge. In that case, it would not need to be confessed in the first place as venial sins can be forgiven in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. However, if it is just this one sin and you would be freed from a weighted concern, by all means confess it and then forget it.

Scrupulosity is when a person never feels forgiven, feels that everything is a sin and must confess the same sins over and over again whether they were committed or not because they weren’t “presented correctly” in the confessional. I feel that if you are concerned about one sin that you forgot to mention in the past then by all means confess it. Your agonizing is not worth the mere chance that you are being scrupulous. A priest would probably be more than happy to work this out with you as he can ask you questions and do a more proper evaluation of your circumstance.

Not to worry is not so easy for me to say as I have been in your shoes many times. But that is not all that bad. We do humble ourselves and recognize our imperfections and that is more than what can be said regarding our culture of death so prevalent today. Keep me in your prayers…God Bless teachccd 🙂
 
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