Sin of presumption

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Butaperson

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So I have a lot of difficulties identifying the sin of presumption in my life.
I know it is when you assume that God will forgive you without real repentance. I have come to understand that one of the ways you can commit it is when you decide it is ok to sin because you can confess it later.
The thing I’m struggling with is, how on earth do you commit an average sin without committing presumption? If you go to confession regularly every 3 weeks, then how do you ever sin without thinking somewhere in the back of your head “I’m going to confess this later”? And if you’re thinking about confessing a sin as you are already committing it…is that not presumption?
For example, one of the sins that I struggle with is gossip. The other day I had to story to tell about this one girl that I probably shouldn’t have told, but I went ahead and told it anyways. Ever since I’ve been picking apart my motivations for doing that to try and figure out if I committed presumption. I never actually thought, explicitly, “well, I can tell them about it now, and just confess it later”, but regardless I knew in the back of my head that I could and would confess it later, and I’m pretty sure that played a role in making me feel like it was ok to do. Should I confess the sin of presumption along with this sin of gossip?
 
I have the same question about presumption actually. I agree that it’s very tricky to distinguish, and if such is the case, then I would think it wouldn’t be “mortal” in the sense that you don’t know entirely if you’re committing it or not. In that case it would be venial only because you’re not doing it with full knowledge. For presumption to be mortal, you’d have to sit and intend to presume that you don’t need to confess a mortal sin you know is mortal. That’s at least what I think. And I say this because I had a scrupulosity about it and I found myself confessing “presumption” every time I went to confession because of exactly what you mention… that fact that you almost can’t commit a mortal sin without presuming in some way that you can confess it later (that’s almost required as a part of “full consent”… the knowledge that it is wrong, and that you consent to do it anyway with full intent…etc.). That is, all mortal sin seems built on some degree of presumption. (This is all just my idle speculation though)…

The problem is determining whether or not it’s a separate sin of “presumption” or if it’s “early contrition.” What I’ve read before on the board concerning this is that presumption is more about refusing to seek God’s mercy. Christ calls it the “unpardonable sin” because the person simply doesn’t seek pardon. If the person say “I need to seek pardon” even before the sin, and really does intend to, then obviously it’s forgivable. I would say that presumption happens when you say “I don’t need to go to confession” or *“I don’t need to confess this” *when you know with full knowledge that the sin you committed was mortal. If you entertain that thought, then that sounds more like presumption as a separate sin. Allowing yourself to remain in a state of mortal sin when you can otherwise go to confession might also be part of it. But saying “I’m going to need to confess this” sounds more like the early stages of contrition, especially when you really do intend to go to confession for it.

Remember all sin begin in the “heart.” If you have the intention to commit mortal sin, then you’ve already “sinned” even before the act is carried out. If you know that you’ve already sunk yourself before the act is committed, your conscience is already telling you “I need to go confession” before the act is even committed. In that case, that wouldn’t be presumption as much as the Holy Spirit calling you back, even before the act is committed.

I may be wrong about all this, so don’t beat me over the head. But it’s something I often wonder about myself. In fact just yesterday I was wondering if I should’ve confessed presumption when I was coming out of the confessional.
 
I’ve read that what you are describing is actually the sin of taking God’s forgiveness for granted and when I asked a priest about it, he told me it was only a venial sin. If one of our main reasons for committing a sin, however, is the fact that we can just confess it later and assume that we will be able to 100% guaranteed, than that might be the sin of presumption.
 
A lot of people have a mistaken understanding of presumption, and this can cause havoc with their confessional experiences. Read more below:

Presumption
 
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