puzzleannie:
the first requirement is that the act be objectively immoral, gravely so. All mortal sins are therefore objectively immoral. Whether or not the person is aware that the act is immoral, or the extent of the gravity of the matter does not affect its objective evil. Whether or not the person’s state of knowledge, or absence of consent, reduces or eliminates his personal guilt for the action, the evil effects still accrue.
For instance: a teen has never been taught that premarital sex and contraception are wrong, and indulges in those practices. He or she may not be subjectively guilty of a mortal sin, but nonetheless the evil effects of fornication and contraception will affect their life, and those involved in their actions. A woman who is raped has by no means given consent to the sex act, and is entirely guiltless of sin, yet no one can deny she will suffer evil effects of the gravely sinful action.
This is a great answer, and completely in line with what the church teaches.
All mortal sins are objectively immoral. But the culpability that we incur for committing a mortal sin is subjectively judged by God. For example, if one is invincibly ignorant of the duty to attend Mass on Sunday, God will not hold that person culpable for missing Mass (e.g. a Buddhist that has never heard the Gospel will not be condemned by God for missing Mass on Sunday!)
But what about a Catholic that knows his faith and chooses to blow off Mass on Sunday to go to the beach? That person gave the consent of their will to choose going to the beach instead of going to Mass. And that Catholic knows that the church teaches doing such a thing is a mortal sin. If that Catholic is unrepentant for blowing off Mass, can he stand before God and claim that he never gave the consent of his will? Can that Catholic claim that he was ignorant of the Church teaching?
INVINCIBLE IGNORANCE
Lack of knowledge, either of fact of law, for which a person is not morally responsible. This may be due to the difficulty of the object of the knowledge, or scarcity of evidence, or insufficient time and talent in the person, or any other factor for which he is not culpable.
(Etym. Latin
in, not +
vincibilis, easily overcome:
invincibilis.)
VINCIBLE IGNORANCE
Lack of culpable knowledge for which a person is morally responsible. It is culpable ignorance because it could be cleared up if the person used sufficient diligence.
One is said to be
simply (but culpably)
ignorant if one fails to make enough effort to learn what should be known; guilt then depends on one’s lack of effort to clear up the ignorance.
That person is
crassly ignorant when the lack of knowledge is not directly willed but due to neglect or laziness; as a result the guilt is somewhat lessened, but in grave matters a person would still be gravely responsible.
A person has
affected ignorance when one deliberately fosters it in order to not be inhibited in what one wants to do; such ignorance is gravely wrong when it concerns serious matters.
(Eytm. Latin
vincibilis, easily overcome;
ignorantia, want of knowledge or information.)
Pocket Catholic Dictionary, John A. Hardon, S.J
**Catechism of the Catholic Church
ERRONEOUS JUDGMENT
1792 ** Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.
1793 If - on the contrary - the ignorance is
invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience.
Saying that mortal sin requires “full” knowledge and consent is a handy memory cue that may be useful in catechesis, but it is not a precise formulation of the kind one would get in a moral theology manual.
The kind of consent needed, more technically, is the degree of consent needed to make a fully human act. This does not mean saying, “Yes! I want to do something
really evil!” and having nor reticence about it. One
can have misgivings, regrets, mixed feelings, et cetera, and still give deliberate consent to an action.
Similarly, one does not have to know with metaphysical certitude that a given act is gravely sinful. Lesser degrees of knowledge count – again, the degree of knowledge needed for an authentically human act is the key. Indeed, someone might even be feigning ignorance or being hardhearted toward the evidence …
“This Rock Magazine”, p. 47, July-August 2002
I will comply. :yup:
