The "Full Knowledge" Required for Mortal Sin

[Neil_Anthony]

Most regulars here know that the Catechism gives three conditions for a sin to be a mortal sin:

1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: “Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.”

I would like to discuss the “full knowledge” requirement. I’ve seen a range of opinions here about what constitutes full knowledge.

On one extreme, some people think just about everyone has full knowledge. If anyone has ever told you at any point in your life that something is a grave sin, then you have full knowledge. An example of this view: If a protestant is walking out of a protestant church one day, and a Catholic drives by and yells out the window “Not being a member of the Holy Catholic Church is a grave sin!”, the people who hear the person yelling from the car now full knowledge of the gravity of their sin.

At the other extreme, people believe that nobody ever has full knowledge of anything in this life. We’re not omniscient. We can never completely understand God’s mind and will, and really understand the greater significance of each of our choices. Few of us are granted complete knowledge of all the harm that is caused by every one of our sins. We can read a book that tells us which ones are grave, but if we have doubts about the veracity of the book, then we just have an opinion, not complete knowledge.

Is either of these extremes true? If not, what exactly is meant by “full knowledge”?

 

[praise_Jesus_1]

Article 1859 of the catechism says:

1859 Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.

So the 2nd sentence there is what I go on. “knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s law”. I’ve heard the argument of nobody having full knowledge in this life but this would indicate that nobody is capable of mortal sin and then why must the church define it? Why must we have confession then? I think that extreme is way off. According to this statement, if we know it’s wrong then it counts as full knowledge. We don’t need full knowledge of everything in this life, we just need to know whether or not the act was wrong.

As for your example about the case with the Protestant I don’t know if that counts as full knowledge, it seems a bit of a stretch, especially since the protestant probably believes that they are doing God’s will holding the beliefs they do.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Yes I think you’re right, either extreme seems off.

Here’s one example I come across a lot: We all know Catholics who don’t follow all the church teachings. You point out to them that the Catechism says such and such is a mortal sin. They respond - “I don’t know what some book says, but I never learned that, and my priest says its okay. Besides, the Vatican is behind the times, they don’t know what its like in North America. I just do what my priest says.”

shrug does this person have “full knowledge”??? I hope not, because if they do, we all know lots of people going to hell

 

[praise_Jesus_1]

Yes I think you’re right, either extreme seems off.

Here’s one example I come across a lot: We all know Catholics who don’t follow all the church teachings. You point out to them that the Catechism says such and such is a mortal sin. They respond - “I don’t know what some book says, but I never learned that, and my priest says its okay. Besides, the Vatican is behind the times, they don’t know what its like in North America. I just do what my priest says.”

shrug does this person have “full knowledge”??? I hope not, because if they do, we all know lots of people going to hell

Thats a tough one. Hopefully their ignorance isn’t feigned ignorance.

I think a lot of this comes from people wanting the freedom to define in their own lives what is sinful and what isn’t.

 

[baltobetsy]

As I see it, full knowledge would mean being told something and accepting it as true.

If I yell at the Protestants out the car window, they’re not going to accept what I say as true, and they’re not going to be responsible before God for going against it. Their own consciences are formed a different way, and they must obey their conscience.

The “Vatican is behind the times” Catholic is a different matter. This person has the obligation to form his conscience correctly and follow that well-formed conscience. Feigned ignorance would be a gross failure to form one’s conscience. To follow one’s deliberately erroneously formed conscience would be sinful. The tricky thing is judging this, which can really only be done by the person himself in the stark honesty of his own heart and by God. There’s no fooling God, no matter how many friends, family members and confessors one deceives.

Betsy

 

[praise_Jesus_1]

Thanks for the insight Betsy!

I always thought it might be a bit tricky to define this for those individuals who are Catholic but choose to ignore certain tenets.

 

[Sonny1954]

Undoubtedly, the “full knowledge” or full consent of the will condition is the most diffiicult to understand. For me, that means that the grave act was committed completely free of dire and unusual circumstances, psychological compulsion, ingrained habit or any type of mental illness, each of which diminishes the ability to give free & full consent of the will toward the sinful act.

And the most serious effect of a mortal sin is that it destroys one’s relationship with God, until the mortal sin is confessed and forgiven by a priest. It is my personal opinion that anyone who feels the need to make confession & do pennance for such an act; or anyone who wishes and feels the need to pray to God following such an act still has some type of relationship with God. A damaged relationship? Yes. One that needs the grace of the confessional? Yes. But not a utterly destroyed relationship, i.e. no relationship with God.

Some individual Catholics believe that mortal sins are quite numerous and easy to commit. Others believe they are rare and difficult to commit, mostly because of this very condition.

 

[John_Hiner]

Laudetur Iesus Christus.

Some of the difficulty with these ideas lies in the English translation. It is often helpful to look at the Latin versions of the portions of the Catechism in which subtleties are being weighed.

“They will speak in new tongues,” (Mark (RSV) 16:17).

The key to understanding the issue of, “knowledge,” turns on the meaning of, “human act.” The question is whether it is fair to say that it is the person who acts, or whether something else is acting and using the person. The Latin versions of the two paragraphs of the Catechism mentioned so far in this discussion make this obvious.

One thing to note when considering the Latin text is that Latin is not an, “encoding,” of English. It is a different language, and its vocabulary does not have a one to one correspondence with English words – or, therefore, with an English speaker’s ideas. This is precisely the reason why it is useful to consider things in two or more languages – with Latin as the anchor of understanding in the Latin Rite.

When looking a word up in a Latin to English dictionary, one must realize that the meaning of the word is not one or another of the several words listed in the definition. Rather, the Latin word is the confluence of all of the listed words. Hence, one should not, “cherry pick,” one of the several words, but rather one should take the sum of the listed words and try to make sense of the Latin word as meaning all of them together. This is very helpful in the case of the paragraphs under discussion.

Ut peccatum sit mortale tres condiciones simul requiruntur: est peccatum mortale quodvis peccatum « cuius obiectum est materia gravis et, insuper, quod plena conscientia et deliberato consensu admittitur »(1366). (Catechismus Cath. Eccl. 1857)

The relevant words are, “plena conscientia.” The definitions for these are:

Plena: full, plump, satisfied.

Conscientia: (joint) knowledge, complicity (of crime); conscience; sense of guilt, remorse.

Hence, “plena,” is not so extreme a word as, “full,” *might *be in English, where it can have an, “absolute,” or, “mathematical,” meaning. Rather it is the other meaning of, “full,” in English, as in, “I am full, having just had lunch.” It is not that all of the space in my stomach is stuffed to capacity, but I have had enough. Also, the word translated as, “knowledge,” is not the technical sort of knowledge, “scientia,” but rather, “going along with,” or “you know you did it.”

None of this is contrary to a fair reading of the English translation offered in the English version of the Catechism, but it does suggest a particular, nuanced meaning of the English. I generally find that after looking at the Latin, I can see how the English, “could mean that,” but that it is one of several possible meanings in the English and not usually the most obvious to a native English speaker.

Hence, an alternative translation for this phrase, “plena conscientia,” might be, “enough that one can fairly be said to have gone along with it.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the second paragraph mentioned says:

Peccatum mortale plenam cognitionem requirit plenumque consensum. Cognitionem praesupponit indolis peccatoriae actus, eius oppositionis ad Legem Dei. Consensum etiam implicat sufficienter deliberatum ut electio sit personalis. Ignorantia affectata et cordis induratio (cf. Mc 3,5-6; Lc 16,19-31) indolem voluntariam peccati non minuunt, sed augent. (Catechismus Cath. Eccl. 1859)

Hence, the phrase here which is rendered, “full knowledge,” in the English translation, is not the same as the phrase that was given the exact same translation in paragraph 1857. One would not notice this considering only the English.

Here the phrase is, “plenam cognitionem.” The word, “plenam,” is the same as, “plena,” above. However, “cognitionem,” is very different from, “conscientia.”

Cognitio: examination, inquiry / investigation (judicial); acquiring knowledge; recognition getting to know (fact / subject / person); acquaintance; idea / notion; knowledge.

Hence, in this paragraph the English word, “knowledge,” should be taken to mean, “time to recognize what is going on or what one is doing.” “Full,” is again that, “satisfied,” sort of fullness or, “enough.” Hence, the import of this phrase might be something like, “one must have enough time to notice what one is doing and do it anyway.”

Again, all of this should be considered in light of the concept of what makes something one’s own action, a human act. In other words, did one do it, or was one forced or used by someone or something else who is the true actor in the matter. This makes it much easier to understand how, “just going along,” when one knows that one does not know enough to judge whether a thing is good or bad could constitute a guilty act and a mortal sin.

I hope this is helpful.

It is not directly on point, but in light of the Lord’s words quoted at first above, it is heartening to recall that the Holy Spirit and the Conciliar Fathers of the Second Vatican Council taught:

Linguae latinae usus, salvo particulari iure, in ritibus latinis servetur. (Sacrosanctum Concilium 36)

Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites. (SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM 36)​

Spiritus Sapientiae nobiscum.

John Hiner

 

[praise_Jesus_1]

Thanks John, another informative post!

 

[praise_Jesus_1]

Sonny1954’s post does pose a bit of a problem though. Because it seems to imply that if one feels they need to go to confession they haven’t committed a mortal sin. Yet I think this would argue “Full Knowledge” even more. If I feel that I need to go to confession then yes I have Full Knowledge that what I did was wrong.

 

[fix]

And the most serious effect of a mortal sin is that it destroys one’s relationship with God, until the mortal sin is confessed and forgiven by a priest. It is my personal opinion that anyone who feels the need to make confession & do pennance for such an act; or anyone who wishes and feels the need to pray to God following such an act still has some type of relationship with God. A damaged relationship? Yes. One that needs the grace of the confessional? Yes. But not a utterly destroyed relationship, i.e. no relationship with God.

I think God sends special graces to help us return to confession. That does not mean we have sanctifying grace in our souls. It is a signal we need to repent.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

…
The relevant words are, “plena conscientia.” The definitions for these are:

Plena: full, plump, satisfied.

Conscientia: (joint) knowledge, complicity (of crime); conscience; sense of guilt, remorse.

Hence, “plena,” is not so extreme a word as, “full,” *might *be in English, where it can have an, “absolute,” or, “mathematical,” meaning. Rather it is the other meaning of, “full,” in English, as in, “I am full, having just had lunch.” It is not that all of the space in my stomach is stuffed to capacity, but I have had enough. Also, the word translated as, “knowledge,” is not the technical sort of knowledge, “scientia,” but rather, “going along with,” or “you know you did it.”

…

Thanks for the excellent answer!

 

[John_Hiner]

Sonny1954’s post does pose a bit of a problem though. Because it seems to imply that if one feels they need to go to confession they haven’t committed a mortal sin. Yet I think this would argue “Full Knowledge” even more. If I feel that I need to go to confession then yes I have Full Knowledge that what I did was wrong.

Laudetur Iesus Christus.

Dear “praise Jesus:”

I agree that there is a problem with the analysis to which you refer. One way of putting the difficulty is, “everyone has a relationship with God, this is not salvation.” God maintains everything in being, even the, “lost,” or, “damned,” in Hell. Satan was not unmade when he fell. He has a relationship with God, however, it is not salvation.

Only grace saves. However, it is not all grace that saves, but, “sanctifying grace.” This is the very life of God, the love among the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity. Only if this sanctifying grace flows through one, is one saved.

To put this another way, it is not whether we love God that matters. Only God’s love for God matters. A man’s love cannot save him. Only if Christ’s love for His Father flows through a man can the man be saved.

As the Holy Spirit writes through St. Paul, “You are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” (2 Corinthians (RSV) 3:3.) Hence, each member of the Church is a token of love sent by the Son to the Father. Sin is a divergence between what the token actually says and what Christ would have it say to His Father. Mortal sin is an action or intention that so contradicts the intention of Christ’s expression of love as to negate one’s role as a message from Christ.

Once this breach has happened. One cannot repair it. Even if one fully reforms, intending exactly what Christ would wish one to intend and do, this would be insufficient. If it is one’s will and not Christ’s, if one is writing a copy of Christ’s letter, but it is sent from the sinner and not from Christ Himself, then it is man’s love and not Christ’s and it cannot save.

Hence, one’s regret is a necessary preparation for Confession. However, it is neither a substitute for it or a sign that one does not need it. Once one has disavowed the contradiction of Christ’s will, one must take the, “re-written letter,” to the Confessional where Christ’s anointed representative can endorse it on His behalf, making it an authentic communication from Christ to His Father – rather than a copy of Christ’s note sent from a human being who cry’s, “Lord, Lord.”

“In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.” (1John (RSV) 4:10.) Unless one is an expression of Christ’s love, sent from Him to His Father, the life of the Holy Trinity, sanctifying grace, is not flowing through one and one is not saved, regardless of how much heart-felt, human love we direct toward God by our own will or intention. Only Christ saves. Man cannot save himself.

Hence, it is not, “any relationship,” but the relationship made possible by the Sacraments of the Holy Roman Catholic Church which save.

Of course, Confession is indispensable if one seeks to offer clean and complete sacrifice in the Holy Mass. One must go and clarify the garbled and dim messages to which we are reduced by venial sin, if one wants to offer a pure and unspotted sacrifice of ourselves and our works on the Altar. Absolution clarifies all of our intentions and submits them to Christ’s will, even if we do not know all of the ways that we have offended. Hence, our lives are conformed to Christ’s will as fully as possible, if we seek absolution as a preparation for Holy Mass. It is not only mortal sin which should lead us to Confession.

I hope this is helpful.

Pax Christi nobiscum.

John Hiner

P.S. On re-reading the above, I noticed that I might have overstated the matter in one respect. It is not that one’s love for God is completely irrelevant. One must authentically love God to be an accurate expression of Christ’s message of love. However, this is secondary. One’s love for God alone will not save. Only when one’s love for God is transformed into and expression of Christ’s love for God by the Sacraments does it become material to one’s salvation. Then it is indispensable.

 

[praise_Jesus_1]

Thanks John. I reread my post and I realized that Iindicated that confession was only necessary to heal a mortal sin. I didn’t mean to come off that way. I agree completely with you that regular confession will allow us to resubmit our wills to that of Christ and is an excellent preparation to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. Thanks again for your informative post.

 

[Ginkgo100]

I think God sends special graces to help us return to confession. That does not mean we have sanctifying grace in our souls. It is a signal we need to repent.

Agreed. By the original logic, no atheist (or other unbaptized person) would ever convert, because we know we need God’s grace to accept faith, and unbaptized people are incapable of receiving such. Since we know that statement is not true—God leads the unbaptized to the Christian Church all the time—then we know a person can be influenced by God without having an active, intact relationship with Him, i.e. Sanctifying Grace.

 

[caoimhin]

If someone is a Catholic but has no interest in anything the Catechism or the Vatican have to say about the rightness or wrongness of their actions, then does that person love God, or do they just want a Get Out of Hell Free card while keeping Self is on the throne? Of course we can’t judge them, but the question is begged IMHO.

 

[rpp]

Yes I think you’re right, either extreme seems off.

Here’s one example I come across a lot: We all know Catholics who don’t follow all the church teachings. You point out to them that the Catechism says such and such is a mortal sin. They respond - “I don’t know what some book says, but I never learned that, and my priest says its okay. Besides, the Vatican is behind the times, they don’t know what its like in North America. I just do what my priest says.”

shrug does this person have “full knowledge”??? I hope not, because if they do, we all know lots of people going to hell

This may fall into the “hardness of heart” category which, as was say in paragraph 1859, does not reduce the gravity of the sin or somehow give the person a free pass. Just because someone says “the Church is wrong about contraception.” and honestly believes that (hardness of heart), and they choose use contraception, the sin they commit does indeed appear to be mortal.

 

[PJM]

=Neil_Anthony Most regulars here know that the Catechism gives three conditions for a sin to be a mortal sin:

1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: “Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.”

I would like to discuss the “full knowledge” requirement. I’ve seen a range of opinions here about what constitutes full knowledge.

On one extreme, some people think just about everyone has full knowledge. If anyone has ever told you at any point in your life that something is a grave sin, then you have full knowledge. An example of this view: If a protestant is walking out of a protestant church one day, and a Catholic drives by and yells out the window “Not being a member of the Holy Catholic Church is a grave sin!”, the people who hear the person yelling from the car now full knowledge of the gravity of their sin.

At the other extreme, people believe that nobody ever has full knowledge of anything in this life. We’re not omniscient. We can never completely understand God’s mind and will, and really understand the greater significance of each of our choices. Few of us are granted complete knowledge of all the harm that is caused by every one of our sins. We can read a book that tells us which ones are grave, but if we have doubts about the veracity of the book, then we just have an opinion, not complete knowledge.

Is either of these extremes true? If not, what exactly is meant by “full knowledge”?

***It means you can’t have one [meaning a mortal sin] without the OTHERS.

Knowledge of the seriousness of the potential act.*

One must be suficiently competent to understand that what is being contemplated constitues a GRAVE and Morally serious offence BEFORE the commission of the offense.

This is more than a simple “shout one heard out the window.” One must have a reasonable understanding of the gravity of the action proposed. How much would that be? Would depend on the person, the surrounding circumstances which vary with each act and each individual.

The judgement is that if the person THINKS that they are GRAVELY sinning; they are in fact Gravely Sinning. If a person does NOT think, does not know [within in God’s tolerated cupability standards of can and or should know] then they do not commit a Mortal sin.

Cold blooded murder for example should be always known as a Grevious act, while abortion; all though reprehensible and an intricsic Evil, might not be understood as such by some?

1. They have to want to do it without being in anyway forced or pressured.
2. It of couse has to be a seriouly Grave issue. Which too can be a judgement call of ones conscience, which we are obligated to have properly informed.

Stealing $5.00 from a Millionaire would not constitute a “grave sin” while taking the ONLY $5.00 a person an a verly low fixed income, might be?**

 

[John_Hiner]

Laudetur Iesus Christus.

This discussion set me to thinking. It occurred to me that one might gain some insight into this issue of “full knowledge,” by balancing virtue against vice. Here are two paragraphs of the Catechism which might be usefully thought about together:

1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: “Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with ***full knowledge ***and deliberate consent.”(131) (1997 Catechism of the Catholic Church 1857)

Ut peccatum sit mortale tres condiciones simul requiruntur: est peccatum mortale quodvis peccatum « cuius obiectum est materia gravis et, insuper, quod plena conscientia et deliberato consensu admittitur »(1366). (Catechismus Cath. Eccl. 1857)

1141 The celebrating assembly is the community of the baptized who, “by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated to be a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, that through all the works of Christian men they may offer spiritual sacrifices.”(9) This “common priesthood” is that of Christ the sole priest, in which all his members participate: (10)Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy, and to which the Christian people, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people,” have a right and an obligation by reason of their Baptism.(11) (1997 Catechism of the Catholic Church 1141)

Celebrans congregatio communitas est baptizatorum, qui, « per regenerationem et Spiritus Sancti unctionem consecrantur in domum spiritualem et sacerdotium sanctum, ut per omnia opera hominis christiani spirituales offerant hostias »(914). « Sacerdotium commune » illud est Christi, unius Sacerdotis, ab omnibus Eius membris participatum: (915)

« Valde cupit Mater Ecclesia ut fideles universi ad ***plenam ***illam, ***consciam ***atque actuosam liturgicarum celebrationum participationem ducantur, quae ab ipsius liturgiae natura postulatur et ad quam populus christianus, “genus electum, regale sacerdotium, gens sancta, populus acquisitionis” (1P 2,9) (cf. 1P 2,4-5), vi Baptismatis ius habet et officium »(916). (Catechismus Cath. Eccl. 1141)​

The Latin root word in these two concepts are the same, “conscio.”

“Pleana,” and, “plenam,” are different forms of the same word: full, plump, satisfied.

“Conscientia,” and, “consciam,” are different words based on the same root. Consider the overlap in their meanings:

Conscientia: feel guilty; be conscious of (wrong); have on conscience; know well (late); (joint) knowledge, complicity (of crime); conscience; sense of guilt, remorse.

Consciam: feel guilty; be conscious of (wrong); have on conscience; know well (late); accomplice, accessory; partner; confidante; one privy to (crime/plot); witness; conscious, aware of, knowing, privy (to); sharing (secret) knowledge; guilty.

So, the level of “knowledge” required to be guilty of mortal sin is comparable to the level of “knowledge” required to participate in the Holy Liturgy.

This suggests that, as one’s theory makes it harder to fail in the one regard, it makes it easier to fail in the other.

Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.

John Hiner

 

[kennerbabe09]

So if you do something which you have full knowledge of as sinnful, but afterwards you are very regretful of it and repent will God forgive you?