Venial or Grave / Mortal Sin

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For sterling to be a mortal sin objectively the dollar value would have to be more than what you stole. They used to say, greater than $35, in the 1950’s. That was almost 40 hours at the min wage. I doubt if a priest would give an amount now, but you get the idea. IT also depends on who you steel from.
Now days you have to decide how serious the theft was. Also, were you trying to offend God? That is what a mortal sin is. A deliberate intentional act to seriously offend God! It is difficult to commit a mortal sin. It takes full knowledge and consent for an action to be a mortal sin.
 
556Sacristan said:
Yes the company I work for is a multi Billion dollar company .
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I know people like to use the line of ‘this huge company’ and I only took a small thing that no one should care. The thing is, you took it, and there are people in harms way and short on the item you took. That is a more serious matter than saying I took 5 forks and 5 knives from the cafeteria.
 
Taking something that does not belong to you, that you are not authorized to take is stealing, plain & simple, and it is wrong.

Dollar amounts should not matter, if it does not belong to you, don’t take it.

What if everyone decided oh, my workplace won’t miss a couple. Then 2 turns into 4, 4 into 8 and soon, there are none and the company has to buy more.

TBH, I am having a tough time with anyone saying that this type of theft is not a mortal sin. We are not talking about a destitute widow stealing food for her kids here. We are talking about theft of property from an employer because of an unrational fear. :roll_eyes:
 
CilladeRoma said:
TBH, I am having a tough time with anyone saying that this type of theft is not a mortal sin.
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Once again, we cannot know the complete state of this person’s knowledge or consent of the will.
We don’t even know him - he’s a random person on the Internet.
For all we know, he may have one or more mental conditions affecting his behavior.

No one is saying it’s not a grave sin, but mortal is judging the state of a person’s soul. That’s for him and his confessor to work out. To tell him he was in mortal sin would be us basically telling him that he had severed his relationship with God (Doubtful, if his conscience is bothering him enough to post a thread) and is going to hell if he doesn’t repent. We don’t tell random people on the Internet “you’re going to hell”, even if they post on here telling us they just committed a murder.
 
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Grave matter, full knowledge, willful consent. It’s all in the OP.
His reasons don’t matter, he knew it was theft, he did it anyway.
Sounds like even the OP knows it was.
 
With all due respect, you’ve received very detailed explanations up thread from several of us, and you also became upset claiming that people were somehow attacking you when they were only trying to explain.

If you still have questions, I would suggest that you discuss it with your priest in person.
 
CilladeRoma said:
Taking something that does not belong to you, that you are not authorized to take is stealing, plain & simple, and it is wrong.
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Actually no. If the owner would reasonably give consent (or withholds it unreasonably), one can take what one desperately needs, so if you are lost on a mountain in winter, you can break into a house and take some food and warmth.
Wrt the situation in the OP, we know only enough to know that the act was quite probably (but not 100%) grave matter, what used to be called [objective] mortal sin.

This is why everyone is advising him to talk with his priest rather than to take the word of a bunch of lay persons on the internet. The priest would be able to ask him the right questions, altho tbh, it seems to me he could just confess the act and not have to worry about it.
 
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Annie said:
altho tbh, it seems to me he could just confess the act and not have to worry about it.
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This is why I generally object to CAF even allowing these kinds of threads on the forum.

If you think you might have committed some big sin, then you should go to confession, not start a thread on the Internet to discuss it with 50 random laypeople.

If confession is not available to you for some reason, then you should make an act of perfect contrition (which in this case would include returning stolen items or giving them to a hospital that could use them) and resolve to confess at the earliest available opportunity.
 
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