Wrong views about Mortal Sin

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The whole thing about mortal sin is that it destroys relationship wih God. So the easiest way to know if you are in mortal sin is to see how guilty you fwel about it. Obviously Christians ought to use their good conscience and judgement and not feelings as those can be decieving but it is natural to have feelings of regret and sorrow when disobeying God.
I’m tired of hearing all these masturbation apologists who try to say that masturbation isn’t that bad. First of all the Church has already made it’s position on this and for it to now change the gravity of a sin from serious to non serious (which could change it from mortal to venial) would be heretical. The Church cannot change teaching and if it did it would go against it’s own “truth”. Masturbation is indeed a serious sin and is mortal when full knowledge of all things about it and full consent is given, it is mortal. For one who is not Catholic or was never told it was wrong, it can never be mortal but is still a “bad thing” and is therefore venial. It is different however if someone was Catholic and chose not to be Catholic because they wanted to masturbate. And nothing is truly black and white. It really depends on the person specifically and how they commited the sin. But whatever the specific case, masturbation is still a serious sin which destroys the soul by way of the flesh.
It is true that sexual sins differ from others because it is so easy to fall in and out of them. It is said in the Bible that “all other sins are outside the body, but the fornicator sins against the body of Christ”. And this also aligns with the view that mastubation is usually a more serious sin for Christians than for others; because others are not in the body of Christ and do not know him, but it is more serious for your most close friends to sin against you than for a stranger to.
And “by force of aquired habit” cannot be taken to mean, “if I masturbate alot then it isn’t mortal anymore”. I understand the temptaions and drives of the desire to mastubate but it still comes down to a choice and you can still judt choose “not to do it”. and it is truly better to be paralyzed and crippled in the bed for the rest of your life than to masturbate. It is God’s forgiveness that we take for granted and strpart to think “one little sin won’t hurt” but it is really better to die then to have one instance of masturbation commited
 
catholic1seeks said:
If you look at how people on CAF talk about sexual sins (for example, masturbation), you will see severe concerns about going in and out of Mortal Sin and then back to the state of grace. Surely this is not how we ought to think of Mortal Sin, no? Is it really that easy for a faithful Christian to fall out of the state of grace (and risk hell) only to pop back up after weekly confession?
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Actually YES!

Which is precisely {that’s THEE right word here} God in His Wisdom and Mercy Instituted the SACRAMENT of Known Forgiveness and PEACE.

As our Creator and the one who justly imposed the penalties of “Original Sin” with its propensity towards sin; then in His GOODNESS, Love and Mercy Instituted Sacramental Confession as HIS antidote for it.

What an AMAZING, Loving and Merciful God we HAVE.

Easter Blessings,
Patrick
 
They do have it right. They were in a state of grace until Thursday, when they mortally sinned, and then they go to Confession and are back in the state of grace. Eventually either they will stop sinning on Thursday or they will stop going to Confession or Confession will no longer be effective because they are not truly contrite. Or it is conceivable that they will continue along this strange path for their entire lives, in which case one must hope that they die on Saturday-Wednesday.

I feel as though they do understand Mortal Sin correctly.
 
Ignorance of Divine Law is not an excuse of Divine Law. A man (or child for that matter) who has made no effort to determine whether masturbation is grave matter is is still culpable because his ignorance was not invincible and therefore he is still guilty.
 
catholic1seeks said:
Is it really that easy for a faithful Christian to fall out of the state of grace (and risk hell) only to pop back up after weekly confession?
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Yes.

Example.

Peter asks Jesus

Jesus ultimately breathes on the apostles giving them the global ability to forgive ALL sins of anyone, (the institution of the sacrament of reconciliation )
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catholic1seeks:
It seems we have to avoid two extremes: The idea of “once saved always saved,” or an extreme view of “Fundamental Option” (whereby one’s concrete acts do not affect one’s fundamental choice to follow God) on the one hand and a legalistic, do-this, automatically sin mortally on the other — to the extent we diminish God’s grace and mercy.
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True

and when approaching the sacrament, we need to be truly sorry for our sin(s) AND resolved to change our behavior immediately.
 
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catholic1seeks said:
In my past, even now, I have been strongly influenced by a view that Christians can slip in and out of grace — even weekly. Of course, mortal sin has conditions: It must be grave matter; consent of will; and full knowledge. However, these are not always clearly explained.
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This is SO true! I think the reason is that we are not taught what our conscience is very well. We think our conscience is a feeling. Our conscience is that which forms a judgment of right and wrong. So our conscience at work doesn’t form a feeling. It gives us knowledge. We know something is wrong.

Some of us confuse that with knowing the Church teaches something is wrong. But when our conscience is in conflict with Church teaching, our job is to form our conscience. This means that we need to look for the truths our conscience is leaning on to make a moral judgment. As we educate ourselves on the fullness of Church teaching, the idea is that we’ll likely find these truths expressed within it. “Oh now you’ve put it into words. Thank you.” As we do this, it becomes clearer as to how the puzzle pieces line up.

Before we’re at this point of full integration though, we have to make an intellectual assent. This means that we have to obey the teaching SO LONG as it doesn’t violate our conscience. We are NEVER to disobey our conscience. If your conscience is telling us that the manner in which to apply the Church teaching to our situation is immoral, we are required to follow our conscience and keep forming our conscience. We will know our judgment is imperfect, but our conscience is in no state to make a better judgment. We are also in no position to apply Church teaching more explicitly than the Church gives us when there is this conflict. The reality is that the lack of integration will make all our judgements flaws. Intellectual assent will help improve it somewhat but we still have to continually educate ourselves.

People try to simplify this by either deciding that the Church is wrong where it disagrees with them or that their conscience is TOTALLY WRONG and they shouldn’t listen to it when it conflicts with their current knowledge of Church teaching. BOTH are a malformation. BOTH lead to grave sins. BOTH can be completely unaware of their sins because of their lack of humility.

And then the full consent gets reduced to any level of consent. They ultimately throw out the mortal criteria entirely and externalize morality to obeying the letter of the law.
 
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ModernCatholic said:
So the easiest way to know if you are in mortal sin is to see how guilty you fwel about it.
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I don’t want to nitpick here because I essentially agree with what you have said. However…“guilt” can have several meanings. If it simply means “I accept responsibility for what I did,” then OK. But if you interpret “guilt” (as most people do) as a feeling that you shouldn’t have done what you did, that’s a problem, and not a good indication of the actual seriousness of your action. For example, I might feel “guilty” because I didn’t open the door for an old lady with a walker. I might feel much more “guilty” about that than about committing a sin (for example, maybe I stole office supplies from my employer!). So I don’t think our feeling “guilty” is a good measure of the seriousness of a sin.
 
coming from my background, I thought all “sin” is mortal. Found a great book , Manual for Conquering Mortal Sin, it is excellent and very insightful. Catholics have absolutely the best books for reading. My library is undergoing this huge purge of protestant opinions to Scripturally based rich reading.
 
Exactly. And feelings are actually the easiest way to fall into sin since our feelings can be decieving. This is why I personally have no problem with the Catholic Carismatic Renewal but pray that they may follow the spirit of God in truth and not just in feeling. For example, praying to “feel God’s presence” is wrong and very dangerous since we as Catholics are called to follow God for who he is and not for his gifts. Praying to feel God’s presence is essentially the same ad praying to find random money or candy on the ground. God may give us a little good feeling to let us know that “hey I’m still there and I love you and keep going!” but every saint has gone through a period of time when it seemed like God wasn’t there for them and wasn’t answeringntheir prayers. Mother Theresa haf this spiritual darkness for 50 years but she still stayed steadfast to the lord as evidence of true devotion. She loved God for who he was, not for all the prayers he answered or nice feelings he gave her. When people look specifically for feelings and miracles, that is an easy entry for the devil since he can trick someone who is looking for that into thinking he’s God, since they’re looking for signs (which the devil can fake) and not for the actuality and reality of God. This is why the CCM/CCR is good for Catholics just joining the faith and for young souls, but can become a spiritual barrier for someone God is calling deeper into the faith. In the same way, the devil can easily create fake guilts and evil feelings which can lead us astray if we look for those as our truth, instead of the actual truth. 🙂
 
ModernCatholic said:
Exactly.
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Exactly right back at you. Nice to find someone I agree with! I agree with everything you said in the last post.

I had a Catholic friend who became a Methodist. Why? I asked him. “Because going to Mass doesn’t make me feel good,” he said. But do you go to Mass to worship God or to make yourself feel good?
 
Erikaspirit16 said:
I had a Catholic friend who became a Methodist. Why? I asked him. “Because going to Mass doesn’t make me feel good,” he said. But do you go to Mass to worship God or to make yourself feel good?
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I became Catholic partially because I was starting to find Methodism’s issues, and going to church there didn’t make me feel good anymore. It made me uneasy. So I turned to the religion of my father and realized I should’ve done that years ago.

Was that wrong? Somehow I don’t think so.
 
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Coming to the Church isn’t wrong. The reasons may not have been correct but it still ends in the right place. We shouldn’t advertise Catholicism to people as a place to feel good, God does that if he chooses to. We show the faith for what it really is.
 
Totally not what I meant at all. If you feel at peace, if you feel you’ve found the truth, if you feel positive about the experience - that is assuredly a part of the whole thing.
 
Buddha felt at peace, after he had sat under that tree for so long.
 
@MCH1 Exactly. Thanks for agreeing with me.
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Pup7 said:
…If you feel at peace, if you feel you’ve found the truth, if you feel positive about the experience - that is assuredly a part of the whole thing.
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Buddha and many philosophers thought they were at peace and that they have found peace with “the truth”. They were clearly wrong and far away from the truth yet they didn’t move because they truly felt at peace with whatever truth of theirs they had. That was assuredly, not part of the “whole thing”.
 
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