October 12, 2006
(Part two of a three-part reflection)
Recently, a question was posed to us about mortal sin versus venial sin. First the writer asked about where in scripture the distinction comes from; second, where it says one must confess mortal sins, but not necessarily venial sins. Generally the writer wanted to know the ins and outs of confessing mortal and venial sins.
I’ll begin with the first question. The notion of grades of sin, mortal and venial, comes both from lived reality and scripture. In Scripture, we see in 1 Jn 5:16, “If anyone sees his brother committing what is not a mortal sin, he will ask, and God will give him life for those whose sin is not mortal. There is sin which is mortal; I do not say that one is to pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal.” Thus, “sins are rightly evaluated according to their gravity. The distinction between mortal and venial sin, already evident in scripture became part of the tradition of the Church. It is corroborated by human experience.” (CCC 1854)
Perhaps though, we should clarify more fully how the Church has come to define sin and its types after its prayerful pondering over the centuries. Sin is an offense against reason, truth and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of a man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as “an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law.” (CCC 1849) In essence, sin is a crime against proper love. Loving properly is what man is built for. God gave us things to use and people to love, and both to draw our love to Him. Too often we use people and love things, and forget about Him.
Mortal sin is a willful choice by a person that is so contrary to what God wants for him that it cuts the soul off from the life of grace offered by God to the soul. For a sin to be mortal the act must be in fact grave; one must know the sin is grave; and one must freely choose to do it. Thus, choosing something inferior to God, over God, the man deals a mortal blow to his own soul. “Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who. . .” alone can satisfy every yearning of the human heart. (CCC 1855)
Common sense and the scriptures show us some of the types of sin that are grave enough to constitute such a rejection of God and His law. We see, for instance, one of several handy lists of such sins in Galatians 5:19-21. “Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger selfishness, dissension, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.” Thus, we see that some sins, or sin patterns, can cut one off from our goal—heaven.
We can also say from logic and from scripture that not all sin is as grave as that. It is simply a different level of sin to be ungrateful and complain about your mom giving you oatmeal when you wanted eggs and toast, versus committing murder or adultery. “Venial sins [or the non-mortal ones] allow charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it.” (CCC 1855)
Now, with all those definitions and explanations in hand, let me offer my own down-home analogy on the different effects of venial and mortal sin on the soul. Imagine life as driving your car on the road to Heaven. Venial sin is kind of like those bugs that splat on the windshield. There is almost no avoiding some of them, try as we might. If we let them accumulate and don’t battle against them, then gradually we lose the clear spiritual vision we need to make good choices on the road. Our capacity to hear the voice of God gets diminished, too. Without fighting them and regularly cleaning the windshield, as it were, we slow our spiritual growth and make ourselves prone to fall into grave sin. Regular confession and the Eucharist keep our spiritual eyes and ears open. So if venial sins are like bug guts, then grave sin is like hitting a cow. We are completely knocked off the road, and we need some immediate repair if we are to get back on the highway to heaven.
With this analogy in mind, and remembering from yesterday’s reflection the reason Jesus instituted confession as a sacrament, we can answer more easily why the Church insists that folks confess the mortal ones and not necessarily the venial ones. Jesus came to forgive sins. He also delegated to His apostles His authority to forgive sins. And we know from what can be inferred from scripture and the lived experience of the Church that this authority was meant to be passed on through the ages. Why else would Jesus have instituted such an authority? Therefore, the necessity for the confession of mortal sins comes from the logical conclusion that it is particularly for those who “dwell in darkness and shadow of death” that Jesus came. He wants their sins forgiven. And He instituted confession through a priest as the means to do it. The Church, thus, insists on mortal sins being confessed, because it is the means by which the life of grace is restored to the one who rejected God by their sinful act.
Tomorrow we’ll look at the confession of venial sins, and some practical reminders on confession.
Fr. John Anthony Boughton, CFR
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