What is Mortal Sin? (Part 2)

Mortal sin is a free, deliberate choice for a grave evil and thus a rejection of God and His love. For sin to be mortal there are three requirements: grave, deliberate, free.

Grave. A mortal sin must be serious, substantial, deep. Stealing $1,000 from Bill Gates, not mortal. Stealing $1,000 from a poor family in danger of starvation, mortal.

Deliberate. It is an intelligent, premeditated action, not done impulsively without clear intention. Most homicides are crimes of passion: lover's quarrel, bar fight, jealous rage, severe fear and anxiety. Such acts are always grave in nature; but many may not be truly mortal in that they are not intended deliberately. A planned murder, entailing a hit-man and a plan of action, on the other hand, would be deliberate and mortal.

Full consent of the will.  It must be a free, fully-willed action. This is related to the prior condition of deliberation. It entails that there is freedom from coercion, exterior or interior. If the rapist holds a gun to the head of a mother's child and threatens to shoot unless she provides him pleasure, her compliance is clearly coerced; there is not full consent of the will. Sexual sins are always grave in matter because they involve the creation of new life and the profound personal intimacy allowable only to spouses; but sexual sins are also almost always embedded in a dense network of anxieties, loneliness, desperation, passion, addiction, confusion and compulsions of all natures. For that reason, the Catholic Church has always been quick to forgive sins of the flesh.

This last condition, interior freedom and full consent of the will, opens up a boundless chasm of puzzlement and wonder for the psychologically sensitive. Virtually all our acts are limited by ignorance, social pressure, bad information, emotional wounds, psychological imbalance and cognitive limitations. It is a good question if we ever make an entirely free decision. Yet, we know that we have freedom; we have choice; we are not entirely determined like a ball thrown into the air which must to up and then come down. Even those afflicted with addictions, who confess they are powerless over whatever the substance or action, confess this freely with a sense of freedom in acknowledging need and seeking help. Paradoxically, the confession of powerlessness  is itself an act of freedom. This is a great Mystery: our freedom. Jesus from the cross prayed:  "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." They don't understand the gravity of this evil act! So much of our behavior is blinded by the fog of anxiety, loneliness, compulsion, confusion and ignorance. And yet, we are free. We are responsible. We are not entirely determined. It is not possible for any of us to really judge the culpability...of others...but even of ourselves. But if we do evil we are endowed with a conscience that knows good from evil and we have the freedom to confess, amend, and change our ways. We are at once free (spirits with intellect and will) and bounded by our fallibility and flesh. We are "angimals": with free angelic spirits and material, natural bodies. We are responsible for what we do and who we become.

And so, a truly free and deliberate choice for a grave evil can be a mortal sin. If one does not repent, it places one in a state of mortal sin, separation from God, isolation and hell here and now in this life.

Can eating meat on Friday qualify as grave? See next blog.