Consider these situations:
I recently watched a movie with Sandra Bullock called “The Unforgivable”. Spoiler Alert if you are considering watching this movie. Bullock plays a single woman who finds herself caring for her 5 year old sister. They are in severe financial constraints and are being threatened with eviction by the Sheriff. She threatens the officer that she will shoot him if he enters their house and has a shotgun lying near the back door. As the younger sister hears the Sheriff entering the home, she picks up the shotgun and shoots the Sheriff as he comes through the door. The subsequent scene shows Bullock’s character and her sister sitting in a restaurant with the young girl eating ice cream completely unaware of what she had done.
Staying with the Sandra Bullock theme, the film “Murder by Numbers” is the story of two high school boys who plan and carry out a series of murders of innocent and unsuspecting people to show that they could do it. Bullock plays the detective trying to solve the case. In this film, the boys commit Intrinsically and immoral acts, are fully aware of their nature as being evil and choose to carry out the acts anyway.
Are these sins equal in God’s eyes? Clearly the end result is the same. Someone dies. The nature of the act is similar. Murder is an evil and immoral act. In both scenarios the individuals involved freely elected to engage in the crime. So what is different? The full awareness and knowledge that the act is immoral and wrong is not present in the first example from The Unforgiveable. The young girl is either a psychopath (highly unlikely) or is merely too young to understand the nature of what she had done.
The point I am trying to make is that there are different degrees of sin in the world. Using four letter words in anger directed at no one in particular cannot be compared to directing God to damn someone. Thus using His name in vain. Taking an apple from a cart when hungry cannot be compared with bilking investors out of millions of dollars. Missing mass because of getting in a car accident on the way to church is not the same as choosing ahead of time to not attend mass because you want to watch an early football game.
And John tells us so in today’s first reading from 1 John Chapter 3:
If anyone sees his brother sinning, if the sin is not deadly,
he should pray to God and he will give him life.
This is only for those whose sin is not deadly.
There is such a thing as deadly sin,
about which I do not say that you should pray.
All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly.
It is from these verses that the Church gets the notion of Mortal versus Venial sin. The letter 1 John is an exhortation to his readers that they have become aware of Christ as God’s Son. They are aware of Him being the light to shut out the darkness. That He is the author of Truth over the Evil One as the bearer of Lies. That as believers we are Children of God and not Of The World. That they should, as also should we, know the difference of Good over Evil.
Sin that is deadly is sin that ruptures our relationship with God. It interferes with our destiny in enjoying eternal life with Christ. When we lie to a friend, knowing the lie will cause them harm, and engage in it anyway, our relationship with that friend is severed. When we gossip about someone, knowing that the tale will irreparably harm the person’s reputation, we commit a deadly act. Deadly to our own salvation as well as the other person. Thus these are Mortal Sins. The Church defines Mortal Sins as any act that meets all three conditions:
- The Act is Intrinsically Evil and Immoral (Essentially any behavior as outlined in the 10 Commandments)
- The person is fully aware and has full knowledge of the immorality
- Freely Chooses to Commit the Act anyway
We willingly turn away from God and injure our soul.
Venial Sins are more minor infractions. They do not have the serious nature as does those acts that disregard God’s Commandments. As in the first example from “The Unforgiveable” if one or more of the conditions which make up a Mortal Sin are missing then these sins can be considered venial. I have heard Venial sins described as infections. We can recover from a simple, single infection. However, if ignored, infections can overwhelm the body…and our soul.
Why does this all matter? Why do we have to have these categories of sin? Why not just say, as do most Protestants, that sin is sin and it is all serious and we need to ask God directly for forgiveness? Because we are all human. Because our intentions matter. By definition Mortal Sin is us willfully turning our backs on God. By saying we don’t need Him. That what we want is more important than what God wants. The consequences of these types of decisions must be different than making an error, or when we suffer from circumstances beyond our control, or the consequences of our actions do not tell God we don’t care about Him.
And the actions we need to take to reconcile with God over a Mortal Sin are different than the actions we should take over Venial Sins. With less severe sins we can ask God personally or in community at Mass to forgive us as we acknowledge our error. And we make a sincere effort to avoid this type of sin in the future. But Mortal Sins carry a need for reunification with God. We need God’s Grace to enter us once again and to achieve that we must confess to a priest who is acting in Christ’s Presence…Persona Christi. Christ gave this power to his apostles to be transferred down over the centuries in the person of His priests in the Church.
And in the Gospel today John tells us of John the Baptist’s need to decrease so that Jesus can increase. Not just historically at the time Jesus walked, but in our own souls. That Jesus occupies more and more of who we are and how we conduct ourselves daily. John the Baptist knew his role as preparer for the coming of Jesus and the Kingdom. We too have that role for Jesus’ second coming. We are committed to tell the world of the truth of Christ so that when He returns He finds the world ready to be taken up by Him. We must play our role, as did John, in salvation history. And a soul barred from God by the evil of sin, particularly Mortal Sin, cannot call others to God’s love and mercy.
Whoever thought that Sandra Bullock could so effectively teach us Catholic theology!? Think I might go see what “Miss Congeniality” has to say about purgatory.
