Thoughts on mortal sin/venial sin

I think Brigid is correct, considering their theology.

My own feeling is that Jesus was acting in obedience to His Father, and may have assumed that His mother should know where He was (and possibly a bit perplexed that she hadn't prayed and heard from the Father where He was). I do think it was a mild rebuke to call her "woman" rather than "Mother" particularly when He was only twelve; yet, being that He was the Son of God, I see no sin there.

 

A man must obey his parents according to Jewish law, but a wife must obey her husband first and even though Christ was born of Mary as a virgin, his father's authority still mattered more.

 

I have always been taught that the word is an honorific in the first century usage, equivalent to calling someone Ma’am today.

 

Indeed so. I am not advocating Novatianism, Donatism or Pelagianism, all closely related heresies; rather I subscribe to the Entire Sanctification, or Christian Perfection doctrine of John Wesley, and to Theosis, the Eastern soteriological model on which it is based.

 

The RCC mode of confession is, in my experience, as formal as you want it to be. I’ve been in conversations with priests before, disclosing my worries, my concerns, my hopes, and been suddenly surprised when he spoke the words of absolution and gave me a very helpful suggestion as a penance.

I think it’s mostly movies and our own expectations that conjure the image of a dark confessional with an arabesque screen between the whispering penitent and the broody priest. Like in The Godfather or something.

 

I was talking to one of our former military chaplains a few weeks ago and he told me the Romans had tried to get him in trouble with his unit for hearing confessions. He informed them that the Roman Catholic Church did not have a monopoly on hearing confession and that he would continue to hear confessions.

 

Does the OAC hear a lot of auricular confession?

Back to the post I don't really believe in the distinction between venial and mortal sin. Sin is sin and some sins are harder on one's soul than others to bear and the damage done but that can vary from person to person.

 

I’m not saying the Roman Catholic Church necessarily interpreted it correctly, but I believe the distinction itself comes from 1 John 5:16-17.

If you see your brother or sister committing what is not a mortal sin, you will ask, and God will give life to such a one—to those whose sin is not mortal. There is sin that is mortal; I do not say that you should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not mortal.​

 

And this is where I see so many of my fellow Romans wringing their hands in anguish. How to know which is which?

I find that Roman authorities are at once both vague and specific. They will say that someone’s sin isn’t necessarily mortal depending on their circumstances, and then they will say also definitely that this sin or that sin is certainly mortal.

I find it drives people a little crazy from time to time.

 

Yeah I don't think they interpret it like it reads. In other translation this reads sin unto death. I have interpreted it to mean a person no longer being a Christian and in a sense their sin is now mortal to them because how do they repent if they are no longer a Christian?

 

I don’t see much of a substantial difference between what you say and what Breaking the Habit says in this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WJh8buobbVM

I have never heard it said quite the way he puts it, even though he covers all the catechism points. Hearing this, I had to ask myself if I was actually hearing this from a Roman Catholic.

 

As a RC I was taught that a willful failure to attend RC Mass on any 'holy day of obligation' was a mortal sin. And of course, attendance at any Protestant church was identified as a mortal sin.

Yet I am quite confident that people are not separated from God's grace by such actions.

 

It depends on the region and size of the parish. The small country parishes tend not to have many regulars. The larger urban parishes will. I have colleagues who have never heard confession and some who have regulars, perhaps as often as monthly. I don't know of anyone who is hearing confession weekly, as the Romans make a token effort to do.