FORGIVENESS MORTALISES VENIAL SIN
If
venial sin is possible it is not possible for those who have sinned and been
forgiven of mortal sin.
If I get forgiven for five
murders by God and then somebody harms me and I do not
forgive them I am ungrateful for the forgiveness I got for God wants me to
forgive.
To be ungrateful for my
pardoning is to declare that I have ceased to be sorry for my offence that I
offered God. It is to offer the same
insult to God all over again. Though God
will not un-forgive my murders and make me guilty of them again I am as bad as
before for I have tried to get myself un-forgiven. It is the same if I refuse to forgive myself
even for an insult for I am just as valuable as anyone else. Jesus utilized this logic in Matthew 18, by
not forgiving he warned that you end up as bad as you were before God forgave
you. It follows that pardoned mortal
sinners cannot refuse any forgiveness without committing a mortal sin.
The
gravity of ingratitude is measured by the value of the thing one is ungrateful
for. God’s pardon for any sin is
infinitely valuable for it enables us to be one with him and to have infinite
happiness so the slightest wilful ingratitude is an infinite insult. You can’t want God or Heaven if you are not
grateful. The venial sinner who is an
ex-mortal sinner can’t be anything other than a mortal sinner when all sin is
infinite ingratitude.
You
might get forgiven for your venial sins but once you commit a mortal sin your
damnation is guaranteed even if you get that mortal sin forgiven. And that is because further venial sin is
inevitable and is made mortal by your ingratitude.
What
we have learned so far contradicts the Catholic doctrine that unforgiveness is not always mortally sinful and that you
can be pardoned while adhering to venial sin.
Catholics only imagine that they are forgiven.
Every
sin in the universe contains an element of being unforgiving. Even when the victim has done you no harm
there is something that you have against her or him and you are giving her or
him a reason to withhold forgiveness from you which is as bad as being unforgiving
yourself. Not forgiving an enemy is bad
because it harms and so to harm a person you have nothing against is as
bad. Even the most secret sin adversely
affects others in some supernatural way.
Read 1 Corinthians 12:26. Its saying that when one suffers all suffer does not meant
that all suffer because of their sympathy for not all would be that
caring. Also, hidden and harmless sins
reduce your resistance to evil and sin and will make it easier to move on to
harmful sins so all sin is indirectly harmful on the natural level too. Every sin brings down on you the infinite
consequences of being unforgiving for it is being unforgiving.
It
is worse to be unforgiving towards the good than towards the bad. To be like that towards the good is to imply
that the bad should be treated worse. To
sin against a bad person is to approve of all the bad things you ever did to
bad people or to people you thought were bad so it is reversing your
repentance. To sin is to un-repent your
repented sins.
Those
who hold a small grudge even for ten seconds are worse than those who hold big
ones because there is more an excuse for the latter. They are more ungrateful for the forgiveness
they have obtained than the latter.
Jesus said that the person who is forgiven a lot and won’t forgive
something small will lose the forgiveness he has received. This is because he is ungrateful for it. He has ceased to want the pardon and he has
insulted that pardon so he is reversing his repentance.
Catholics
are encouraged to come to communion even if there are some venial sins they are
not sorry for. “Venial sins do not
prevent our making a worthy communion, but if we do not repent of them our
communion will be less fruitful” (page 142, Living in Christ). They could be sorry for them all so the
Church dares not say that God has to make this arrangement because nobody could
get communion if they had to have a universal repentance. When you can go to communion in such a
rebellious attitude you can certainly go to confession the same way.
It
is shocking that Roman Catholicism says that regarding true repentance that
obtains pardon: “We must be sorry at least for all mortal sins without
exception. It is impossible truly to
hate a single mortal sin as being an offence against God, without at the same
time hating whatever offends Him mortally.
There can be no true sorrow if we entertain an affection for a single
mortal sin” (page 320, The Student’s Catholic Doctrine). And then it would have you believe that
venial sin is different! It obviously
can’t be. Catholic books are littered
with proofs that Roman Catholicism is mad for power.
www.tracts.ukgo.com/loraine_boettner.htm
BOOKS CONSULTED
A PATH FROM ROME, Anthony Kenny Sidgwick
& Jackson, London, 1985
BLESS ME FATHER FOR I
HAVE SINNED, Quentin Donoghue, Linda Shapiro,
McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, 1984
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH, Veritas, Dublin, 1995
CONFESSION OF A ROMAN
CATHOLIC, Paul Whitcomb, Tan, Illinois, 1985
CONFESSION QUIZZES TO A STREET PREACHER, Frs Rumble and Carty, TAN,
Illinois, 1976
CONFESSION, WHY WE GO,
James Tolhurst, Faith Pamphlets, Surrey, 1975
DIFFICULTIES, Mgr Ronald
Knox and Arnold Lunn, Eyre & Spottiswoode,
London, 1958
ENCHIRIDION SYMBOLORUM ET DEFINITIONUM,
Heinrich Joseph Denzinger, Edited by A Schonmetzer, Barcelona, 1963
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THEOLOGY, Edited by Karl Rahner,
Burns and Oates, London, 1977
GOING TO CONFESSION
TODAY, Patrick McCarthy CC, Irish Messenger Publications, Dublin 1981
LIFE IN CHRIST, PART 3,
Fergal McGrath S.J., MH
Gill and Son Ltd, Dublin, 1960
LIVING IN CHRIST, A Dreze SJ, Geoffrey Chapman,
London-Melbourne 1969
NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA,
The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.,
Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
ORDINATION, Rev Willie Bridcut,
Irish Church Missions, Dublin
PEACE OF SOUL, Fulton Sheen, Universe, London,
1962
PENANCE CONSIDERED
Michael S Bostock, Wickliffe Press London, 1985
PENANCE SACRAMENT OF
RECONCILIATION, Kevin McNamara, Archbishop of Dublin, Veritas,
Dublin, 1985
ROMAN
CATHOLICISM WHAT IS FINAL AUTHORITY?
Harold J Berry, Back to the Bible, Nebraska, 1974
SALVATION, THE BIBLE AND
ROMAN CATHOLICISM, William Webster, Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, 1990
SECRETS OF ROMANISM,
Joseph Zacchello, Loizeaux
Brothers, New Jersey, 1984
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAS
THE ANSWER, Paul Whitcomb, TAN, Illinois, 1986
THE CODE OF CANON LAW,
Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland, William Collins and William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983
THE QUESTION AND ANSWER
CATHOLIC CATECHISM, John A Hardon SJ,
Image Books, Doubleday and Company, New York, 1981
THE SECRET OF CATHOLIC
POWER, LH Lehmann,
Protestant Truth Pamphlets, Agora Publishing Company, New York
THE STUDENT’S CATHOLIC
DOCTRINE, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates, London, 1961
TRADITIONAL DOCTRINES OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH,
EXAMINED, Rev CCJ Butlin,
Protestant Truth Society, London
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HEAVEN? Dave Hunt, Harvest
House, Eugene, Oregon, 1988
BIBLE VERSIONS USED
The Amplified Bible
Sunday, 09 December 2007