Venial
Sin Doctrine is Hypocrisy
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NOBODY IS ENTIRELY FREE FROM SIN
FIRST GREATEST COMMANDMENT MORTALISES ALL SIN
FURTHER PROOF THAT ALL IS MORTAL
RC CHURCH KNOWS THERE’S NO VENIAL
SIN
ABOUT SIN
Sin is an offence against God in thought, word, deed or omission.
In the Roman Catholic Church you will be instructed that there are two
kinds of sin: mortal sin and venial sin.
Mortal sin is sin that cuts you away from God’s
friendship leaving you his enemy.
Christianity asserts that its just punishment is everlasting
punishment. An example is drunkenness or
adultery (1 Corinthians 6:9,10). Grace is God’s power that works inside you to
make you pleasing to him. Mortal sin
kills it why is why it is called mortal.
It kills the soul’s relationship with God and also kills you by making
you deserve death for the Bible says the wages of sin
is death and that because of sin all die.
So sinning mortally is not just a bad thing to do but it is also murderous. It is an attempt to kill yourself
out of spite towards God.
Venial sin is sin that does not terminate the fellowship. Venial is just a weakening of your friendship with God and is not as bad as mortal.
The Church claims that all sins are grave for they offend such a good God but that all sins are not mortal. Incidentally, the Koran asserts that only certain kinds of sin, the allegedly graver sins, put you in Hell (Sura 53:32).
To commit a mortal sin you have to have full knowledge of what you are doing and its seriousness and to do it freely.
If God exists then wrongdoing is worse than it would be if he did not. If the Church is the true faith, we are in trouble for it increases the amount of sins to choose from. For example, contraception wouldn’t be wrong to an atheist mind but would be wrong to a Catholic mind. So religion gives you plenty extra to trouble yourself over. That makes tons of extra sins or compounds the guilt. Both belief in God and belief in sin in accordance with the Church is degrading. You should only believe in whatever evil you need to believe in to treat others well. I should come first when my own existence is the only thing I am most sure of. I should not degrade myself by belief in God or religion. And original sin, the sin I allegedly carried from my conception because of Adam is a far bigger insult to me. For though I am most sure of my existence, I am told that I have to carry that sin though it is not my fault and it implies that I should not put myself first when God allowed that sin to stain me and God is always right. God didn’t make me to love or respect myself when he dishonoured me by original sin.
Doctrines that make you worse when you do wrong are evil and vindictive doctrines.
NOBODY IS
ENTIRELY FREE FROM SIN
Official Catholic doctrine teaches, “It is not a question of the man
doing Penance being one who says ,’Well, Lord, I think
I’ve lived today pretty perfectly. I
prayed generously and faithfully. I’ve
loved my neighbour more than adequately – no failure there. I honestly don’t think I’ve failed you at
all. So really, for a man who loves you
as well as I do, there’s nothing more except some work of supererogation: so
I’ll do this bit of Penance’. No, the
man who does Penance is one who says, ‘Lord, the end of another messed-up day.
I let you down at every turn. I’ve lived
for myself all through. You’re not
giving the basic graces I need. Lord,
please…I’m serious: so I’ll do this” (page 4, Friday Penance, John C Edwards SJ).
The First Epistle of John claims that anybody who says he has no sin is a
liar and the truth of God is not in him at all.
It does not say it just means people who think they have never sinned or
people who think they do not sin any more but used to. So clearly it means both. This tells us that nobody alive is completely
free from sin. They always have some sin
in them. If all sin will be punished
with eternal damnation then there is no hope except by somebody like Jesus
keeping the law of God for us in our place.
Romans 3 teaches that all are sinful and nobody is an
exception. It speaks in the present
tense. It says that the reason nobody could
be saved by obeying the Law of Moses was because nobody can keep it right
despite it making provisions for forgiveness from God. That means we are all sinners and never have
a clean moment.
In Isaiah 64:6, the prophet says that we and all our right ways are
filthy rags before God. He says we so he
included himself too. And he would have
lived like a holy man and he claimed to be totally evil.
Jeremiah 13:23 says that a leopard cannot change its spots or an
Ethiopian his skin just like the evil cannot do good. Isn’t that a nice piece of cynicism from the
God of the Jews and the Christians?
Jeremiah is saying they would pretend to be good but are not.
As St Augustine observed in Book 21, Chapter 27, of his City of God, Jesus
in Matthew 6 gave out the Lord’s Prayer and immediately after stressed that you
cannot be forgiven your sins unless you forgive first and indicated that it
should be said as much as possible for it was the best prayer that he was
hinting that all of us are continually in sin.
The doctrine that we are never completely pure is a logical consequence
of the doctrine of Moses and Jesus that we must love God totally and with all
our hearts meaning we serve ourselves and others the way God commands so that
it is really God who is being served. We
could never manage that in all things.
The black and white attitude which lies behind the Bible’s attempt to
convict everybody of sin is dangerous.
Many of the supposedly good and evil things we do are really neutral –
as bad as they are good or neither if you like.
If consequences have any bearing on morality or right and wrong at all
then you have to believe that there are actions which are neutral.
FIRST GREATEST
COMMANDMENT MORTALISES ALL SIN
Christianity claims to agree with God that we have
to love him with all our power and love others just for his sake (Matthew
Notice too that to say you must love God with all your powers is to
automatically make this the main rule and the greatest commandment for you are
being told to sacrifice all to God so that is very serious and heavy stuff and
also a rule concerning the love due to such a supremely good being would have
to be the greatest for that being is the greatest. Since loving God alone is the greatest
commandment according to Jesus, the Son of God (Mark
ALL SIN IS MORTAL
The Roman doctrines of the difference between mortal and venial sin are unbelievable
for it is plainer than the skin on one’s hands that one disagrees with the
other. People might buy the final
sentence out of short sightedness and forgetfulness of what God’s unlimited
love implies about sin.
If God is really
infinitely good then he must be infinitely offended when any sin is committed
so all sins are infinite offences or mortal.
All sins would be unlimited ingratitude for the unlimited good God would
do for you. He gave you your existence
and that is infinitely valuable in itself.
Suppose some sins are not infinitely evil. If I commit a venial sin then though the sin would not be seem to be very evil the contempt expressed by doing something so small against such a good God would be a mortal sin. The smaller the requirement that I won’t keep the worse is the insult I offer. This does not and cannot mean that it is preferable to commit a mortal sin for it is a mortal sin.
Suppose all sin is mortal. Suppose not all mortal sin is equally bad. Suppose for example that to rob a bank, a mortal sin in Catholicism, is not as bad as murdering somebody, another mortal sin. In committing these acts, I choose to reject God, all my friends and family, all the blessings I have, to rot in Hell forever. I would be total evil in my heart if not in my actions. That is a mortal sin by itself. The robbery or murder is one thing but the rejection of all love is another. Its an additional sin. That means that every time I rob a bank I commit this additional sin. That means every time I murder I commit this additional sin as well. In both cases the additional sin is equal.
If a sin could be mortal but you are not sure, then you are saying to God, "If I am heading for Hell doing this then so be it!". That is a mortal sin in itself. The way the Church makes the slightest sexual thought to be a mortal sin shows that you don't need to be doing much harm to be a mortal sinner. Most Catholics cannot tell or are not sure if an act they are considering is a mortal sin. They do such acts every day. Who then can be saved? Even a theologian wouldn't be exempt for the matter is so complicated.
Every sin you commit cannot be undone – you cannot go back in time to
make it not have happened. The sin will
be perceived by God forever for he sees all things and is outside time. To sin is to blight God’s creation forever
for it is bringing about an evil that is permanent in the sense that it still
happened. Thus all sin must be
infinitely bad.
If every sin is infinitely offensive then no sin can be any worse so all
sin is equally bad. Sins can be worse or
better only in the sense that they do greater or lesser damage. The sin is mortal not because of the harm it
does but because it is intended to tell God to get stuffed. Why?
Because if God is infinite good then we are to love him for his own sake
and to love ourselves and others for his sake.
You cannot commit an infinite offence unless you intend to mock God.
How can Catholics who know that all sin is total opposition to God love
their enemies when they are flippant towards true forgiveness in the ways we
have discovered? Christ told us that we
would know the false prophets by their fruits!
Observations like this have led many to argue that the Catholic Church is not a religion that knows what true love is. And that the Church is putting souls in danger of falling into satanic devotion. They would add that this devilish system seems to want to damn the soul with its fake forgiveness. How can it forgive in the name of God when its doctrine is evil and its morality is bogus?
FURTHER PROOF
THAT ALL IS MORTAL
We have seen the proof that all sin is mortal and seen that it is so clear
that anybody who says that mortal sin is infinitely malign because God hates
evil infinitely is forcing his or her listeners to hold the same to be true of
venial sin.
But there are other proofs.
Looking at sin from another angle provides another way of proving all sin
to be quenching all love for God.
Let’s try another angle again. If
I get forgiven for five murders by God and do not forgive others I am
ungrateful for the forgiveness I got for God wants me to forgive like he has
forgiven me. To be ungrateful for my
pardoning is to declare that I have ceased to be sorry for the offence 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 my pardon cancelled and am putting new sins in
the pardoned ones place. It is the same
if I refuse to forgive myself even for an instant for I am just as valuable as
anyone else. Being unforgiving makes all
the pardons you got count for nothing.
For example, if God forgives you for murder and you do not forgive
others then you insult that forgiveness and became as bad as a murderer
again. You are saying that you are glad
you killed and are reversing the repentance that gave you mercy. 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 to
another without committing a mortal sin.
It would be evil to get forgiveness for a serious sin and fail to
forgive others for less. The lesser the
sin you won’t pardon the worse your ingratitude is. Nearly everybody is a mortal sinner at that
rate. If you didn’t believe in God this
problem wouldn’t exist which would be proof that the Devil is behind all God religion
if he really wants all people damned in Hell.
Now you know the real depths of Jesus’ compassion – shallow.
What if all sin is equally bad before God in intent even though the
outward damage of the sin may differ?
It remains a fact that you must instantly forgive any sin committed
against you or another person for all are as bad as
each other.
If I am pardoned for small sins
and I can’t forgive a murderer or a rapist I must remember that all my sins
many of which were to do with the fact that every moment I stay in sin is a
fresh sin add up to grave harm. I cannot
judge a person on one act and say I am better.
I cannot say that I am entitled to be unmerciful to him for he did worse
than I did.
If I think I should not forgive
those who are “worse” then me then that logic would tell me to forgive only
those people who are as good as me. So,
if anybody commits one small sin more than I have I should not forgive
them.
If I sin I do not forgive myself
as long as I am unrepentant so it is the mortal sin of being ungrateful for the
gift of pardon.
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 cannot want God or Heaven if
you are not grateful. When you sin, you
can’t be anything other than a mortal sinner when all sin is infinite
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. As a religion that say that sins have
different levels of gravity as regards responsibility.
As a religion that believes in different levels of the gravity of sin,
Catholicism should say that it is a far bigger offence to God to refuse to
forgive a small sin than a big one. But
so low is its morality that it does not.
So-called venial sinners are welcomed to communion!
Every sin in the universe contains and element of being unforgiving. Even when the victim has done you no harm
there is something that you can 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. Even the most secret sin
adversely affects others in some supernatural way (1 Corinthians
Like
The Church accepts Catholics who make little effort to learn what sins
are mortal and what are not. But when
these people sin the sin may not be mortal in itself but the fact that they
committed it and didn’t care if it was mortal or not is.
If my good works are done while I have a “venial” sin on my conscience
then they are as fake as the Turin Shroud.
I am telling God, “Take this good but I am not repenting.” The good is not really meant to be good in
that case. When I sin I cannot do
anything good so to sin is to put all love for the Lord out of my heart. It is a mortal sin. I have stolen the heart that belongs to my
God. Venial sin does not exist. Those who say it does must ask themselves if
they are being hypocritical.
To commit a venial sin would be to take a step closer to committing
mortal sin. It is expressing your will
that if it leads you to commit a mortal sin then so be it. But that attitude is a mortal sin. To wilfully make yourselves open to mortal
sin is willing a mortal sin to take place.
The Church teaches that nobody loses their faith except through failing
to pray which is a sin or some other sin that is committed too much. So if you are a Catholic and cease to be
convinced, you are an evil person. This
is an unkind assessment and it is one the Church does not shy from. So sin then reduces your faith and increases
the tendency to doubt. Doubt or denial
of the faith is the ultimate sin for it is turning your back on what the Church
says about sin and God. Therefore all
sin must be mortal for it reduces your faith.
Also, to do good and refuse to sanctify that good and make it real good
by casting all sin, even if it is only all venial sin, out of your heart would
be a mortal sin and casting ridicule on the good when that good is major. The better the good the more I put it up for
ridicule by doing it in sin. It is a
mortal sin to ridicule a person for saving a life. When you ridicule your own saving a life or
something it must be a mortal sin too.
Does that mean that we are not allowed to do good
while adhering to unrepented sin? Yes.
You chose the sin so you choose the results and limitations sin
causes. If you want to do the good
repent the sin first.
The more good you do in a state of sin the more you mock the good. You must be ready to do immense good such as
saving lives at all times. You must have
no sin. Not to be ready by repenting of
venial sin as soon as it is committed would be a mortal sin. It is like refusing to do something easy and
reasonable in order to save others from death or Hell. The more good you do in a state of sin the
worse the blasphemy is. This implies
that the venial sinner should no do good and the less good done the
better. God tells us we must never ever
sin and that if saving a life would be a sin for us through conscience or
circumstance then it should not be done.
So God would prefer you refraining from a good action than carrying it
out to profane it. It is endlessly worse
if it is a mortal sinner and not a venial sinner. Jesus was hostile to hypocrisy like no other
sin which suggests that we should refrain from helping others if it would be
hypocritical. That means we are never
allowed to help others for we are always stained by sin.
Today it is accepted that the person is the absolute value. Life is more important than quality of life
for life must be more important than quality when the quality of life
matters. From this it follows that
murder is the worst thing you could do.
This contradicts Christianity as the apostles taught it under the
inspiration of Jesus which sees hating God as worse and shows that true
Christianity is anti-humanitarian and undermines the value of life over a
theistic hypothesis. Many top Christians
just pretend to honour the absolute value of life. The Catholic Church commits a mortal sin
merely by espousing this attitude and if it were really open to virtue it would
have the right view. We cannot make
excuses for people who have bad opinions of others without proper cause. So anyway human life is the absolute value
meaning that every moment of human life is precious too for it is a moment of
life. Therefore to hurt a person is to
hurt a precious moment of life and is seriously wrong.
Venial sin is a lie.
THE SIN OF PARTIAL CONSENT
The Church of Rome alleges that when you sin you consent to it either
partly or fully. For a sin that tears
you away from God and makes you fit only for being dumped in Hell forever you
have to have full consent. If the
consent is incomplete then the sin is venial.
If a person is blinded by lust and falls into bed with somebody else’s
spouse that is a venial sin because the ignorance inflicted by the desire
forced the person to freely choose to sin.
The person forgot that adultery is a mortal sin and because of that he
or she could not commit a mortal sin by committing adultery.
All this seems fine, it seems reasonable.
And it seems to prove that venial sin does exist at least when there is
partial consent. But that is merely
because of our selfish prejudice and the lack of integrity that the Church
likes to have ingrained in us. We
sometimes like to pretend that our wrongdoing is not all our fault on the
grounds that we did not have a complete understanding of what we were
doing. We want to believe we sinned but
not very much.
But to sin you need to be aware that you are doing something that is
against God’s way. Therefore to say that
a person who cannot resist choosing to commit, say, adultery does not fully
know what she or he is doing and therefore not committing a mortal sin is
ludicrous for she or he knows all they need to know. If you know that much and can sin then you
have enough freedom regardless of the other motives caused by weakness or
whatever.
If you are overcome with passion and examine yourselves you will see that
your consent to sin was just as good as any other.
Perhaps the will is partly forced to commit adultery by the intense lust?
Stupid question.
Anybody who is weak is weak because they want to be. This means that weakness is no excuse for
half-excuse especially in the matter of the graver sins.
If the person freely consents to mortal sin then it is a mortal sin for
if it is not then the person had no free will at all. The person had enough freedom to sin. It is a contradiction to say that some part
of free will can be outside a person’s control.
So, the doctrine that mortal sin is impossible without perfect consent is
incoherent and childish because there is always sufficient assent. If a person can sin venially without full
control of the will then he or she can sin mortally too. Why is it that we never hear of a person
doing good works with imperfect consent?
If the Church really believed in partway consent she would remove the
things that make people do good though alleged weakness. She would have us dressed in long robes with
paper bags on our heads before letting us do good. And she claims she is here for making us the
best!
The doctrine is covering over the gravity of mortal sin. It is telling people that they are better
than they truly are. It is treating
their victims as nothing. Through the
doctrine, many believers are able to virtually condone many child-murders. When they do that they are pronouncing their
hatred on the little victims and even for the killer though he or she is
preferred at the same time.
It is vital for Catholics to examine their minds so carefully that they
will know if they granted full consent to any sin. The Church says she is concerned that they
might smear themselves in confession so she instructs them to be sure. But the only thing they could be sure of is
that they did consent fully. They must
know that the official teaching on the matter does not prove that venial sin
exists.
And we must realise that the doctrine accuses Christians who do not
believe in venial sin of fraud, of denying on religious grounds what they see
to exist by gazing into their own hearts because if you are not totally to
blame for our choice you would find out if you examine yourselves. If Catholicism really believes in it then she
stoops low by treating those people as sincere dedicated followers of Christ.
It is often hard to be sure if you have consented fully to something or
not if the doctrine of the Catholic Church is correct. You need to go over every second to be
sure. Memory fails us and can be contaminated. So what do you do? The mortal sinners would have to assume that
they are not mortal sinners to be on the safe side. Would it not be the safe side to assume you
have committed a mortal sin? No for the
Church says that if you are not sure that a sin was fully intended by you to be
mortal then you are right with God and he cannot hold it against you. The Church advises against seeing yourself as
a mortal sin without need.
Most of the damaging sins that happen are caused by strong desire. But even weaker desire could take away full
use of the faculty of free will like when you are rushing. The doctrine hints that most of the people in
jail should be out. The doctrine is a
menace. The Church even lets people be
jailed over the doctrine though it tells us she should not.
If you think you should assume that you are a mortal sinner the situation
is different but no better.
Now, it is common nowadays to insist that mortal sin is a rare occurrence
because people are so weak and sin is partly caused by desire. Religious teachers might tell you that the
more you want to commit what is seriously harmful the more venial it is if you
commit it. That means it is better to kill
a person who clearly intends to commit a mortal sin if it would be a venial sin
for you to murder. Then it might not be
a venial sin at all for it is averting a greater evil.
MANY VENIALS MAKE A MORTAL
Mortal sin is a serious sin that makes you totally opposed to God. Venial sin is a lesser sin that you can
commit without shutting God off.
Sin is in the will. If you commit
a venial sin you will that all people in your situation should do the same even
an infinite number. This makes the sin
infinitely malicious. You are trying to
do infinite damage.
According to Roman Catholic doctrine, no amount of venial sins ever add
up to a mortal sin (Everyman’s Road to Heaven, Leo J. Trese, page 35).
Anyone that teaches this doesn’t know what good and evil are or are they
just being untruthful? Lots of little
upsets can equal the amount of harm done in beating a person up. Beating people up is seen as a mortal sin. There must be a point at which committing any
more venial sins crosses the border into mortal sin. When a host of venial sins do more damage
than one mortal sin it is impossible for them not to be worse and add up to a
mortal sin. The Book of Revelation has
Christ complaining about a section of the Church being neither hot or cold
which he will spit out of his mouth for tepidity (3:16). Yet
If sin is bad for the sinner, it follows that venial sinners do so much damage to their hearts and characters over time that they could be worse off than somebody who committed a big mortal sin and who repented. Surely then the person has forsaken the ways of God in her or his heart? The Church used to teach that animals had no rights and forbade the torture of animals for what it did to the character of the torturer. In so doing, it is paying homage to the reasoning that venial sinners can ruin their own hearts and shut God out if they commit enough sins.
Some teach the following. “When
your countless venial sins are interspersed with several acts of repentance the
past is forgotten and forgiven. This
forgiving gives help from God to avoid mortal sin. It prevents you from accumulating venial sins
until you finish up as mortal.” But when
you sin venially you are restoring the guilt of all your previous sins. You cannot really be sorry for offending God
with the past venial sins anymore when you have committed another one of them.
She is guilty of unjust discrimination for calling some viciousness
venial and that is as just as bad as mortal sin. She is putting down the culprits and the
victims. In degrading them she degrades
her God. She is commanding
irrationality.
It is a sin to commit what you think may be a mortal sin. It is not caring if you sin this way or
not. All must be mortal sinners. All are sinners according to Christian
teaching.
What we have learned about venial sin means that all who sin may have
mortally sinned in tipping the balance with too many venial sins for nobody is
fully conscious of what damage they have wanted done. Assuming a person is not charged with mortal
sin by their conscience, nobody knows what will be waiting if they die, whether
it would be life in Heaven or torment in Hell.
The doctrine of mortal and venial sin implies that nobody should have
peace of mind on earth.
RC CHURCH KNOWS
THERE’S NO VENIAL SIN
All priests must know fine well that all sin is mortal for they preach
the necessity of looking at all your sins to see if you intended to divorce God
by them. They are as bad as the
Pharisees of the Bible. Catholics who
agree with them are in the Devil’s chains if there is a Devil.
One can nearly hear the Catholics saying: ”The priests and theologians
are continually pondering over such matters so they would teach the same as you
if you were right. Please, don’t ask me
to believe that all those wonderful men were liars and that they suffered and
sometimes died for falsehood and hypocrisy.”
Atheists are sorry but they have to.
The Catholic priests are just all frauds for they know that all sin is
an finite insult and then arbitrarily and bigotedly contradict it by preaching
venial sin! They hate anyone they have
got prosecuted for blaspheming for the blasphemy in so far as they maintain it
should not be counted as or considered to be a serious sin. If there is a Satan he is very powerful and
when one reflects upon the sly ways of the priests and the theologians one will
notice that one has underestimated his magic before.
I will never forget the first moment I learned why mortal sin deserves
Hell. For in that moment while waiting
for confession in my
Anyone who preaches that venial sin exists is either totally naïve or
lying.
God or the priests are in no position to tell me what is a mortal sin and
what isn’t. It is my conscience and
decision and belief that determine if any act will be a mortal sin. They are telling me if I have sex outside
marriage that I should intend it to be a mortal sin. Do they want to punish me not because sex is
that wrong but because I have sex? If so
then this is jealousy and interference and persecution in their purest forms
and self-righteousness and sadism are the motivations.
What business has God and priests forgiving mortal sins against me in
confession or whatever without my consent as if I was never harmed? Catholics believe in people making amends to
God for the sins of others in their place.
Surely then God should ask me what penance I want the person to do for
me. Surely the priest who absolves
should or tell the penitent to ask me first and get back to him. What business has God making these decisions
as if I had no right when he cannot even prove that he can be loved or should
be? When you get married you have to
make sure you know the person but you don’t know God at all and he is so
mysterious and does things that look evil.
But that does not stop him being domineering.
Jesus said that God accepts no sacrifice from anybody who has fallen out
with a neighbour and who does not go and make peace with the neighbour
first. This proves that the Catholic
Church which does not insist on this is in breach of the law of Christ and is
not his infallible bride. Jesus was
right so the Church is blind to what the right thing is and that is terrible
and more inexcusable when it reads his words.
THE GREATEST OF EVILS
We have seen that sin is freely offending God by not doing his will and
that to offend a God of infinite love is infinite ingratitude for what
everlasting good he would do for you if circumstances would permit (sin is
still as bad if there are gods or aliens who are to be treated as good gods)
and for the love he has for you now.
“Therefore,” it is argued, “sin is the worst evil for it is deliberate
and needless evil while natural evils happen for a good purpose. Natural evils like earthquakes and famines
wouldn’t be done by God if they were the worst evils. Sin is the greatest evil of all. It is better to be struck dead or be
paralysed by torment by God than to sin.
Blanche, the mother of
But by no means can sin then be said to be the worst evil. If so, then there should be no pain at
all. It would be better to leave bad
people alone than to hurt them terribly for life when the pain outweighs any
harm they would do in the future. And
God only sees what will happen and he doesn’t see exactly what will take place
in a non-existent future. So he can’t
see if what he did was sensible or for the best in reality therefore he is just
using sin as an excuse for being cruel.
He can only hope for the best.
The Christian is expected to prefer to see her son dying of some horrible
disease than for him to be using a condom which is forbidden by the Church of
Rome or committing any sin. Often, a sin
will not do him any harm. And it will
not harm God whose happiness cannot be taken away. Rules are more important than people in the
religion of Jesus Christ.
The Church says that earthquakes are bad for people but good for the
world (page 20, Christianity).
But God could have made a world that does not need them. Their attempts to prove that sin is
unnecessary evil while natural evil is necessary is futile. They just assume the latter is necessary and
that makes their answer worthless.
If sin is the worst evil then it is right to do whatever will make it
less likely for people to be led into sin.
It is right to resort to violence and even murder to stop the production
of pornography for instance. According
to the New Testament, forbidden sex is a sin meriting the everlasting torments
of Hades (1 Corinthians 6:9,10) and it is morally as bad to fantasise about it
for that is doing it in your head (Matthew
If venial sin is a worse evil than death or being killed and murder does no
harm but just puts you somewhere else then it must be better to murder a person
rather than to let them fall into venial sin.
You could wish that you would crack up and kill them for it wouldn’t be
a sin if you were out of your mind.
If people are bent on sin and cannot be persuaded not to go ahead then
the Christian has to convince them to commit a lesser sin. This is the doctrine of St Alphonsus Liguori. (Advising a person to sin is not sinful when
there is no other way). Sexual sin cuts
the souls of those who are involved away from God. Murder kills only the murderer’s soul by
killing its friendship with God.
Physical murder is the least evil.
It follows that the Christian should get people to commit murder rather
than illicit sex. It must be wise to
kill a person you know you will sleep with.
Some might think that this should be added, “provided you are sure they
are ready for God.” But it can’t be a
sin to take a life and thrust the soul of a person into Hell when God has the
power to prevent anyone from choosing eternal torment and won’t make use of
it. To criticise men and women who
dispatch souls to Hell would be to criticise God. The status before God of the killed is really
their own concern.
We see that the church will command the killing or the use of violent
measures against anybody who leads others into sin.
Religion permits its victims to mourn the dead. If sin is worse than death then we should be
more devastated by sin than by anybody dying.
If it is infinitely bad then we should be so horrified and saddened by
it that our hearts literally break. The
less repelled by it we are the more we like to sin so it is a sin to
deliberately refuse to work on being able to have utter abhorrence for it. The doctrine that sin is so terrible tells us
that we should be all insane or dead by the time we are ten years old.
Some might say that it is a sin to have bad feelings about sin for that
makes it a pleasure, a relief, when it does not happen. It is possible to hate everything. The more you hate goodness the better as long
as you practice goodness. Sacrificial
love is what God wants. There would be
no suffering if he didn’t. Unless you
make your good actions as painful as you can you are sinning for you are
refusing to sacrifice all. You only will
goodness but you are not supposed to like it.
All who teach assertiveness today, and assertiveness is the moral
orthodoxy of modern times, state that the only time it is right to be
aggressive is in extreme circumstances say when a building is about to explode
and your secretary will not leave with you.
Jesus was certainly aggressive and cutting in the Bible so he is being
condemned by the philosophy. If sin is
the worst evil then aggressiveness is a duty more than assertiveness would ever
be. You would have to be aggressive to
stop your son having a boyfriend to prevent the awesome sin of homosexuality or
scandal and a lot more than you would be to get him to leave a building in
which a bomb was about to go off. Sin is
worse than the bomb.
CONCLUSION
The doctrine of sin implies horrendous things and is a charter for
religious terrorism and violence. Full
to the brim with hypocrisy and deceit it has to be exposed and to expose it is
to expose the harmfulness of belief in God.
Whoever invents extra sins the way the Church does – eg:
contraception used as a once-off in a marriage – is commanding evil.
WORKS CONSULTED
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS CATHOLICS ARE ASKING Tony Coffey, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 2006
FRIDAY PENANCE, John C Edwards SJ, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1985
CITY OF
EVERYMAN’S ROAD
TO HEAVEN, Leo J Trese, Geoffrey Chapman,
APOLOGETICS AND CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, Most Rev M Sheehan DD, M H Gill &
Son,
RADIO REPLIES, VOL 1, Frs
Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press,
THE SINNER’S GUIDE, Ven Louis of
CHRISTIANITY, David Albert Jones OP, Family Publications,
THE INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, John Calvin, Hodder and
BIBLE VERSION USED
The Amplified Bible
06/02/08