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Charlie Traffas
Charlie Traffas has been involved in marketing, media, publishing and insurance for more than 40 years. In addition to being a fully-licensed life, health, property and casualty agent, he is also President and Owner of Chart Marketing, Inc. (CMI). CMI operates and markets several different products and services that help B2B and B2C businesses throughout the country create customers...profitably. You may contact Charlie by phone at (316) 721-9200, by e-mail at ctraffas@chartmarketing.com, or you may visit at www.chartmarketing.com.
Religion
2011-01-01 10:18:00
How is accountability for a sin determined?
Answer: Every sin, big or little, is an offense to God. Since it is God who is offended, it is up to Him to determine whether the offense is grievous or slight. Whether or not something is a sin does not depend on my opinion or my pleasure. Sins are evaluated according to their gravity. The distinction between mortal (serious) sin and venial (not grave) sin is taught in the Bible and by the Church, following the instructions of Jesus, particularly in his Sermon on the Mount. Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his true happiness, by preferring an inferior good to God. Venial sin allows charity to remain in the soul, although it offends and injures the soul. For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must be present together: the object must be serious matter, which is committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent. Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man (Mark 10:19): “Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.” The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger. Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s law. It also implies consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin. Unintended ignorance and misinformation can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense. But no one is completely ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are in the conscience of every person. The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest. Venial sin does not set us in direct opposition to the will and friendship of God. However, deliberate and repeated venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin. Repeated mortal sins gradually harden one’s heart. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal damnation. The ultimate judge in the matter of sin is God. Each human person has been endowed by God with a conscience. The word “conscience” means: with knowledge. Every person has a moral sense about good and evil, whether something is nice or naughty. Every person is endowed also with a free will, i.e. the ability to choose whether they will do, or refrain from doing, what they know deep down in their conscience is good or is evil. The more frequently they choose to do good, the easier it becomes; and thus good habits are formed. And the more often a person chooses to do what they think is evil, the easier it becomes to repeat evil actions, like a second nature. Pre-marital sex is the sin of fornication, i.e. sex between persons who are not married to anyone. Intercourse with a married person, who is not one’s spouse, is the sin of adultery. According to the Bible, both fornication and adultery are serious sins against God’s law, as well as an abuse of what is proper in marriage. Adultery is also a sin of injustice against the married sexual partner’s spouse. Nowadays many teenagers are ignorant or misinformed about the morality of sexual activity. The responsibility for such ignorance is shared by their parents and teachers and clergy, who will have to answer to God for their neglect in teaching correctly the young persons, entrusted to their charge. Each person will be held accountable for his or her own sins, but also for the sins they caused other persons to commit. Each person has a duty to learn and be informed about good and evil. Only when a person has tried to learn and then been misinformed, so that their conscience does not accuse them, can he/she be held not accountable for particular sins. Objectively, the goodness or the sinfulness of any human action is determined by the extent that it corresponds to God’s law or is opposed to God’s law. Subjectively, the sinfulness of a human action can be diminished or increased through genuine ignorance or being mis-informed about God’s law. For example, someone with a delicate conscience might consider drinking alcoholic beverages to be sinful. In itself, such drinking is not sinful but good, as contributing to health of the body or to relaxation or joy. It becomes sinful only when done to excess. Another example: Abortion is a grievous sin, the sin of killing innocent persons not yet born. It is forbidden by God’s law in the Commandments. Many people are really ignorant of the Commandments and, since the Supreme Court decided to make abortion legal, some persons think that abortion must also be good or morally indifferent. Instead of considering abortion as murder of innocent babies, they view it as removal of an inconvenience, unwanted tissue, a wart. This is misinformation and ignorance, which can diminish the gravity of the sin of murder by abortion. However, the five Justices, who made abortion legal, knew that they were acting against God’s law and they must answer to God for all the murders caused by their wrong decision. On the other hand, the ignorant or misinformed mother, who undergoes an abortion, might not be guilty of sin, in following her conscience, which has been misinformed by that legal decision.
 
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