Category: Sin

4 min read

Sin

Do You Take Sin Seriously?

Father Francis Baker

March 14, 2023 9:08 am March 14, 2023

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4 min read

Sin is for the most part a leap in the dark. A man knows he is doing a dangerous thing, but he does not realize the full danger. He does…

Sin is for the most part a leap in the dark. A man knows he is doing a dangerous thing, but he does not realize the full danger. He does not take in the full scope of his action, nor its complete consequences.

St. Paul speaks of “the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb 3:13). The expression describes very well the source of that disappointment and unhappiness which often overtake the transgressor when he finds himself involved in difficulties from which it is all but impossible to extricate himself, and sorrows that he never anticipated.

Do you think that young people who develop habits of sin that undermine their health know all they are bringing on themselves: the weakness of body, the feebleness of mind, the early decay, the shame, the remorse, the impotence of will, the tyranny of passion, the broken vows and resolutions, the hopelessness, the fear — perhaps the premature disease and death? No, all this was not in their thoughts at first. These are the bitter lessons that [youths have] learned in the school of sin.

When the thieving businessman yielded to the glittering temptation, and made himself rich for a while with dishonest riches, did he then see before him the deeper poverty that was to follow? Did he envision the loss of all that makes a man’s heart glow and his life happy? Did he see the lies he must tell, the subterfuges he must resort to, the horrible detection of his crime, the loss of situation, the public trial, the imprisonment?

No. Of course, these possibilities were all daily in his thoughts, for they were part of the risk he knew he was running. But so little did he bring them home to himself, and the suffering he was to endure, that when they came it seemed almost hard, as if a wholly unlooked for calamity had overtaken him.

Wherever we look we find the same thing. Men imagine sin to be a lesser evil than it really is. It is so easy to commit it, it is so soon done, the temptation so strong, that it does not seem as if such very bad consequences would come of it. So it is done, and the bitter consequences come.

God’s Estimation of Sin

Before you allow yourselves to act on this estimate of sin, so prevalent in the world, ask yourself how it accords with God’s estimate of sin. That is the true standard. God is Truth. He sees things as they are, and everything is just what He considers it to be.

What, then, is God’s estimate of sin? Look at the Cross, and you will have the answer. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with His stripes we are healed” (Is 53:5).

He suffered death because we deserved it. He was accursed because we had made ourselves liable to the curse of God. Hell had its hour of triumph over Him because we had made ourselves its children.

Here we have a revelation of the evil of sin. Since Christ died for sin, the cross of Christ is the measure of sin. “Consider the remedy,” says St. Bernard of Clairveaux, “and you will learn, my soul, the greatness of your danger. See how serious were your wounds, for which, in the plan of divine wisdom, it was necessary that the lamb Christ should be wounded. If your sins had not been unto death, and unto eternal death, never would the Son of God have died for them.”

Can anything show more than this what a mysterious evil sin is, that it is an offense against God, an assault upon His throne, an attack upon His life, an evil all but infinite? All the other expressions of the evil of sin — the cries of misery that it has wrung from its victims, the warnings that natural reason has uttered against it, the tender lamentations with which the saints have bewailed it, the penalties with which God has threatened to visit it — all pale before the announcement that God sent His Son into the world to die for it (see Jn 3:16).

Father Francis A. Baker (1820-1865) was a preacher of the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle. This excerpt comes from “The Cross, the Measure of Sin,” published in his collected sermons in 1896.

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9 min read

Sin

Concupiscence: Our Inclination To Sin

Msgr. William J. King

January 29, 2023 7:07 am January 29, 2023

9 min read

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9 min read

The mechanic at the repair shop explained to the frustrated vehicle owner that the wheels of his car were out of alignment. The mechanic asked if the driver had recently…

The mechanic at the repair shop explained to the frustrated vehicle owner that the wheels of his car were out of alignment.

The mechanic asked if the driver had recently driven through a pothole or perhaps had hit a curb. He explained that this could be sufficient to have forced the wheels out of alignment. All the driver knew was that it took a lot of work to drive straight down the highway with the car constantly pulling off center. Without constant attention and constant adjustment of the steering wheel, the car tended to drift off the road. “One big pothole can do that,” the mechanic informed the puzzled driver, “and after that, it’s almost impossible to go straight without constant correction.”

What’s true for an automobile is, in this sense, also true of the human soul.

Theologians have long attempted to explain humanity’s tendency to veer off course: one big sin (that of our first parents in the garden) and it’s almost impossible to go straight without constant correction. Keeping in mind that the New Testament word for sin is hamartia, a Greek word that literally means to miss the mark or to veer off course, we might say that after original sin it’s nearly impossible to stay on the “straight and narrow.”

Theologians call this tendency to sin “concupiscence.” The word concupiscence is defined as a strong desire, a tendency or attraction, usually arising from lust or sensual desires. It is, morally speaking, the tendency to go off course.

Concupiscence is understood as an effect of original sin that remains after baptism. The waters of baptism cleanse us of original sin itself, but concupiscence remains as a lingering effect. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “certain temporal consequences of sin remain in the baptized, such as suffering, illness, death … as well as an inclination to sin that Tradition calls concupiscence” (No. 1264, emphasis in original).

To use another analogy, medical research cautions that a severe sunburn early in life will render a person more susceptible to dangerous skin cancer throughout life. That early sunburn may heal fairly quickly, but its effects last through life, increasing vulnerability to cancer. Precautions must be taken to shield the skin from the damaging effects of the sun’s radiation, since there is a greater susceptibility to skin damage after that major sunburn.

Original Sin

Original sin — passed down through the generations of humanity — brought to our first parents the alienation from paradise, and with it all the effects of mortality: pain, illness, suffering, aging, death and decay.

Original sin caused a rupture, or break, in the harmony between body and soul that was part of God’s creation of man. In the original innocence of our first parents, there was perfect harmony: harmony with God, harmony with the surrounding world, harmony with one’s self. The decision to break away from God’s will also broke the original harmony in creation, and there has been tension ever since.

The first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis reveal the growth of tension and discord: starting with the perfect harmony of the garden, through the first sin, then the sin of brother against brother, and it ends with the tower of Babel — a point in human history where no two persons could understand each other.

In the original innocence of our human nature, there was perfect harmony between body and soul. Since death entered the world as a consequence of sin, the separation of the soul from the body at death is a consequence of original sin. We profess our belief in the resurrection of the body, at which time soul and body will be restored to the perfect harmony that existed before original sin. Concupiscence is a symptom of the disharmony between soul and body, since the body and its appetites, or desires, wants to pull us a certain way, and the soul wants to cling to the higher things of God and grace.

In heaven, the harmony between body and soul will be restored, as will the harmony with God and the world around us. Sin will be no more.

The Sacrament of Baptism washes away original sin, yet there remain the effects of original sin. One of them is an innate tendency to be vulnerable to temptation, to be inclined to sin, to be predisposed to desires that do no honor to the grace of God.

The Council of Trent (1545-1563) taught that concupiscence “comes from sin and induces to sin.” Yet, concupiscence is not itself sin. Concupiscence makes us vulnerable to sin, but susceptibility to temptation is not sin. How we act in response to the temptation determines the rightness or wrongness — the sin. With constant attention, or more accurately with the acceptance of God’s constant outpouring of grace, the human person can be unaffected by this tendency to drift off course.

A driver who is attentive to the path ahead can constantly adjust for a misalignment in the car’s front end, keeping the car moving toward the goal of the driver. Indeed, the Council of Trent noted that concupiscence “cannot harm those who do not consent but manfully resist it by the grace of Jesus Christ” (Catechism, No. 1264). It is prevenient grace that precedes our thoughts and actions, waiting for us when we are tempted by concupiscence to go off course. By availing ourselves of that grace, we are enabled by God to resist the tendency to sin and instead to stay on the morally proper course.

How Do We Respond?

The story is told of the priest who asked a man in the confessional, “My son, do you entertain evil thoughts?” The penitent quickly responded, “Oh no, Father, they entertain me!” It is concupiscence that makes our minds more vulnerable to thoughts that incline us to sin and to sinful actions, but neither concupiscence nor those thoughts are sinful in themselves. The morality is determined by what we do in response: to beg God’s grace to turn away from thoughts of sin is meritorious, but to offer no resistance and give in to immoral or disordered acts is the very definition of sin itself. Concupiscence corrupts the will to the point that we are tempted to conclude that something less than God will ultimately satisfy.

St. Thomas Aquinas taught clearly that concupiscence is a consequence of original sin. Once human beings made the decision to be unbound from the will of God, the harmony within human nature also became unbound.

Desires and appetites were no longer in harmony with the intellect or reason, and the two — desire and reason — fought against one another.

St. Paul understood this, and described it in his Letter to the Romans: “I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (7:23). As a result, St. Paul could write, “I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want” (Rom 7:19). Even Jesus observed concupiscence in action when He said, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt 26:41; see also Mk 14:38).

The prophets of the Old Testament understood this interior tension. Jeremiah asked the piercing question, “More tortuous than anything is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9). Jeremiah understood human nature and spoke often of the stubbornness of their evil hearts (see 3:17 and many other passages), “evil thoughts” (4:14, RSV), and humanity’s “stubborn and rebellious heart” (5:23, RSV).

The psalms of David offer lament for sins committed as well as penetrating insight into the lived dichotomy between weakness and grace, the lusts of the flesh and the longing for holiness. “Sin directs the heart of the wicked man; his eyes are closed to the fear of God” (Ps 36:2). In a plaintive cry for God’s mercy, the psalmist acknowledges the dueling desires within him, and acknowledges, “I have been mortally afflicted since youth” (Ps 88:16).

Staying on Course

From the earliest reflection on life lived in relationship to God — the Book of Genesis — to the present day, the tension between good and evil is well-known. Whether presented as a life or death struggle in the psalms, or a comedic conversation with an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, it is innately understood that we all experience concupiscence on a daily basis.

Have you noticed that the temptation to eat meat seems to be the strongest on a Friday in Lent?

That’s concupiscence at work, the body at war against the soul, each pulling in a different direction. Whether we entertain evil thoughts or they entertain us, that’s also concupiscence at work: the desires of the flesh are not in harmony with the desires of the soul.

While we cannot vanquish concupiscence in this life, we can open our lives to the grace of God that provides the strength to resist the weakness of our fallen nature.

Despite the choice of our first parents to “throw off the yoke of God’s will,” as St. Thomas Aquinas described it, we can today choose to take upon ourselves a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light (see Mt 11:30). The grace of God that goes before us and anticipates our weakness — prevenient grace — is ours if we but open ourselves to it when concupiscence tempts us off course.

Modern highways help drivers stay on course with painted lines and with a rumble strip when they veer out of the lane. In the moral life, prevenient grace and our free will to do what is right perform for us the same function, and if we veer off course, the rumble of conscience will gently prod us back.

Msgr. William King is a priest of the Diocese of Harrisburg.

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2 min read

Sin

Understanding the 7 Deadly Sins

Father James Shafer

January 29, 2023 6:51 am January 29, 2023

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2 min read

The Catechism of the Catholic Church also refers to these sins as “capital sins” and explains why they are the most dangerous. “Vices can be classified according to the virtues…

The Catechism of the Catholic Church also refers to these sins as “capital sins” and explains why they are the most dangerous. “Vices can be classified according to the virtues they oppose, or also be linked to capital sins which Christian experience has distinguished, following St. John Cassian and St. Gregory the Great. They are called “capital” because they engender other sins, other vices. They are pride, avarice [greed], envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth” (No. 1866).

1. Pride: an excessive love of self or the desire to be better or more important than others. “Respect for the human person proceeds by way of respect for the principle that ‘everyone should look upon his neighbor (without exception) as “another self,” above all bearing in mind his life and the means necessary for living it with dignity’” (No. 1931).

2. Lust: an intense desire, usually for sexual pleasure, but also for money, power or fame. “The God of promises always warned man against seduction by what from the beginning has seemed ‘good for food … a delight to the eyes … to be desired to make one wise’” (No. 2541).

3. Gluttony: overconsumption, usually of food or drink. “The virtue of temperance disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco or medicine” (No. 2290).

4. Greed: the desire for and love of possessions. “Sin … is a failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods” (No. 1849).

5. Sloth (or Acedia): physical laziness, also disinterest in spiritual matters or neglecting spiritual growth. “Acedia or spiritual sloth goes so far as to refuse the joy that comes from God and to be repelled by divine goodness” (No. 2094).

6. Anger or wrath: uncontrolled feelings of hatred or rage. “Anger is a desire for revenge … The Lord says, ‘Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment’” (No. 2302).

7. Envy: sadness or desire for the possessions, happiness, talents or abilities of another “Envy can lead to the worst crimes. ‘Through the devil’s envy death entered the world’” (No. 2553).

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4 min read

Sin

Can I Trust My Conscience?

Marcus C. Grodi

January 8, 2023 3:29 pm January 8, 2023

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4 min read

In the 16th century, two celebrated spiritual leaders, Martin Luther and St. Thomas More, stood on opposite sides of the religious debates of their day. Ironically, they took their stand on…

In the 16th century, two celebrated spiritual leaders, Martin Luther and St. Thomas More, stood on opposite sides of the religious debates of their day. Ironically, they took their stand on the same principle: an appeal to conscience.

Luther died outside the Catholic Church because he claimed that his conscience compelled him to oppose the Church. More died a martyr because he insisted that his conscience forbade him to oppose the Church.

Today, the cry to stand on conscience, especially with regard to socially contentious issues, is heard more and more among Catholics and others as well. Yet just as it was in the time of Luther and More, the conclusions drawn according to individual conscience are often contradictory. How is it, then, that trusting one’s conscience seems both perennially essential and dangerously unreliable?

Consider this analogy. I’m 6 feet 4 inches in height. Most people consider me tall, but in my mind’s eye I’m just average height. In fact, whenever I encounter others of my height, I think of them as taller than I am.

For most of my life, you see, my normal line of vision has tilted down as I look into the faces of family and friends. What seems, then, to be “level” or “normal” in my mind is skewed slightly downward.

My perception of height is thus not objectively accurate, but rather subjective, relative to my experience. If I had spent my life with mostly taller people or mostly shorter people, I would probably have become accustomed either way to think of myself, in my mind’s eye, as their height.

Given this situation, if I were to stand before a large mirror alongside others, I’d be surprised at what appears there. No doubt I would then look around for a reliable measuring instrument, some kind of yardstick, to determine accurately how my height compares objectively to that of the others. Only then could I correct that warped lifelong perception of myself and others.

In a similar way, the perception of right and wrong that we call our conscience can become untrustworthy. Over the years, it tends to adjust to the world around us, in ways to which we are dangerously blind. Sometimes our conscience bends to be more like those whom we admire or who admire us. Sometimes it bends away from those whom we despise or who despise us.

Either way, our conscience is skewed in ways we don’t recognize. Scripture recognizes this problem when it speaks of consciences that are “weak,””wounded,””branded,””tainted” (see 1 Cor 8:7-12; 1 Tm 4:2; Ti 1:15).

So how do we gain a trustworthy conscience, a vision of right and wrong that is accurate? Most people are unwilling to examine and correct their consciences until they become aware, through direct confrontation with another person’s conscience or some other “Aha!” experience, that “there’s something wrong with this picture!” Such an experience is like standing before the mirror.

Having recognized the problem, we must regularly examine and form our conscience by using a reliable moral “yardstick”- an objective means of measuring what is right and wrong. But practically speaking, what kind of yardstick is available?

Luther claimed that we must use Scripture alone to form conscience. But we need only observe the chaos of Christian opinions on critical moral issues to see that Luther’s sola Scriptura principle has proven perpetually untrustworthy as a means of forming conscience. Merely private scriptural interpretation is simply too subjective.

Others say that the best way to form conscience is to ask “WWJD?” or “What would Jesus do?” Yet this approach can be just as subjective and shaky as sola Scriptura. We should ask instead, “What did Jesus do?”What did He do to provide us with an objective means to measure truth and form a faithful conscience?

The answer, of course, is that He gave us as a trustworthy yardstick “the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tm 3:15). If we study and embrace the Church’s precepts, and all the authoritative moral teachings of the Church, we’ll form a conscience on which we can confidently take our stand.

Marcus C. Grodi is host of the popular EWTN program “The Journey Home” and president of the Coming Home Network International.

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2 min read

Sin

Gluttony

Father Francis Hoffman

November 5, 2022 4:08 am November 5, 2022

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2 min read

How does gluttony work? You just get bigger and bigger and bigger! Gluttony is the vice that leads us to eat and drink more than we need and more than…

How does gluttony work? You just get bigger and bigger and bigger! Gluttony is the vice that leads us to eat and drink more than we need and more than we ought. It is a very easy vice to fall into if we are not mortified and become accustomed to satisfying our cravings.

The sense of taste is just one sense that needs to be mortified. If we give our body all that it wants, it takes over and suffocates our soul, easily leading toward that downward path of sin and degradation. Instead of living as children of God, we wind up living like animals.

Pleasure is not wrong. But always in moderation. Remember what St. Paul wrote to the Romans: “Let us then throw off the works of darkness [and] put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy” (13:12-13).

Yes, you can sin — more or less deliberately — if you eat too much during the holidays. But you can also sin against charity if you do not eat your mother-in-law’s pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. Rather, pace yourself, and then express your appreciation for the hard work and care that others have spent to make life pleasant for you at Christmastime.

I think the only time gluttony becomes a mortal sin is if you eat so much you become ill, or if you wear down your health over time, or you drink so much that you cannot find your way back home. St. Thomas Aquinas points out in the Summa Theologica that “drunkenness by it’s nature is a mortal sin” (Q. 150, Article 2), but the sin admits for parvity of matter, which means if you are a little tipsy, that is not a mortal sin, but if you cannot stand up and are out of control, then that’s a mortal sin.

But pay attention here! If you are only concerned about avoiding mortal sin, you are skating on thin ice! We need to avoid even deliberate venial sin, because venial sin easily accepted inevitably leads to mortal sin. So we have to keep the battle far from the walls of the main fortress.

Rev. Francis Hoffman, J.C.D., Executive Director of Relevant Radio. Follow him on his Facebook page “Father Rocky.”

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4 min read

Sin

The Value of Conscience

Elizabeth Scalia

September 29, 2022 7:48 am September 29, 2022

4 min read

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4 min read

The memory still stings: there I was, age 7, the veteran of a splendidly moving and memorable first holy Communion and graced with an oddball love of the Sacrament of…

The memory still stings: there I was, age 7, the veteran of a splendidly moving and memorable first holy Communion and graced with an oddball love of the Sacrament of Confession in all of its velvet-curtained-sliding-screen ambiance, planning to steal a toy “ladies fan” from a candy store, simply to see if I could.

The fan was red, and I had always been — and still am — a sucker for all things red. It was airy, lacy and flamboyant, and I had the 10 cents the thing cost in my pocket.

But the toy display was on the other side of the cashier, and the devil was on my shoulder: “Take it,” he whispered. “I bet you could slip it into your pocket and no one would know.”

Petty theft, which I had never before aspired to, became suddenly a tantalizing challenge. And the fan was red. I took it. I cleverly slipped the thing into my sleeve and casually walked out the door. It was so easy. And so completely unsatisfying.

By the time I’d walked home, fanning myself all the way in a manner I was sure duplicated the graceful lines of a señorita, I had begun to feel a peculiar emptiness that was new, and throughout the day that feeling grew, until it threatened to become a black hole into which I could disappear. By eventide, I had thrown the fan away from me in disgust. It wasn’t mine; it was ill-gotten booty. I had sinned, and it was not good.

The next day was Saturday — confession day in our neighborhood, for in 1965 it was a rare Catholic who would receive Communion without first reconciling themselves to God. I frankly couldn’t wait to get the theft off my chest — and out of my heart and soul — and had barely gotten the “bless me father” off my tongue before the full story came pouring out. The priest, spending another glorious Saturday within a small, airless box and — at that hour — listening mostly to the piping sins of children, had given a grumpy acknowledgement that my sin was a biggie. “Stealing is mentioned in the Ten Commandments; it especially offends God,” he said, and I thought, “I know, I know, it’s been eating at me.”

Thank God for penance. A Rosary decade on my knees felt sufficiently arduous, and I emerged from church feeling like I’d done my piece. And yet . . . it couldn’t be that easy, could it? Where was the justice? The man at the candy store was still out his 10 cents.

Walking home, I fingered the quarter in my pocket, given me by my grandmother and designated for an orange drink I craved. My sense of justice wrestled with my thirst. I did dearly love my orange drink. But, finally, conscience won out; stepping into the candy store, I approached the counter, meaning to confess my crime, pay the dime and be done. But I couldn’t. Serving justice on a coward’s tray, I waited until the man’s attention was diverted, and quietly slid the quarter on his counter and quickly left the store.

It was not a perfectly balanced redemption; it left me cleansed, but out 15 cents. But I had not yet explored the vagaries of fairness. I was ignorant of all but the most elementary theology, and it would be many years before I could distinguish between the unsophisticated notion of “Catholic guilt” and the heavy grace of “a properly formed conscience,” but I felt better. My Catholic grounding had informed my sense of both justice and mercy. I had confessed regret to my God and made a generous, if anonymous, restitution, and the gaping mouth of emptiness so eager to swallow me had been resolutely snapped shut. The red fan was never again a pleasurable toy, but it became a favorite possession, a reminder that whenever God is pushed aside, only emptiness awaits.

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