Fourth Saturday in Lent.
CONDITIONS THAT AGGRAVATE GUILT.
As there are certain conditions that remove the gravity of guilt attaching to mortal sin, so, on the other hand, are there certain conditions that aggravate the culpability of an act against God’s will, conditions that may cause a sin, not in itself heinous, to become deadly in its consequences to the soul. These conditions shall now be taken into consideration. They are four, just as there were four conditions that lessened guilt.
The conditions are these:—
(a)An error of Conscience, which leads the person committing an act, to believe that an act is forbidden by God, which really is harmless or allowable, and he nevertheless commits the act wilfully. Believing a course to be sinful, he takes it deliberately. The course may not be in itself wrong, but in that he thinks it wrong, and wilfully elects to take it, believing that he is going against the Will of God, he sins mortally. This we can see at once, for it is a deliberate revolt of the will against what is believed to be God’s Will, and it is the setting of the will in opposition to God which is the condition that makes sin to be mortal.
(b)The evil of the end proposed.That is to say, if anyone allows himself to do an act in itself harmless, or permissible, in order to attain to an evil end, then the act, though in itself harmless and permissible, becomes exceeding sinful. The end proposed poisons the whole course of conduct pursued. In the former case a harmless act is made deadly in its consequences through antecedent ignorance, in this case through subsequent evil. In both cases there is revolt of the will against God. He who desires an evil of any kind, knowing that it is evil,i.e., that it is against the law of God, and deliberately compasses that end, makes every step he takes in the course whereby he reaches that end, however indifferent they may be in themselves, taken by themselves, to be mortally sinful to him. This is clear, because throughout he is acting with a will in opposition, and in known opposition, to the Will of God.
(c)Contempt of the law or Lawgiver.An act done by man in disregard of God’s law, with indifference to what God wills, is in itself mortally sinful. No man has any right to disregard God’s law, which is the rule the Creator has impressed on His intelligent creatures, and no man may be indifferent to God, Who has given His law as the rule of well-being for the creatures He has made. To put God out of the thoughts, and to act as if there were no God Who has expressed His Will is practical Atheism. With the lips he who so acts may indeed confess Him but in acts deny Him. Neglect and disregard of God may, indeed, be due to circumstances over which man has no control—defective teaching in childhood, for instance—but of this we are not speaking, but of such cases where a man has been taught about God and His Will, and deliberately putssuch considerations aside, and does not allow them to influence his conduct.
(d)The circumstances of the case.An act, harmless or permissible in itself, may yet be sinful, and gravely sinful, if the circumstances be such as to make it the occasion of evil; for instance, if it lead on to the formation of a bad habit; or if it be the occasion of grave scandal. Such was the case of eating meat offered to idols. In itself it was innocent, but he who ate meat so offered before weak brethren, knowing that he was causing injury to their consciences, thereby defiled his own conscience. In the former case we have an act made sinful through disregard of the Lawgiver, in this through disregard of the consequences to ourselves or to others.
Simple Maltese Cross