Wednesday, January 25, 2017

NCRegister: Taking Care of My Little Sin

Living in sin, with sin, by sin, for sin, every hour, every day, year in, and year out...Always the same, like an idiot child carefully nursed, guarded from the world. ‘Poor Julia,’ they say, ‘she can’t go out. She’s got to take care of her little sin. A pity it ever lived. (Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, Book II, Chapter 3)

I was recently asked by a secular publication about my thoughts on Pope Francis extending the faculty to absolve the sin of abortion indefinitely to all priests (who have the faculties to hear confessions). What struck me as I read his Apostolic Letter from the end of the Year of Mercy was how the women he presented from Scripture were all living sinful lives, but also how Christ extended mercy to all of these women. The women caught in adultery has always been a penetrating example for me of his great mercy and my inability to judge others, for how can I claim to be without sin and cast the first stone? Yet, he who is without sin will not cast one at the sorrowful women.

Read the rest at the National Catholic Register...

2 comments:

  1. I know this post is a little old but without revealing the sin, can I ask how you didn't know it was a mortal sin? That is a fear of mine, that I would trivialize a mortal sin.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Rebecca, Good question! This is from the Baltimore Catechism:

      "To make a sin mortal three things are necessary:
      first, the thought, desire, word, action or omission must be seriously wrong or considered seriously wrong;
      second, the sinner must know it is seriously wrong;
      third, the sinner must fully consent to it."

      In my case, the sin became more serious the freer I was from the habit of it and the more knowledge I had of the seriousness of it. When one is in habitual sin, it is hard to fully consent to it since the habit is fully established. If you are unsure about a sin, talk to a trusted priest in the sacrament of confession. He will be able to help you know your sins more clearly.

      God Bless,
      Susanna

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