An Unpopular Subject

St. Paul wrote: As for a man who is factious, after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is perverted and sinful; he is self-condemned (Titus 3:10-11).

And, again from St. Paul: When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:14-16)


Pope Pius IX,  December 9th, 1854 said:

We must hold as of the faith, that out of the Apostolic Roman Church there is no salvation; that she is the only ark of safety, and whosoever is not in her perishes in the deluge; we must also, on the other hand, recognize with certainty that those who are invincible in ignorance of the true religion are not guilty for this in the eyes of the Lord. And who would presume to mark out the limits of this ignorance according to the character and diversity of peoples, countries, minds and the rest?

And...

 in Quanto conficiamur moerore 10 August, 1863:

It is known to us and to you that those who are in invincible ignorance of our most holy religion, but who observe carefully the natural law, and the precepts graven by God upon the hearts of all men, and who being disposed to obey God lead an honest and upright life, may, aided by the light of divine grace, attain to eternal life; for God who sees clearly, searches and knows the heart, the disposition, the thoughts and intentions of each, in His supreme mercy and goodness by no means permits that anyone suffer eternal punishment, who has not of his own free will fallen into sin.

The problem is, of course, that without the sacraments, and especially Baptism, Eucharist and Confession, it is almost impossible not to fall into mortal sin with one's free will. It is hard to imagine anyone in today's world maintaining innocence, without mortal sin, being saved outside the Church, which gives us opporunities for grace over and over and over.

Sadly, God will actually stop giving grace if persons decide consistently to choose mortal sin over His Truth, either as given to all in natural law, as codified in the Ten Commandments, (which is the natural law "written in stone" ), and the holiness called for in the Beatitudes. Remember, only the perfect see God, so in addition, one must submit to purgation.

I am not sure there is such a thing as invincible ignorance for adults in this day and age of information glut. 

Yes, God gives sufficient grace to all men and women, but to those who turn towards Him, He gives more and more grace.

And, contrary to some clergy and lay people, a misinformed or underdeveloped conscience in a Catholic is not invincible ignorance.

Christ is clear on what one needs for salvation as seen in these passages: Mark 16:16, Luke 13:3 John 6:54.

And from the CCC: Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it. (CCC 846)

Second repost on culpability and ignorance

Wednesday, 22 January 2014

Friday, 27 July 2012

Types of sins and culpability mark two--perfection

Readers have asked me to look at Garrigou-Lagrange more directly with his definitions of sins. I did a few this past week and here are some more. He divides sins into classifications. After all this negativity, I shall go back to the virtues, which are much more interesting and fun for me.

These categories are connected to Thursday's response as well. The Dominican writes:

The sin of ignorance is that which springs from voluntary and culpable ignorance, called vincible ignorance. The sin of frailty is that which arises from a strong passion which diminishes liberty and impels the will to give its consent. As for the sin of malice, it is committed with full liberty, quasi de industria, intentionally and often with premeditation, even without passion or ignorance. We shall recall what St. Thomas teaches about each of them.

This first demarcation reveals that frailty or weakness is culpable, which is hard for modern men and women to understand. We make psychological excuses for many things.

I am not going into all the categories of ignorance, but I want to highlight one. Here is Garrigou-Lagrange again: 

Voluntary or vincible ignorance cannot completely excuse sin, for there was negligence; it only diminishes culpability. Absolutely involuntary or invincible ignorance completely exculpates from sin; it does away with culpability. As for concomitant ignorance, it does not excuse from sin, for, even if it did not exist, one would still sin.

Invincible ignorance is called "good faith." That ignorance be truly invincible or involuntary, it is necessary that the person cannot morally free himself from it by a serious effort to know his duties. It is impossible to be invincibly ignorant of the first precepts of the natural law: Do good and avoid evil; do not do to others what you would not wish them to do to you; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; one God alone you shall adore. At least by the order of the world, the starry sky, and the whole creation, man can easily obtain a knowledge of the probability of the existence of God, supreme Ordainer and Legislator. When he has this probability, he must seek to become more enlightened and must ask for light; otherwise he is not in genuine good faith or in absolutely involuntary and invincible ignorance. As much must be said of a Protestant for whom it becomes seriously probable that Catholicism is the true religion. He must clarify his idea by study and ask God for light. Unless he does this, as St. Alphonsus says, he already sins against faith by not wishing to take the means necessary to obtain it.

If one does not desire to be free of sin, that in itself is a problem. As the author states, issues involving the human capacity of knowing natural law never excuse a person. I hope this is not confusing. In other words, as I have stated before, all people must learn what they need to know to be free of a vice and pray for help. Counseling and the sacramental life are necessities, not luxuries.

Fraility also involve choice: A sin of frailty is one which springs from a strong passion, which impels the will to give its consent. With this meaning, the Psalmist says: "Have mercy on me, a Lord, for I am weak." (17) The spiritual soul is weak when its will yields to the violence of the movements of the sensible appetites. It thus loses rectitude of practical judgment and of voluntary election or choice, by reason of fear, anger, or concupiscence. Thus, during the Passion, Peter yielded through fear and denied our Lord three times. When, by reason of a lively emotion or of a passion, we are inclined toward an object, the intellect is induced to judge that it is suitable for us, and the will to give its consent contrary to the divine law.(18)
But we must distinguish here the so-called antecedent passion, which precedes the consent of the will, and that called consequent, which follows it. Antecedent passion diminishes culpability, for it diminishes the liberty of judgment and of voluntary choice; it is particularly apparent in very impressionable people. On the contrary, consequent or voluntary passion does not lessen the gravity of sin, but augments it; or rather it is a sign that the sin is more voluntary, since the will itself arouses this inordinate movement of passion, as happens in a man who wishes to become angry the better to manifest his ill will.(19) Just as a good consequent passion, such as Christ's holy anger when He was driving the merchants from the Temple, increases the merit, so an evil consequent passion augments the demerit.

I repeat that there is always culpability, but sometimes this is lessened. Before I get to sins of malice, which we mostly understand, let us look at this warning from the text. 

It would be a gross error to think that only the sin of malice can be mortal because it alone implies the sufficient advertence, the full consent, together with the serious matter, necessary for the sin which gives death to the soul and renders it worthy of eternal death. Such an error would result from a badly formed conscience, and would contribute to increase this deformity. Let us remember that we can easily resist the beginning of the inordinate movement of passion, and that it is a duty for us to do so and also to pray for help, according to the words of St. Augustine, quoted by the Council of Trent: "God never commands the impossible, but, in commanding, He warns us to do what we are able and to ask Him for help to do that which we cannot." (22)

This is the rub...we must not cover over our own tendencies and weaknesses. As one of my readers noted remembering Barney in The Andy Griffith Show, "Nip it. Nip it in the bud!"

to be continued...

The Matter of Sin, Three

Early this year, I had two posts which referred to the "matter of sin". Few priests talk about this and today, I want to refer to one aspect of the left-over weaknesses we have from falling into sin.

First of all, once a person sins mortally, that is chooses a serious sin, even after the sacrament of confession, there is a weakness in the will, imagination and the senses.

This "matter of sin" may cause us to stray when we would not have been tempted in an area if we had never committed mortal sin at all.

Some people did not like the scene in the last Narnia movie when the White Witch tempts Edmund when the crew of the Dawn Treader is fighting the sea serpent. I found that scene most believable and connected to this conversation on the matter of sin.

If Edmund has never betrayed his brother and sisters, he would not have been tempted either in his imagination or in his senses by the White Witch. But, like anyone who falls, his person became vulnerable to suggestions.

This is why we must have control over our emotions regarding past sins. And, we must have custody over our imaginations.

Everything we see, watch, read, hear and so on goes into our imaginations.  A person who has watched porn, for example, will be tempted in the imagination in a much more severe manner than the person who has never looked at porn.

One absolutely must guard the imagination from anything sinful.

Or stupid, or silly, or merely a waster of time....our brains feed our souls and what is in the mind is in the soul.

The matter of sin affects the senses, which is why some people cannot go into certain places, like pubs or bars if they are alcoholics.

Once we have fallen, we nurse a weakness, perhaps for years and years.

God does strengthen ones spiritual life and will, but it is so much better never to have sinned in the first place.

Teach your children about the matter of sin. Innocence cannot be tempted in the same way as the weakness of will and senses, imagination and memory.

Some priest teach that the healing of memories should include forgetfulness. This is a good, as one must forget past sins and the matter of sin, so as not to be constantly tempted in that area.

to be continued...

And, another re-post on an aspect of invincible ignorance

Friday, 14 June 2013

Why we MUST evangelize three.

Posted by Supertradmum

From the CCC:

"Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation" (CCC 847)

"If...the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience" (CCC 1793).

"However, no one is presumed to be ignorant of the principles of moral law since these are written on the heart of every man" (CCC 1860).

Syllabus of errors(1864) of Pope Pius IX 

Condemned Proposition #17: "Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ. -- Encyclical ‘Quanto Conficiamur,’ Aug. 10, 1863, etc.”Pope Pius IX, Quanto Conficiamur Moerore, 1863, #7: "Here, too, our beloved sons and venerable brothers, it is again necessary to mention and censure a very grave error entrapping some Catholics who believe that it is possible to arrive at eternal salvation although living in error and alienated from the true faith and Catholic unity. Such belief is certainly opposed to Catholic teaching.

Yet another repost tied to invincible ignorance

Tuesday, 29 January 2013

On the Contracepting Mentality

Posted by Supertradmum

Thanks to Philotheaonfire...........

In discussions with Catholics in England over the past 30 years, I have discovered, to this present day, the wide acceptance among Catholics of contraception. Contraception is held to be a "sacred cow" even among some Catholics who are anti-abortion.

How this happened to become so widespread partly has to do with three things which mark Catholicism in Great Britain since the War.

First, is the acceptance of mixed marriages. The marrying of a Catholic to a non-Catholic has been more widespread here than in America for a variety of reasons. One has been the soft-pedalling by the clergy of the dangers of such marriages and also, the demographics.

Second has been the sad and horribly scandalous acceptance of the clergy of the contraceptive mentality and the rejection of Humanae Vitae. This is still obvious by the position of the clergy towards The Tablet, which is still sold in the back of Catholic Churches and is supported by those priests who allow this to happen. The Tablet immediately broke with the Church over Humanae Vitae so many years ago.

Third, and this may be unique to British Catholics, as I never heard anyone state this opinion in the States, is that birth control is fine in a marriage relationship but not fine for fornication, that is, sex outside of marriage.

This, of course, is a misunderstanding of the purpose of marriage. This error lies at the feet of the clergy. I hate to say this, but too many priests have over-emphasized the primary reason of marriage as companionship and have separated the marriage act from the call of God to pro-create. NFP classes should be offered in all dioceses, so that engaged couples can learn how to use this effective means as soon as they are married. Why the emphasis on children has slipped away is part of the contraceptive mentality and the forgetfulness of one of the most important reasons for marriage, the establishment of the nuclear family, which is not a politically correct term.

Until this mentality is addressed, Catholics have lost the culture war in Britain and people's souls as in danger.

There is no such thing as invincible ignorance in our society, so that cannot be use as an excuse. Sadly, adults in Britain, who have grown up with the contracepting mentality, must be evangelized, which is hard when one of two in the couple are not open to changing.

Only the Holy Spirit can convict, but we must be willing to pray for loving approaches to this serious problem.

To be continued....

Re-post on ignorance and culpability

Friday, 27 July 2012

Types of sins and culpability mark two--perfection

Posted by Supertradmum

Readers have asked me to look at Garrigou-Lagrange more directly with his definitions of sins. I did a few this past week and here are some more. He divides sins into classifications. After all this negativity, I shall go back to the virtues, which are much more interesting and fun for me.

These categories are connected to Thursday's response as well. The Dominican writes: The sin of ignorance is that which springs from voluntary and culpable ignorance, called vincible ignorance. The sin of frailty is that which arises from a strong passion which diminishes liberty and impels the will to give its consent. As for the sin of malice, it is committed with full liberty, quasi de industria, intentionally and often with premeditation, even without passion or ignorance. We shall recall what St. Thomas teaches about each of them.


This first demarcation reveals that frailty or weakness is culpable, which is hard for modern men and women to understand. We make psychological excuses for many things.


I am not going into all the categories of ignorance, but I want to highlight one. Here is Garrigou-Lagrange again: Voluntary or vincible ignorance cannot completely excuse sin, for there was negligence; it only diminishes culpability. Absolutely involuntary or invincible ignorance completely exculpates from sin; it does away with culpability. As for concomitant ignorance, it does not excuse from sin, for, even if it did not exist, one would still sin.
Invincible ignorance is called "good faith." That ignorance be truly invincible or involuntary, it is necessary that the person cannot morally free himself from it by a serious effort to know his duties. It is impossible to be invincibly ignorant of the first precepts of the natural law: Do good and avoid evil; do not do to others what you would not wish them to do to you; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; one God alone you shall adore. At least by the order of the world, the starry sky, and the whole creation, man can easily obtain a knowledge of the probability of the existence of God, supreme Ordainer and Legislator. When he has this probability, he must seek to become more enlightened and must ask for light; otherwise he is not in genuine good faith or in absolutely involuntary and invincible ignorance. As much must be said of a Protestant for whom it becomes seriously probable that Catholicism is the true religion. He must clarify his idea by study and ask God for light. Unless he does this, as St. Alphonsus says, he already sins against faith by not wishing to take the means necessary to obtain it.


If one does not desire to be free of sin, that in itself is a problem. As the author states, issues involving the human capacity of knowing natural law never excuse a person. I hope this is not confusing. In other words, as I have stated before, all people must learn what they need to know to be free of a vice and pray for help. Counseling and the sacramental life are necessities, not luxuries.


Fraility also involve choice: A sin of frailty is one which springs from a strong passion, which impels the will to give its consent. With this meaning, the Psalmist says: "Have mercy on me, a Lord, for I am weak." (17) The spiritual soul is weak when its will yields to the violence of the movements of the sensible appetites. It thus loses rectitude of practical judgment and of voluntary election or choice, by reason of fear, anger, or concupiscence. Thus, during the Passion, Peter yielded through fear and denied our Lord three times. When, by reason of a lively emotion or of a passion, we are inclined toward an object, the intellect is induced to judge that it is suitable for us, and the will to give its consent contrary to the divine law.(18)
But we must distinguish here the so-called antecedent passion, which precedes the consent of the will, and that called consequent, which follows it. Antecedent passion diminishes culpability, for it diminishes the liberty of judgment and of voluntary choice; it is particularly apparent in very impressionable people. On the contrary, consequent or voluntary passion does not lessen the gravity of sin, but augments it; or rather it is a sign that the sin is more voluntary, since the will itself arouses this inordinate movement of passion, as happens in a man who wishes to become angry the better to manifest his ill will.(19) Just as a good consequent passion, such as Christ's holy anger when He was driving the merchants from the Temple, increases the merit, so an evil consequent passion augments the demerit.


I repeat that there is always culpability, but sometimes this is lessened. Before I get to sins of malice, which we mostly understand, let us look at this warning from the text. It would be a gross error to think that only the sin of malice can be mortal because it alone implies the sufficient advertence, the full consent, together with the serious matter, necessary for the sin which gives death to the soul and renders it worthy of eternal death. Such an error would result from a badly formed conscience, and would contribute to increase this deformity. Let us remember that we can easily resist the beginning of the inordinate movement of passion, and that it is a duty for us to do so and also to pray for help, according to the words of St. Augustine, quoted by the Council of Trent: "God never commands the impossible, but, in commanding, He warns us to do what we are able and to ask Him for help to do that which we cannot." (22)


This is the rub...we must not cover over our own tendencies and weaknesses. As one of my readers noted remembering Barney in The Andy Griffith Show, "Nip it. Nip it in the bud!"

to be continued...

Re-post on baptism

Friday, 4 May 2012

On Baptism Again......

Posted by Supertradmum

I shall get back to Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical on love after this post. I must write about the terrible confusion in the Church regarding the sacrament of Baptism. Now, I have written about this before, but the confusion is so widespread among Catholics, that a repetition is needed. I hope other people in catechesis and RCIA help clarify the confusion. It is almost as if some Catholics no longer believe in Original Sin.

We are all born with Original Sin. Baptism takes away the sin, which has separated us from God and grace.

So, what does baptism do?

One: it makes one a child of God. We are not born as adopted children of God; only once, in our life and with His Life, which is sanctifying grace, are we made children of God.

Two: it makes us co-heirs with Christ in eternal life and in the life of God on earth, with is the life of grace. Without baptism, we do not inherit heaven, nor the life of God, the Kingdom of God within. We receive the Indwelling of the Holy Trinity in baptism, not in any other way. We are heirs of God and heirs of heaven. (These points could be divided into three).

Three: we are given the means to achieve perfection, that is, through sanctifying grace. We are given the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. We are given the gifts to grow and develop the other virtues, not natural virtues, but supernatural ones.

Four: we are given salvation, which means, eternal life, if we cooperate with the graces and virtues given.

Five: we are made pleasing to God and just in His Eyes, through the Death and Resurrection of Christ, through the waters of baptism.

Six: we are given the means to gain merit. Only souls in grace, not those in mortal sin, can gain merit.

Seven: we are united with God in an intimate union.

All these items may be found in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, in the documents of the Church regarding baptism, and in the Scriptures, particularly the Letters of Paul and the Letters of John and in other catechisms, as well as the writings of the saints.

To believe that all people have access to heaven and the above gifts, as well as the state of grace becoming children of God without baptism is to be a heretic. It is too bad, but many Catholics fall into heresy for the following reasons.

One: like myself, there are children in our families, such as nieces, nephews, etc. who are not baptised and some people cannot bear the suffering of facing the truth about their state. I, for example, have a niece who is not baptised. This is a painful situation, but as I am not her parents, I can only pray that God will inspire her to be baptised someday.

Two: many Catholics cannot face the real tragedy of abortion, which is that the souls of these little victims may not be taken up into the Beatific Vision as those who are baptised. Unbaptized babies, as Blessed John Paul II stated, are in the mercy of God. But, we cannot assume that their state is the same as that of a baptised baby. Otherwise, we are denying the efficacy of the sacrament.

Three: many Catholics simply do not believe in Original Sin, hell, or purgatory. In other words, some believe in the heresy of universal salvation, which I think is the most common heresy in the world today.

Four: relativism regarding religions demands that baptism makes no difference as all good people go to heaven--this is a common heresy as well.

Five: the misunderstanding of the baptism of desire, which only applies to those over the age of reason who cannot because of serious circumstances, such as persecution, be baptised. Another person other than one's self cannot desire baptism for a second party.

Six: some Catholics believe all children are in a state of innocence simply because they are children. This is a sentimental idea which used to be common and still lingers on in some circles.

Seven: the misunderstanding of the Nature of God makes some think that God would never punish or damn a child. Now, invincible ignorance is always a possibility, but as I wrote in an earlier posting, children can choose evil and if not baptised, the choosing of good is much harder.

Why Confusion?

I have been studying again, in the past four days, two subjects about which two people seem confused.

The first (I shall get to the second in another post) is the subject of invincible ignorance, a topic which was very important after the discovery of the natives of the New World in the 15th century. The Church had discussed such ignorance in the earliest days and the Doctors of the Church were very clear that the pagans having heard the Gospel were responsible for rejecting it.

In addition, such ignorance would have been informed by natural law, which all humans share by the fact that they are human. Now, the question has been incorrectly addressed in Catholic colleges, seminaries and universities in the last forty years.

Let me start this rehash of this subject which I have had on this blog before by stating that Aquinas, and especially the Thomist, Francisco de Vitoria, to whom I shall return in a minute, are clear on the responbilities of those who have heard the Gospel. 

The Doctors of the Church dealt with the problem of the non-salvation of the pagans over and over. The consensus was that pagans were not saved by their good works, and that it was very hard to remain free of mortal sin, even if one was in ignorance, and, therefore, most pagans who rejected Christ were not saved.

This idea, that most humans fall easily into mortal sin without the graces of baptism and the sacraments, is easily seen today. Without grace, one cannot save one's self by one's own efforts, which is the heresy of Pelagius.

To reject information is an act of the will or a reaction of the appetities, emotions involving the capitol sins of pride, sloth, and so on.

That most men and women today in America, Canada, and Europe are not in invincible ignorance must be stated clearly. Even if one did not have access to television, radio, the Internet, the culture of Europe, which was created by the Church, that is, Western Culture, constantly reminds one of the Catholic Faith.

One cannot ignore classical music, great churches, art, and so on in the West. All of these things point to God and to Christ, still.

The great philosophers and theologians agreed that even in a person was in invincible ignorance, they would most likely be damned because of Original Sin and mortal sins.

Vitoria, who was very fair to the natives of the New World and wrote extensively on how Europeans could not exploit them, still wrote this that even if a prophet came and foretold the conquest of the Indians by the Spanish with signs and miracles to back him up, this would not make them blameless, "any more than Nebuchadenazzer or Jeroboam".

The key is reason. The Faith is reasonable and therefore, all humans, who have reason, can come to the conclusion that Christianity is the way to truth and God.

Here is a summary of Vitoria on some of these points regarding the natives of the New World. Thanks to ET for this.

1. The Emperor is not the lord of the whole world.

2. Even if the Emperor were the lord of the world, that would not entitle

him to seize the provinces of the Indian aborigines and to erect new lords

and put down the former lords or to levy taxes.

3. The Pope is not civil or temporal lord of the whole world, in the proper

sense of civil lordship and power.

4. Even if the Supreme Pontiff had secular power over the world, he could

not give that power to secular princes.

5. The Pope has temporal power, but only so far as it subserves things

spiritual.

6. The Pope has no temporal power over the Indian aborigines or over other

unbelievers.

7. A refusal by these aborigines to recognize any dominion of the Pope is

no reason for making war on them and for seizing their goods.

8. Whether these aborigines were guilty of the sin of unbelief, in that

they did not believe in Christ, before they heard anything of Christianity.

9. What is required in order that ignorance may be imputed to a person as,

and be, sin, that is, vincible ignorance. And what about invincible

ignorance?

10. Whether the aborigines are bound to hearken to the first messengers of

Christianity so as to commit mortal sin in not believing Christ's Gospel

merely on its simple announcement to them.

11. If the faith were simply announced and proposed to them and they will

not straightway receive it, this is no ground for the Spaniards to make war

on them or to proceed against them under the law of war.

12. How the aborigines, if they refuse when asked and counselled to hear

peaceably preachers of religion, can not be excused from mortal sin.

13. When the aborigines would be bound to receive Christianity under penalty

of mortal sin.

14. In the author's view it is not sufficiently dear whether Christianity

has been so proposed and announced to these aborigines that they are bound

to believe it under the penalty of fresh sin.

15. Even when Christianity has been proposed to them with never so much

sufficiency of proof and they will not accept it, this does not render it

lawful to make war on them and despoil them of their possessions.

16. Christian princes can not, even on the authority of the Pope, restrain

these aborigines from sins against the law of nature or punish them

therefor.