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Saturday, March 17, 2007

Guide to Confession and Examination of Conscience

The CC blog has gotten a few hits from Google searches looking for information on the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

I've added this Guide to Confession and Examination of Conscience to the Conversion Resources section in the sidebar.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Chris. Very helpful--and small enough to print!

Moral question while you're at it: would addiction/habit to something dull its gravity, as this can overcome the force of the will?

Chris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chris said...

*above comment deleted for fix an error*

Mark,

I had an idea of how to answer your question but wasn't really sure so I turned to the good people at the Defenders of the Catholic Faith Forum for help. Here is what came of that:

Addiction/habit does not reduce the gravity of the act in a strict understanding of the word as it relates to how wrong something is.

However, addiction/habit could mitigate the willingness of the sinner. This could have such an effect on the culpability of an act to reduce an otherwise mortal sin to a venial one.

However, the question also raises the issue of the circumstances under which the addiction/habit was formed. Was the addiction/habit formed while one was unaware of the sinfulness of the act or was it formed with the full knowledge that the act was sinful?

Also, upon realizing the sinful nature of an act one can not use the addiction/habit as an excuse to continue in the action. If one makes a good faith effort to avoid the action yet continues to commit the act from time to time out of habit/addiction it is quite possible that it could be a venial sin rather than a mortal one.

In any case it would probably be best to bring the matter into the confessional and talk to a priest about it. Hopefully the priest will be able to help guide you in eventually overcoming the habit/addiction altogether.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Chris. I was meaning the willingness as opposed to the objective wrongness of the act itself. I really appreciate this.

It's something I want to take to Confession anyway. Even though the willingness may change the 'grade' of sin from mortal to venial, I like to forget about that distinction at times, and just take everything. After all, if it's on my mind, then it's impeding my relationship with God.

Cheers. :)

Anonymous said...

Oh, and changed your profile pic? The old one was very smart, but you look more relaxed in the new one which is good too.

Chris said...

I thought you were talking about willingness but when I used the word gravity on the message board I caused a semantic debate between a couple of seminarians (one may be a priest, i'm not sure).

Yes, I changed my profile pick to a newer one.

Anonymous said...

I caused a semantic debate between a couple of seminarians (one may be a priest, i'm not sure).

Nice to see I'm still causing trouble!