Why its a mistake to give the Catholic
Church support via membership or donations
Why its a mistake to give the Catholic
Church support via membership or donations
CATHOLIC ARTIFICIAL SORROW FOR SIN
THE ESSENTIALS
God for religious people is that which you can allow to be the be all and end all. But the problem is this is impossible. That is why it is never possible to prove that anybody however holy is not an idolator. In fact we prove they must be. It is idolatry to say you are connected to God as in relationship when you cannot be.
Let us talk about contrition for sin. Somebody said, "Perfect contrition was when you were sorry for your sins because you were so upset at hurting God - who is love." That is wrong. Perfect contrition is perfectly unconcerned with what is in it for yourself. You reject sin for God's sake and not at all because sin hurts you or you feel terrible at what you did to God. It is obvious that perfect contrition is a trick for it is clearly impossible. It is easy to think, "I choose goodness even if I have to be tormented by Satan for all eternity over it as long as it is the right thing to do. I choose it for God's sake." But that is self-deception. It is arrogant too, Nobody can be that good. Perfect contrition is not Biblical either. The Church invented it to avoid being accused of terrorising dying people who could not get a priest to forgive their sins. The theory is that perfect contrition absolves your sin even without a priest as long as you would confess your sins and take absolution if a priest was there. The terror is still there for it stands to reason that there can be no certainty of forgiveness without perfection contrition and knowing you really are perfectly contrite is impossible. Not only that it is a lie.
ANALYSIS
The Church says mercy is only for those who will not abuse it and will not be
given if you only want it to do further wrongs. But what if you are the kind of
person who means it at the time and five minutes later is back to square one?
That is what happens so the Church teaching on forgiveness does not really do
any good.
Contrition means repenting for the love of God and for his sake alone – this is
called perfect contrition. Imperfect contrition means repenting for the love of
God and some other reason. Attrition means repenting without any concern for God
at all but just concern for yourself or because you want rid of the feeling of
shame. If you resolve to get forgiveness for sin and not to sin again simply
because you want something from God say health or his blessing or are afraid of
eternal damnation that is attrition too.
The Church says that a sincere act of perfect contrition made by the dying
person is not as good as confession for he has to intend to confess if he is
able and since the sacrament can forgive sins even without perfect contrition it
is more powerful and trustworthy than it. The problems are that it is easy to
make an act of perfect contrition which implies that you hate sin so much that
you would do anything to make up for it and avoid it and then one hour later you
find that you are sinning again which shows that you were only deluding
yourself. Confession is the only way to be sure you are really forgiven (page
14, Confession Quizzes to a Street Preacher, Fr Carty or Question 831, Radio
Replies, Vol 1). This seems like magic but Rome is compelled to teach it for it
says imperfect contrition can only help you if you go to confession. It puts
disposition and sincerity in second place to a ritual for even if there is doubt
about the sincerity of the penitence a ritual isn’t going to make any difference
for it can’t work without penitence! You can delude yourself with imperfect
contrition and attrition as well as perfect contrition – in fact more easily -so
the confessional does not afford any greater certainty. This shows that if Jesus
gave power to forgive sins to the apostles that they could only use it when the
Holy Spirit told them that the person was in the right spiritual state to
receive absolution which would indicate that it was the apostles power alone and
could not be passed on.
The insistence on confession is occultism. It also suggests that Protestants who
do not have confession know in their hearts that they might not be forgiven at
all despite the promise of Christ which would make them to be self-deceiving
hypocrites. What kind of Church would tell a dying man, woman or child that
their salvation is not very certain when the priest won’t be able to make it in
time? The Church may not say that to them when they are lying there dying but it
says it to them in life.
If Catholics are so sorry for sin and want rid of it to please God then what are
they going to the priest for forgiveness for? When we hear that priests can
forgive sins for God we get uncomfortable for we sense the absurdity of this not
to mention the blasphemy. We sense that it is not really God forgiving us.
The Church teaches that God cannot pardon a sin unless you regret having done it
and earnestly resolve never to do it again. The moment you have perfect
contrition your sins are forgiven but you still have to go to confession to tell
your sins.
The Church imagines that references to half-hearted repentance refer to
attrition in the Bible (Hosea 6:1-4; Matthew 3:7-12; Luke 15 – see New Catholic
Encyclopaedia). But the references only say that people changed for selfish
reasons and do not mention any concern for God or the soul. Attrition would have
to relate to making peace with God for selfish reasons and there is no hint of
it or of any approval of it in the Bible.
Imperfect contrition and attrition only win God’s forgiveness for mortal sin
during priestly absolution and no other time. Venial can be gotten rid of
outside confession.
Imperfect contrition is an incomplete break with sin for contrition is repenting
sin just for God’s sake so if you repent sin for any other reason then you are
not repenting it because it is still hateful to God in so far as it is for that
other reason.
It is held that imperfect contrition diminishes the guilt of sin without
confession but confession is needed to remove it completely. It diminishes the
guilt because it is part true repentance. It seems then it can turn mortal sin
into venial. This view is wrong. The Church says this would be part forgiveness
and God doesn’t do forgiveness like that. She says you cannot be restored to
God’s friendship without confession or perfect contrition. If imperfect
contrition could turn your mortal sin into venial that would be in effect
reconciling you with God for venial sin doesn’t stop a relationship with God.
Only long experience will tell how deep your imperfect contrition or attrition
is or was. In so far as you refuse to reject mortal sin purely for the love of
God you are harbouring attraction for the sin. You are preferring a creature to
the creator. No one can have repentance that is only a partial break with mortal
sin and get absolved for it by God for that means the person is still harbouring
some attachment to mortal sin. It cannot work. To say it does is to deny that
God has any morals. It has to be a mortal sin to be partially attached to the
sin of murder.
If there is no element of love for God for his own sake in the penitence then
you would just be insulting him by asking for forgiveness for you are just
pretending that you want it. Anything without the love is not hating the sin but
the consequences. It is not repentance. To mostly love God and to have a bit of
a shine for anything else in your repentance is partly loving the sin but hating
the consequences too. It cannot persuade God to pardon you.
Imperfect contrition is not repentance at all but an insulting sham. If those
who claim to have it really have it then they can drop the motive other than the
love of God and make their love for God the only motive. It is a sin to offer
imperfection when you don’t have to. Rome is proclaiming salvation by, in and
through sin! Catholicism does not love God when it teaches that fake love is
good enough for God so the motive of love for God in seeking pardon must be
self-delusion.
The person does not want to correct the offence for God’s sake as much as he
wanted to commit the sins repented for his own sake. In other words, the badness
is X amount but the apology is less than X in depth and devotion. Such penitence
can only be useless. It says, “I repent and I do not repent”. To offer
half-repentance to God is no good for you are either repentant or you are not.
It would be a sin like it would be to offer somebody a cup of wine that is half
dirty water.
God’s gift of free will was about us being able to choose love for God or
self-love. And the abuse of that gift caused evil and suffering. If God would be
satisfied with attrition then he was only wasting his time giving us free will
and therefore to blame for all the damage it did. To pray to him is a sin.
You cannot reach God unless he offers you the power to love him and offers it
all the time. Suppose you are too weak to love God but do your best then you are
loving him for you are doing all you can. So, there is no such thing as being
unable to love God perfectly as far as the will is concerned though it might not
look as if you love him. Many will abuse this doctrine and claim that they love
God while living immoral lives. It is certain that those who are into religion
for they think it restrains evil actions are being naïve. Religion more often
that not just changes the way it looks on the outside but not the inside.
The Council of Trent said, “If the person in confession is sorry for sin for he
will burn in Hell that will do for absolution” (Session 14).
It would be blasphemy against the Holy Spirit to teach that he will accept such
selfishness as repentance and forgive. Jesus said that such blasphemy cannot be
forgiven. Jesus said that concerning the Jews who said he was using Satan to
cast out demons. Imagine how much worse it is to say that the Holy Spirit is so
immoral that he forgives those who serve Satan by offering fake repentance to
God!
The Church does not censure the belief that repenting out of the fear of
punishment or repenting out of shame is enough to get you forgiven in confession
(Denz 2071, New Catholic Encyclopaedia, Contritionism). But it is certain that
the Church believes that imperfect contrition is sufficient in confession.
Better Catholics teach, “To repent of our sins merely because through them, we
have lost our good name or our peace of mind is not contrition. God is the
person offended, and true sorrow must necessarily have reference to the one
offended” (page 319, The Student’s Christian Doctrine).
The Baptist endeavoured to rescue the people from repenting out of fear into
repenting for the love of God (Matthew 3:7-12). This suggests that attrition is
not good. The Prodigal Son rose from sorrow for sin based on how sin had ruined
him to sorrow out of love for his father (Luke 15:17-19) so all attrition is
good for is leading to perfect contrition.
Alan of Lille who died in 1202 was the first to talk about contrition and to
distinguish between it and attrition (Contrition, New Catholic Encyclopaedia).
This shows that the Catholics accepting attrition as sufficient is both contrary
to the early traditions of the Church and a man-made doctrine.
Duns Scotus who died in 1308 was the first to declare that attrition was enough
to gain forgiveness in confession (New Catholic Encyclopedia). No true Catholic
would believe in it when it is a late doctrine. Some thought that the attrite
penitent gets grace that makes him as good as contrite though not contrite. That
is absurd. Attrition is attachment to sin so how could it permit more power from
God into anybody’s life to sanctify that life even more? The more grace you get
the worse you get as long as you stay attrite. That is because you remain
attrite despite the better helps towards holiness and contrition.
St Thomas Aquinas taught that attrition cannot pardon a sin unless the person
goes to confession in which the sacrament transforms it into contrition (ibid,
Contritionism). But any Catholic knows by experience that no such miraculous
transmutation need necessarily occur.
He believed that attrition could only forgive sin if it was taken by the
penitent for contrition in good faith. It is not enough to say that attrition is
enough in confession for it is the first step to contrition for it is still not
contrition.
Nobody can say that attrition will save you when you mistake it for perfect
contrition for perfect contrition has to do with the will and motive and if you
examined yourself right you would know and have tested yourself rigorously by
doing something difficult for God and if you really love God at all you will
examine yourself until you are sure.
Roman Catholicism accepts imperfect contrition and forgives because of it but
does not urge the penitent to strive for perfect contrition for these sins later
on. To neglect that is to say, “Stuff you God, the imperfect contrition for my
sins will do you fine. You are not getting any more than that.” That is
insulting the pardon he gave you and when you insult something so precious that
delivered you from sin you are committing a new sin that is as bad as the
forgiven sins were in malice. To be ungrateful for being acquitted of murder
would be as good as saying you were glad to be guilty of the murder and that
would be as malicious as murdering. Perfect contrition would be the most perfect
break from the sins of the past and you are refusing to make that break. It is
only a waste of time absolving sins when the priest does not urge and stress
perfect contrition later if it is not possible now.
One can only be amazed at the cleverness of the Devil if one believes in him for
only he could have inspired Rome’s substitute for repentance with such a
successful though not brilliant forgery of repentance.
FAKE REPENTANCE FOR SIN
Repentance is despising sin and regretting it and promising never to sin again.
It is official Catholic teaching that priests were given the power to forgive
sins in the confessional to make getting forgiveness easier. The Council of
Trent decreed infallibly that if you express in confession how you regret your
sin and will not do it again and this is only because you fear the punishment of
Hell that is fine and you will be forgiven validly by the priest. The Church
says it is enough if you only repent your sins because you are afraid of Hell.
In other words, you reluctantly give up the sins to avoid Hell. It is the
punishment not the sin that you despise. This is called repentance or turning
away from sin! It obviously is not real repentance at all. Would a man who
stopped sleeping with his lover but who wanted to be described as being a good
loyal husband? He only pretends to be good and loyal. A system that forgives on
the basis of repentance like the kind the Church accepts is advocating
selfishness and rewarding it. Even if the whole Church “repented” that way only,
it would still claim to be a holy Church. Obviously this is absurd. What it is
is a Church that feigns repentance and puts outward observance before changing
the heart. Whoever forgives on the basis of fake repentance is really rewarding
the sin.
How could it be turning away from sin when it is really just the punishment you
don’t want? You want the sin. You still have the sin in your heart. The Church
says that God accepts those who repent only because they fear punishment from
God for their fear is the start of loving him and he wants to encourage them on
the right road. But it is not repentance so how could it be the start of loving
God? The Church may reply: “But what about the sinners who turn their lives
around and renounce sin because they have begun to love God and others?” But I
repeat the point is that it is not turning your life around but only outwardly
appearing to do so! The wish not to sin is absent. What you have is the wish to
sin but in a different way. The sin of attachment to sin is still being
maintained and adhered to.
To forgive means to abandon any will or desire to see a person suffer for the
wrong they did you. A God who forgives must also be a God who is vindictive or
who likes or exacts retribution.
A God like that who is bad enough. But what about a God who forgives some people
who do fake repentance and not others? The Catholic God forgives those who fake
provided they go to confession! This is the God who claims to punish only those
who refuse his mercy. He is more vindictive than the forgiving version of God.
A Church that forgives paedophile priests who merely stop their sin to avoid
punishment and no other reason is effectively rewarding and condoning their sin.
Such a religion cannot be considered holy.
Imperfect contrition or imperfect repentance is a mixture of both repentance
and unrepentance. It could be 51% per cent repentance and 49% not
repenting. And that shabby repentance is considered reasonable? It
is corruption to be part of a religion that teaches such rubbish especially one
that does harm!
www.tracts.ukgo.com/loraine_boettner.htm
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