THE CATHOLIC CASE FOR VENIAL SIN FAILS

The Catholic Church classifies sin as that which leads to eternal Hell at death and that which does not.  The former is called mortal partly because it kills your right to enjoy eternal life with God.  The latter is referred to as venial sin.

Critics say that something can seem innocent or tolerably bad.  It can seem innocuous in its early stages.  It can seem near enough harmless.  Yet in the end it will miss its target by thousands of miles.  Look what happens if your nuclear missile has a slightly wrong trajectory.

The Church asserts there is always some trace of sin in us. When holiness is hard and demanding it is obvious that we cannot avoid Hell, the place of eternal and permanent torment, unless we refrain from all sin, hardly anybody if anybody, will make it to Heaven for one sin defiles all you do and is at the back of your good works making them sinful.  In other words, holding an attachment to some evil and then doing a good work sullies the good work. And life is a Hell. At most if any, only one in a million would be worthy to get the sacraments. Baptism would only be for those who had proven themselves to be capable of unusual holiness for it is a pledge of obedience. The Church is forbidden to ever knowingly ordain a mortal sinner. Priests would be so scarce that even those who would be able for the high degree of perfection would be barred from Heaven because they did not receive their sacraments.

The Church says that the Bible speaks of the foundation and basic beliefs of the Church and that it is only natural that it teaches that there is sin that does not mean turning your back on God, which is venial sin and that there is sin that utterly rejects him, mortal sin. This is a lie. The Bible makes no such distinction.

The Law of Moses says that not all sin deserves death seemingly implying that not all sin is mortal. But God could command that sin that does the most damage should bring execution on the guilty parties even though all sin deserves death. You can’t kill everybody. And death for a sin does not infer that the sin deserves exclusion from God for all eternity. God decreeing execution for some and not others would not mean that not all sin is mortal when his ways seem foolish to us.

Jeremiah taught that the Jews were worse than their forefathers (7:26). Jesus told Pilate that Judas committed the bigger sin (John 19:11). Pilate had no right to know this and he did not believe in Jesus. A Jesus who did this would not be a reliable guide about morality though he claimed to be sinless. Anyway, all sin could be equally evil and some sins could still be more harmful than others. This has nothing to do with a sin being venial or mortal. Romanism says that all mortal sins are not equally bad which is strange for it makes a mortal sin of harmless sexy thoughts like it does murder.

In Matthew 12:36, Jesus said that every idle thing that a person says, that person will have to account for it on the judgment day. Catholics say that they would not have to explain themselves if they were in mortal sin for they would be already sentenced to Hell. So Catholics conclude that their sin is venial. And the Church teaches that many idle things that might be said are mortal sins so it doesn’t believe its own interpretation.
 
If the people meant were only venial sinners they would have paid for their idle words in Purgatory and have no need to talk about them as if they were on trial. God can alter the speed of time so he can make a person who has a hundred years to pay go though it in a minute so that he can be in time to judge the world a few seconds later. But it is only an assumption that only venial sinners will or won’t be questioned for God might want them to be judged to show his mercy. Jesus is on about sinners so he could be on about mortal sinners only. The verse does not even look like it lends support Catholicism’s delusions about mortal and venial sin.

Some think that when Jesus said that to insult the Spirit is an eternal sin and that it is not to insult Jesus (Matthew 12:32) that mortal and venial sin must exist. That would mean that Catholicism is wrong that sins like murder and apostasy and desecrating Holy Communion are mortal sins. It would mean that all sin is venial barring blasphemy against the Spirit.
 
All sin could be mortal and one mortal sin could express a more stubborn rejection of God than another and thus prevent pardon. Jesus is not talking about degrees of sin but about what can be forgiven. God could refuse to pardon a sin for some inscrutable purpose even though there are others ones as bad that he pardons. Christians say it is a mortal sin to insult Jesus so he certainly did not mean it was a venial sin to do it.

It seems that giving the poor a lower place at a party than the rich would be a venial sin and is one in Roman doctrine yet James 2 says it is hell deserving.

In John 3, Jesus says that everybody who will not come to him and use him as the light that shows the way to God is too attached to sin to do so and so they avoid the light and hate it because their deeds are evil. He says everybody and there is no hint of the existence of venial sin or of acceptance of any religious system that did believe in it in John’s writings so he is saying that all sin is mortal.

The Church says that Hebrews 6 teaches that losing the faith is a mortal sin seeming to imply that there is venial sin. Protestants say that Hebrews warns of severe punishments for those who no longer hear God speak for they have closed their hearts to him. It does not say that the punishments include exclusion from eternal salvation.
 
If Hebrews does say such will be excluded from salvation then consider this. The Bible says Jesus paid for our sins so it could be that God will impute his work to us so that our mortal sins excepting one – stubborn refusal to believe - do not cut us off from him. Disbelief could be a more final and damaging sin than the others. Disbelief is only unforgiveable because belief is necessary for salvation. It is possible that you can think you have become a true believer and be wrong. Then if you abandon the faith, it shows that you are predestined to everlasting torment. Claiming to be a believer and then apostatising could mean your damnation is guaranteed. Christians who become Catholics are predestined by God to eternal damnation. This is how Paul could write that once you are saved you are always saved but that if a believer commits sins such as homosexuality or adultery or witchcraft he or she will be damned forever. Their behaviour is a sign that they were predestined to everlasting damnation. Holiness in the believer is not required for salvation but is a sign of being chosen for salvation. It is a sign of predestination to eternal happiness with God.

The psalmist in the psalm De Profoundis wrote that if God should mark our guilt then nobody would survive. This means that all have committed sins that deserve death. The only reason some sins are not granted the death penalty is because God will not give everybody exactly what they deserve for he would have nobody.

In James 3:2, we read that we all do wrong in many things daily. Since James preached against sin in this letter and included himself in it, it is assumed that he was saying that he was in a right relationship with God despite his sins. It is assumed that he would not condemn sin if he were separated from God by sin. It is assumed that the sins he means are venial. But he could preach against mortal sin when he said we commit mortal all the time. There would be no hypocrisy in that when he said we all do it and are too weak not to. It is not hypocrisy especially when you want to stop.
 
James could have meant that all sin is mortal and we all commit it every day but Jesus took care of it so that we won’t pay the price for it and will still be considered right with God. In other words, Jesus has done it all for us.

Protestants must hold that God won’t let Roman Catholics into Heaven just because they mistook their mortal sins for venial. They are sins and must be given their full punishment, everlasting agony. You don’t get off with murder just because you said that you thought it was not a serious crime. You knew it could be and you still did it so you did mean to commit a serious crime.

We see that the case for venial sin fails if you look at the Bible.   Also, not all adultery is necessarily a grave sin and yet it is slammed as grave by the Church.  A wife married to a brute is right to adulterously get a good relationship with a good man.