Posted on 03/10/2008 10:21:49 AM PDT by Froufrou
The list came as the Pope deplored the “decreasing sense of sin” in today’s “secularized world” and the falling numbers of Roman Catholics going to confession.
The Catholic Church divides sins into venial, or less serious, sins and mortal sins, which threaten the soul with eternal damnation unless absolved before death through confession and penitence.
It holds mortal sins to be “grave violations of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes,” including murder, contraception, abortion, perjury, adultery and lust.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into Hell.”
Although there is no definitive list of mortal sins, many believers accept the broad seven deadly sins or capital vices laid down in the 6th century by Pope Gregory the Great and popularized in the Middle Ages by Dante in "The Inferno": lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride.
Christians are exhorted instead to adhere to the seven holy virtues: chastity, abstinence, temperance, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.
Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confessions and plenary indulgences, said after a week-long Lenten seminar for priests that surveys showed 60 percent of Catholics in Italy no longer went to confession.
He said that priests must take account of “new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalization.” Whereas sin in the past was thought of as being an individual matter, it now has “social resonance.”
“You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbor’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I think the way we answer that question says alot about what we think of marriage. Is it indeed a covenant of love, or is it just an arrangement for sex?
Sex is one of the ways in which a husband and wife express their covenant of love. One of the most important ways, in fact. Nothing in your hypothetical changes that.
Interesting that you jumped right to divorce and infidelity. Didn't even occur to me. Even if a couple cannot express themselves in conventional ways due to illness or injury doesn't mean they can't get creative.
Asking a perfectly healthy married couple not to have sex, however, is cruel at best. Why place an otherwise strong relationship under that level of stress needlessly?
You got a direct line to God?
Just somebody that needed a lot of forgivin’!
:-)
You’re welcome...glad you see the light...
As far as I know, any and all contact is moral and licit, provided that the sexual act itself is not "closed to the possibility of life". Because that's what it's for.
A cruder way of stating it is this: whatever you do, just make sure you are at the line of scrimmage when the ball is snapped.
I think it is probably going to go back to Leviticus in the OT. To find it, you might want to search “issue” or “ground”. I seem to recall there is something about your “issue on the ground” or something similar. I think that may have had more to do with abusing oneself as anything. I don’t recall ever seeing anything pertaining to women and contraception. I know I have been absolutely NO help. :)
You might want to double check your scripture. Sex within the confines of marriage is a gift from God.
You seem to have confused humanity for God. Which seems to be the crux of the entire problem - humanity believing it is equal to God.
Here's a hint: Since God created the world, He can do whatever He wants to it.
I don't believe ANY man on earth, regardless of what costume he wears or how he genuflects, can absolve anybody’s sins. The only One Who can do that has nail prints in His hands and feet, and has entered through the heavenly Vail, and offered His own Blood for our Redemption.
Lets see, what else. No braces. No clothes. No jewelry. No haircuts. The list is almost endless.
I think your point can also apply to the Church's opposition to genetic engineering/cloning.
I can understand being opposed to certain uses of genetic engineering, but I don't get the categorical opposition to the concept as a whole.
Presumably, it is just fine for science to intervene to get rid of disease or defect after a person is born. Something as "unnatural" as using pharmaceuticals to attack cancer or lasers to improve vision is morally acceptable.
But using technology to change the genetic structure of a zygote is alleged to be gravely immoral. Even if the procedure did not result in destroying any life, and even if the modification was made to prevent a serious handicap, I've been told by some Catholics that it would be wrong to use genetic engineering in that scenario.
I don't see why it's morally acceptable to let a disorder fully manifest itself in a person's body and then attack it with a scalpel, but it's NOT morally acceptable to prevent the disorder in the first place using a different set of instruments.
Abortion and contraception are already considered mortal sins.
The headline is misleading. Any mortal sin is deadly. There are seven CAPITAL sins, from which all other mortal sins derive. Abortion is wrath, contraception falls under lust.
Might a person make the same argument about antibiotics? I realize that this may be apples and oranges here, but I can certainly see where the argument could be made.
I believe as do you.
I'm not sure we can make that argument Biblically. Because God asked perfectly healthy married couples to abstain for days in Leviticus 15 and 18. Of course, we are in a new dispensation now, but the fact remains that it isn't *cruel* to ask for abstinence. If anything, St. Paul grants marriage almost as a concession.
Sex is one of the ways in which a husband and wife express their covenant of love. One of the most important ways, in fact.
Right!!! So let me ask this. How does birth control further that end? How does birth control express that love?
Always has been and for those of you who skipped religious history class you might want to learn what the protestants views/teachings on the subject were prior to the 1930 Lambeth conference.
Because prevention of the disorder in the first place, according to the scientific community, is much easier accomplished through abortion. There have been more than enough instances of children fated to be born with Down's Syndrome who come out perfectly normal. How many are aborted withouth actually carrying the defect? How many embryoes will be needlessly manipulated in fear of a disease that can be easily misdiagnosed? At the end of the day, genetic manipulation is a ranking of human worth from worthless (ill) to priceless (healthy).
Genesis 3:21-- "And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife, garments of skins, and clothed them"
We didn't clothe ourselves.
Heavens...what gave you the impression that I was denying THAT? Of course it is a gift from God! And normally, when you get a gift, you don't misuse it right in front of the person that gave it to you.
"Hey, Bob, thanks so much for the flat screen TV! I'm gonna screw it to some 2x4s and it'll make an excellent workbench!"
Part of the thing about a gift is that you have to use it the way is was intended to be used. I don't think deliberately frustrating your own fertility is exactly in keeping with the spirit of the gift, know what I mean?
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