[Mrs. Don-o]

I am a member of our parish RCIA team, and the program is really quite good, but I have noticed this is creeping in even there: the idea that people are "off the hook" if there was some element of ignorance or deception or coercion which mitigates formal guilt.

I am reminding myself to give much more emphasis to

• the duty to have a rightly-formed conscience, which means that for adults, ignorance is culpable much more frequently that we may think;
• the objective harmfulness of sin: even if you didn't know it was wrong, or that it was that wrong, sin objectively has painful, harmful consequences which affect ourselves and others, every single time
• if you fail to resist the things that impair your judgment, whether it be drink or drugs, or fear or desire or any strong emotion--- that's on you, buddy.

  I

[Bayard]

I agree completely.

Some people also don’t realize that telling someone they have not sinned, when clearly they are sinning, makes them also guilty for the subsequent sins that person commits!

This is why scandal is really bad.