2. MORAL
is
any one practice
or teaching
within a moral code.
3. EVIL
evil is either metaphysical, physical, or moral.
• Metaphysical evil is not evil properly so called; it is
but the negation of a greater good, or the limitation
of finite beings by other finite beings.
• Physical evil deprives the subject affected by it of
some natural good, and is adverse to the well-being
of the subject, as pain and suffering.
• Moral evil is found only in intelligent beings; it
deprives them of some moral good.
4. EVIL
is defined by
St. Thomas (De malo, 2:2)
as a privation of form or order or due measure
Evil implies a deficiency in perfection,
hence it cannot exist in God who is essentially
and by nature good
5. WHAT IS MORAL EVIL?
Moral evil
is the result of any morally negative event caused
by the intentional action or inaction of an
agent, such as a person. An example of a moral
evil might be murder, or any other evil event for
which someone can be held responsible or
culpable.
6. NATURE OF SIN
We are created to love God, to do God’s will. If we love ourselves more
than God, if we do our own will instead of God’s will, we commit sin.
7. Nature of sin 1. Sin, Guilt, Redemption and
Forgiveness of Sin
2. Sin is defined
3. Sin is possible
4. In the light of reason sin is
hateful
5. In the light of faith sin is
hateful and the greatest of all
evils
8. SIN AND GUILT, REDEMPTION AND
FORGIVENESS OF SIN
• Matthew 9:13 – It was Christ’s mission to call sinners to repentance
• Luke 18:9 – Whoever humbles himself before God and acknowledges
his sins receives forgiveness, whereas pride and hypocrisy make
forgiveness impossible
• Mark 2:1-12 – Several times we see Him forgiving people’s sins by a
miracle
• Mark 10:45 – He redeemed mankind from sin by His death: “The son of
Man is come to give His life for the redemption of many”
• John 1:29 – He is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world
9. SIN IS DEFINED
BY ST. AUGUSTINE
• Factum vel dictum vel concupitum aliquid contra legem
aeternam
“Any thought, word or deed against the eternal law of
God.”
• Sin is the turning away from God, our true end
10. SIN IS POSSIBLE
because we possess free will
which we can abuse and turn against the purpose
for which God gave it to us.
11. IN THE LIGHT OF REASON
SIN IS HATEFUL
Because:
a. It humiliates and degrades our nature;
b. It is often an injury to our fellow-men, always an
injury to ourselves; and
c. In itself and its effects it is a disturbance of the
moral order of which God is the true source.
12. IN THE LIGHT OF FAITH SIN IS HATEFUL
AND THE GREATEST OF ALL EVILS
Because in its innermost nature, it is:
a. A rebellion against God’s most holy will;
b. A contemptuous defiance of the Almighty Creator;
c. A base act of ingratitude towards God;
d. An insult to the thrice holy God;
e. A mockery of Christ;
f. An assault to our own soul;
g. A surrender of true interior liberty and peace
14. THE WORD SIN IS USED
FOR THREE DIFFERENT THINGS
ORIGINAL SIN
MORTAL SIN
VENIAL SIN
15. ORIGINAL SIN
• also called ancestral sin, is, according to a
Christian theological doctrine, humanity's
state of sin resulting from the fall of man.
• A state of complete separation from God
inherited from our first parents.
16. MORTAL SIN
• Mortal sin is called mortal because it is the
"spiritual" death of the soul.
• Complete separation from God brought
about by an act of our own free will.
18. WE MUST REMEMBER:
• If we die without repenting
we will lose Him for eternity.
• However, by turning our hearts back to Him
and receiving the Sacrament of Penance,
we are restored to His friendship.
• Catholics are not allowed to receive
Communion if they have NOT confessed
MORTAL sins.
19. VENIAL SIN
• Venial sins are slight sins. They do not break our
friendship with God, although they injure it. They
involve disobedience of the law of God in slight
(venial) matters.
• Not a complete separation from God, yet a willful
deviation from the right path and weakening of
the life of grace.
20. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN
MORTAL AND VENIAL SIN
Mortal sins = sufficient acts to destroy our
relationship with God
Venial sins = weakens our relationship
with God
21. WHAT MAKES A REAL MORTAL SIN?
CONDITIONS TO CONSIDER SIN AS MORTAL:
1. it must be a grave matter;
2. we know we are sinning; and
3. we freely choose to sin.
The absence of one will make a sin NOT
MORTAL,
or not a sin at all.
22. MORTAL SINS DIFFER MUCH IN GRAVITY
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) defines these sins as grave matter:
(This is not necessarily all of the possible grave matters.)
• Abortion
• Adulation of another's grave faults if it makes one an accomplice in another's vices
or grave sins, but it is not grave when it only seeks to be agreeable, to avoid evil, to
meet a need, or to obtain legitimate advantages.
• Adultery
• Blasphemy
• Defrauding a worker of his wages
• Deliberate failure to go to mass on Sunday unless excused for a serious reason or
dispensed by one's own pastor
• Divination, magic, and sorcery
23. • Divorce (If civil divorce, which cannot do anything to the spiritual marriage in the
eyes of God, remains the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the
protection of inheritance, or the care of the children it is not a sin.) [21]
• Drug Abuse
• Endangering their own and others' safety by drunkenness or a love of speed on the
road, at sea or in the air
• Envy (if to the level of wishing grave harm to another)
• Euthanasia
• Extreme Anger (at the level of truly desiring to seriously hurt or kill someone)
• Fornication
• Gluttony
• Hatred of a neighbor/to deliberately desire him or her great harm
• Homosexual acts
• Incest
24. • Lying (gravity measured by various conditions in catechism)
• Masturbation
• Murder
• Perjury and False Oaths
• Pornography
• Prostitution
• Rape
• Rich nation's refusal to aid those which are unable to ensure the means of their
development by themselves
• Sacrilege
• Scandal (deliberately causing someone to sin gravely)
• Suicide
• Terrorism that threatens, wounds and kills indiscriminately
• Unfair wagers and cheating at games unless the damage is unusually light
25. Venial sins are usually divided into
deliberate and indeliberate.
27. “ I delight in the law of God after the inward
man, but I behold another law in my
members fighting against the law of my
mind, and making me captive to the law of
sin”
-St. Paul
(Rom. 7:22)
28. WHAT IS TEMPTATION?
It is the incitement to choose some personal
satisfaction in place of the will of God.
Thomas à Kempis: “So long as we live inthis
world, we cannot be without tribulation and
temptation”
Job: “The life of man upon earth is a life of
temptation. No man is so perfect and holy but he
hath sometimes temptation”
29. 3 STEPS TO DISTINGUISH TEMPTATION
a. Occasion of temptation:
• Either some external object that fall under our senses; or
• Some stimulus, feeling, or emotion within us.
Conflict arises in our soul between passion and duty.
b. Temptation itself:
“Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by
God. For God is not a tempter of evils, and He tempts no man. But every
man is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and
allured” (James 1:13)
c. Outcome – Temptation comes to an end when our will decides either
for or against our duty.
30. TEMPTATION IS NOT SIN
• It is a conflict
• It must be remembered that: “ where the
will withholds consent there is no sin”
31. TEMPTATIONS ARE USEFUL
• God would not permit them unless useful in
many ways.
• The Holy Ghost promises the victor’s crown to
all who have stood the test of temptation:
“Blessed is the man that endureth
temptation, for when he hath been proved, he
shall receive the crown of life, which God hath
promised to them that love Him.”
32. • Temptation steels and fortifies the will
• Temptation makes us aware of our
helplessness and learn to cast ourselves
with humility and childlike trust into the
arms of God.
• Where there is conflict, there is
courage, vigilance, fidelity, wisdom, pruden
ce, firmness, ardor and endurance.
33. PREPARE TO MEET TEMPTATION
a.Prayer: all-important means for gaining the
victory in temptations
b.In times of peace we must prepare for war;
training our will by deliberate acts of self-
denial and self-conquest.
c. Turn away from objects or imaginations
that give rise to temptation.
34. d. Resist temptation from the very beginning
“ The enemy is more easily to overcome, if
he be not suffered to enter the door of our
hearts, but be resisted at the very gate of his first
knocking” (Imitation of Christ, 1, 13:5)
Resist beginnings; al too late the cure,
when ills have gathered strength through
long delay.
35. e. Real personal love of Christ is the best armor
against temptation.
“Many waters cannot quench charity, neither
can the floods drown it” (Cant. 8:7)
St. Agatha: “My mind is settles and grounded in
Christ. Your words are winds, your promises are
rains, your terrors are floods. With that violence so
ever that may beat against my house, it can never
fail, for it is founded upon solid rock.”
36. WE CANNOT AVOID TEMPTATION
• BUT we are strictly bound to avoid the
proximate occasions of sin, whenever it is
possible.
38. BEING WISDOM ITSELF, GOD MUST HAVE
PROVIDED A PERFECT SELECTION FOR HIS LAW
• To suppose would imply that He could be
indifferent to its being observed. His
justice, too, demands such a sanction.
“For it would be clearly a negation of justice for
Him to show Himself equally kind to those who
do His will and to those who maliciously set it
aside.”
39. THE ETERNAL GOD HAS PROVIDED AN ETERNAL
SANCTION FOR THE MORAL LAW
• If we deliberately violate that law in an important
matter, we separate ourselves completely from God --- we
say to His face:
Non serviam – “I will not serve thee.”
• If we die in mortal sin, our separation from God becomes
eternal.
We have forfeited our right to the kingdom of light and
joy, and our lot is cast with those who dwell in the realm of
darkness and eternal pain.
40. • Over the gate of hell, these dreadful words are
written:
Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass eternal pain.
Through me among the people lost for aye.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.
-- Dante, Inferno
41. LOVE AND FEAR
• LOVE OF GOD – noblest motive which ought to
inspire us in the battle of sin.
• FEAR OF GOD, of judgment and Hell – was
needed to ensure their perseverance in God as
declared by many saints. They were doing what
Christ bade them to do:
“Fear Him that can destroy both soul and body
into Hell” (Matt. 10:28)
42. IF SIN IS SUCH A DREADFUL EVIL, THE
GREATEST OF ALL EVILS, WHY DID GOD PERMIT
IT? WHY DOES HE NOT HINDER IT?
• Mysterium inquitatis – the mystery of inquinity
(2 Thess. 2:7)
Divine Wisdom
has good grounds
for not hindering the entrance of sin
into this world
