Sect. 156Mortal Sin and Venial SinMortal Sin and Venial Sin

I. Some sins cause the loss of eternal life, and so entail eternal punishment; they are immediately followed by the loss of grace and by positive disgrace, and thus cause the spiritual death of the soul. Others do not entail these consequences; they can coexist with grace and with the supernatural life of holiness and justice, of which grace is the principle. The former are called mortal, because they deprive the soul of supernatural life; the latter are called venial, because of their comparatively trivial character, and because they are more easily pardoned.

The existence of mortal sins is manifest from the dogma of eternal punishment. The existence of venial sins was defined in the Second Council of Milevis, can. 8, 9, and again in the Council of Trent (Sess. vi., chap. 11, and can. 23, 25). These definitions are founded upon 1 John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves;” and James 3:2, “In many things we all offend,” which texts are certainly to be applied to the just. The text Prov. 24:16 (“A just man shall fall seven times, and shall rise again”), so often quoted in support of this doctrine, does not refer to falls into sin, but into temporal misfortunes, as St. Augustine has noted. See the classical text 1 Cor. 3:8, sqq., with the commentary of St. Thomas, 1 2, q. 89, a. 2.

II. The difference between mortal and venial sin is not merely accidental or external, but affects their very essence, and determines the great difference in their punishment. Speaking generally, it consists in this: mortal sin is a fully voluntary transgression of a Divine command gravely binding; whereas, if the act is not fully voluntary, or if the command only lightly binds, the sin is venial. A command is said to be gravely binding (that is, binding under heavy penalties) when its transgression carries with it the loss of Divine friendship and of the delinquent’s claim on eternal life. This is the case when the object of the command is the attainment of an important end or the securing of an important good, which, by the Will of God, must be attained or secured as necessary means of salvation. A commandment is said to be lightly binding when it binds indeed, but not in so stringent a manner. The difference between heavy and light obligations, although apparently only one of degree, is, in fact, an essential difference. The opposition against the Divine Will manifested in the breaking of a grave obligation shows in the sinner a malice of disposition essentially different from that shown by disobedience in light matters. In mortal sin, the opposition to God is formal disrespect, and contempt of His Sovereignty and Supreme Goodness; whereas in venial sin the opposition to God amounts merely to neglect, the Divine attributes being not so much despised as insufficiently acknowledged. In mortal sin the creature turns away from God as its last end, and seeks felicity in another end; whereas in venial sin the creature only loses sight of God, the last end; it walks outside the road, but not in an opposite direction. In other words: in mortal sin, the sinner prefers himself or some creature to God, because, for the love of a creature, he despises the Majesty of the Divine Lawgiver, and sacrifices the felicity of possessing God; he acts as if he, and not God, were the Highest Good. In venial sin the sinner does not prefer himself or any created good to God; he has no wish entirely to despise the rights of God as Lawgiver and as Highest Good of the creature; his disposition is such that, if God prohibited the disorderly action under grave penalties, he would not commit it. Holy Scripture always represents sins of the first class as hostility between man and God; whereas venial sin is never so described.

Again, just as all sins have in common that they are opposed to the great Law of Charity, so also the two classes of sins draw their essential difference from their different degree of opposition to the same law. Mortal sin turns the heart of the sinner away from God towards the creature; venial sin coexists with the love of God, but falls short of the perfect compliance with it. Since grave sin and charity are incompatible metaphysically, as soon as sin enters the soul, charity and its principle, grace, must quit it; the supernatural beauty of the soul is extinguished by “mortal” sin, and the creature cannot of himself recall the spiritual life thus lost. St. Thomas, 1 2, q. 72, a. 5; qq. 88, 89.