{"id":101327,"date":"2017-10-18T00:44:25","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T07:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=101327"},"modified":"2017-10-18T07:57:19","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T14:57:19","slug":"word-term-intrinsically-immoral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/10\/word-term-intrinsically-immoral.html","title":{"rendered":"A Word About the Term ‘Intrinsically Immoral’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I mentioned the term\u00a0\u201cintrinsically immoral\u201d in my discussions of the death penalty.\u00a0 Lots of people are confused about that term.\u00a0 Calling a sin \u201cintrinsically immoral\u201d\u00a0does not make\u00a0a sin extra super duper gravely evil.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s back up.\u00a0 The Church distinguishes grave sins from less serious ones.\u00a0 Minor sins (or \u201cvenial\u201d sins as they sometimes are called) are still sins and still hurt us.\u00a0 It was, never forget, a minor sin called \u201cstealing an apple\u201d that got the snowball rolling for the whole human race back in the Garden.\u00a0 By that trivial act, the human race signaled something catastrophic: the rejection of God himself. This is why, in a passage moderns find a bit kooky and obsessive, Augustine dwells at great length on a seemingly minor incident from his youth when he stole some pears<\/a>. He\u2019s on to something.<\/p>\n

Some folks will give away their real attitude toward venial sin by replying \u201cWell, that was different because Adam and Eve directly disobeyed God Almighty with that sin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Um, yes.\u00a0 Because that\u2019s what every<\/em> sin from stealing apples to killing Cain is. Once the fundamental rejection of the life of God has happened, all the rest of human history is doomed. That\u2019s what Augustine sees and we do not.<\/p>\n

When people say things like \u201clittle sins don\u2019t matter\u201d, they give away the fact that they don\u2019t really believe venial sin is sin at all and that \u201creal\u201d sin is just the Big Stuff: murder, adultery, grand theft auto, war crimes, etc.\u00a0 In short, what they give away is their conviction that sin is a matter of keeping rules and observing legalities, not a matter of relationship with God.\u00a0 But in fact venial sin, embraced and nursed and made a habit of dullness to the voice of God can lead to graver sins just as a scratch, left unattended, can lead to an infection that kills.\u00a0 So we distinguish between venial and mortal sin<\/a> because to not do so is crazy (we don\u2019t jail people for twenty years for jaywalking) but we still recognize that venial sin is sin. When the seemingly trivial apple was plucked from the tree, in that very instant, God looked the human race in eye and saw that tragic, nearly imperceptible moment when we stopped having the child\u2019s eyes of open, trusting love. Something glazed over in our gaze and returned to him only a looking cunning, deceit, distrust, alienation and remote distance. The act was small. But the change in us was as if galaxies stood between us and the Divine Love. And when our first parents lost that Life, they lost it for us all. We are all of us born withe a spiritual birth defect: a hole in our souls where the life of God should have been and is not. We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. Our brokenness is first expressed in our actions, and then our actions make us and those around us more broken still.<\/p>\n

Now, into the mix of both mortal and venial sins, the Church also describes certain sins as \u201cintrinsically immoral\u201d.\u00a0 Many Catholics have taken that to mean \u201csuper duper extra immoral, the worst kind of sin there can be\u201d.\u00a0 It does not mean that.\u00a0 A sin can be both intrinsically immoral and yet venial.\u00a0 So, as we saw several years ago in the Great Lying Debate, the Church teaches that lying\u2013all lying from fibs down to covering up the Holocaust\u2013is \u201cby its very nature\u201d to be condemned (CCC 2485).\u00a0 There is no such thing as a lie that is not a sin, according to the Church.\u00a0 But it does not follow that every lie is a grave sin and, in fact, most lies (\u201cNo, that dress does not make you look fat\u201d) are venial sins.<\/p>\n

Conversely, things that are not intrinsically immoral may nonetheless be grave. Case in point, the death penalty. Again and again, the champions of the death penalty insist that because the death penalty is not intrinsically immoral, it is perfectly fine to make war on the Magisterium\u2019s teaching and call for the execution of prisoners\u2013and this is done despite the fact that, statistically speaking, it means that DP advocates are willing to kill roughly 4 innocent people out of any given pool of 100 condemned prisoners.<\/p>\n

Slice that however you like, but when the Church is saying \u201cWe don\u2019t *need* to kill any of these people\u201d and you are saying \u201cI don\u2019t care if we kill four innocent people, I just want these other 96 to die so much that I\u2019m willing to commit four human sacrifices to my lust for blood!\u201d I would not be altogether certain of my standing on the Day of Judgment. Especially when our Tradition extends back to the story of God telling Abraham that he would spare Sodom itself if there were just a handful of righteous men there.<\/p>\n

The implication (for all non-lawyerly non-rigorists) is obvious: God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked and wants mercy, not vengeance for us all. In short, stop asking \u201cWhen do we *get* to kill?\u201d and start asking, \u201cHow can we show mercy wherever possible?\u201d That is, think with the mind of the Church\u2013the mind of Christ\u2013and seek life, mercy and relationship, not technical, legal loopholes to satisfy a desire for death. And do it even\u2013and especially\u2013for those who do not deserve it, since that is what Jesus has done for you, who are guilty of nailing him to the cross.<\/p>\n

O my Jesus, save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned the term\u00a0\u201cintrinsically immoral\u201d in my discussions of the death penalty.\u00a0 Lots of people are confused about that term.\u00a0 Calling a sin \u201cintrinsically immoral\u201d\u00a0does not make\u00a0a sin extra super duper gravely evil. Let\u2019s back up.\u00a0 The Church distinguishes grave sins from less serious ones.\u00a0 Minor sins (or \u201cvenial\u201d sins as they sometimes are called) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":101369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[278,458],"class_list":["post-101327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abolish-the-death-penalty","tag-catechesis"],"yoast_head":"\nA Word About the Term 'Intrinsically Immoral'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I mentioned the term\u00a0"intrinsically immoral" in my discussions of the death penalty.\u00a0 Lots of people are confused about that term.\u00a0 Calling a sin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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