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No, Pregnancy is Not a Sin

No, Pregnancy is Not a Sin

Last updated on: December 5, 2018 at 2:12 am by Mary Pezzulo

No, Pregnancy is Not a Sin 2018-12-05T02:12:21-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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Now, on this same thread we also had a priest, and I know he was a priest because he had a vestigial “Fr” stuck to the front of his name, who kept boasting about how he used to teach theology in a high school and telling everybody that sex out of wedlock is always a mortal sin. He kept insisting on that. He said it was always, always, always a mortal sin because it’s grave matter. He shared the catechism’s criteria for mortal sin to back up his point, but apparently he didn’t actually read it, because that’s not the case either.

No, it’s really not.

Fornication, sexual intercourse between people who aren’t married to one another, is grave matter, yes. But that doesn’t make it always a mortal sin.

Mortal sin has THREE criteria, and if you don’t meet all three you haven’t committed a mortal sin. One or two out of three doesn’t cut it. This isn’t a spelling test. You don’t get partial credit. It has to be all three.

The three criteria for a mortal sin are: 1) grave matter– fornication certainly counts; 2) full knowledge; and 3) deliberate consent. If an action doesn’t meet all this criteria, it’s not a mortal sin no matter how grave it is. I bar nothing. If you directly kill every person on earth without full knowledge and deliberate consent, you’re still not in mortal sin. You have to know full well that an action is gravely wrong and you have to freely and deliberately consent to do it anyway before we’re in mortal sin territory.

If a person was raised in a bubble and has absolutely no idea that fornication is wrong, and then commits fornication, that’s grave matter. But it’s not a sin, and certainly not a mortal one, because he didn’t know what he was doing was wrong.

If a person figured that fornication was probably a bad thing but didn’t know that it was gravely wrong, and deliberately did it anyway, she would be committing a sin. But it wouldn’t be a mortal sin, because that’s not full knowledge. It’s a venial sin at that point.

If a person had full knowledge that fornication was gravely wrong and was tricked or forced physically or with threat of harm into going through the motions of sex anyway– that’s not mortal sin on their part; it’s not even sin at all. It’s being the victim of rape. Being a victim is never a sin. The person who forced them sinned, very gravely. The victim is innocent.

If a person had full knowledge that fornication was gravely wrong and ended up doing it anyway while he and his partner were having a psychotic break, or on heavy medication, or when they were under such severe emotional strain that they just weren’t thinking clearly– that’s grave matter but it isn’t full consent. A person who is psychotic or severely distraught or impaired on drugs can’t give consent. It’s not a mortal sin. It might not even be a sin, depending on how impaired they were at the time.

A mortal sin requires grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent.

Technically speaking, it’s not possible to know for sure whether anyone in the world has ever committed a mortal sin. We can judge whether the matter was grave but we can’t know with certainty whether the other two conditions were met. Only God is the judge of a person’s mental state and how much they knew. Sometimes we can have enough information to hazard a guess about that. But most of time it’s a sin against charity to speculate. If you’re somebody’s confessor, it might come up. Otherwise, charity demands that we assume the best about our sisters and brothers in Christ.

We need to remember to say “grave” when we mean “grave” and let the word “mortal” mean what it already means. And we especially need to do this if we happen to be a priest who teaches kids about the Faith.

And for mercy’s sake, don’t tell people that involuntary bodily functions are a sin.

(image via pixabay)

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