Mortal and Venial Sins

Two kinds of sin and two remedies · the Catechism, paragraphs 1854–1864 · the Council of Trent, Sessions 6 and 14.

Every Christian tradition admits that some sins are worse than others. Rome goes further. It divides sin into two kinds that differ not only in degree but in effect: mortal sin, which kills the life of grace in the soul and leads to hell if unrepented, and venial sin, which wounds that life but leaves it intact. On this distinction rest the practice of confession, the rules for receiving communion, and the doctrines of purgatory and indulgences. “The distinction between mortal and venial sin,” the Catechism says, “already evident in Scripture, became part of the tradition of the Church” (CCC 1854).

Mortal Sin in Rome’s Teaching

The Church calls this kind of sin mortal, as James McCarthy notes, “from the Latin word for death”: it is a grave offense that turns a person away from God as his final end. “Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him” (CCC 1855). For a sin to be mortal, the Catechism says, three conditions must be met together:

Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.

CCC 1857

1. Grave matter, “specified by the Ten Commandments,” such as murder, adultery, theft, and false witness (CCC 1858).
2. Full knowledge of “the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s law” (CCC 1859).
3. Deliberate consent, “sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice” (CCC 1859). Ignorance, passion, or pressure may diminish guilt (CCC 1860).

The consequences are total. Mortal sin “results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell” (CCC 1861). “Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell” (CCC 1035). The Council of Trent taught that the grace of justification is lost “not only by infidelity … but also by any other mortal sin soever, though faith be not lost” (Session 6, chapter 15), and anathematized anyone who says otherwise (Canon 27).

The remedy is the sacrament of penance. Mortal sin “necessitates a new initiative of God’s mercy and a conversion of heart which is normally accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation” (CCC 1856). Every mortal sin of which the penitent is conscious must be confessed to a priest, “even if they are most secret” (CCC 1456), and one who is conscious of mortal sin “must not receive Holy Communion … without having first received sacramental absolution” (CCC 1457). Trent bound this on the conscience under anathema:

If any one shall say, that, in the sacrament of Penance, it is not, of divine right, necessary unto the remission of sins, to confess all and individually the deadly sins, the memory of which, after due and diligent previous meditation is held … let him be anathema.

Council of Trent, Session 14, Canon 7 (Buckley)

Venial Sin in Rome’s Teaching

Venial sin is a lesser offense, named “from the Latin word venia, meaning pardon” (McCarthy). “One commits venial sin when, in a less serious matter, he does not observe the standard prescribed by the moral law, or when he disobeys the moral law in a grave matter, but without full knowledge or without complete consent” (CCC 1862). Quoting Thomas Aquinas, the Catechism gives as examples “thoughtless chatter or immoderate laughter and the like” (CCC 1856).

Venial sin “weakens charity,” “merits temporal punishment,” and if deliberate and unrepented “disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin.” Yet it “does not break the covenant with God,” and “does not deprive the sinner of sanctifying grace, friendship with God, charity, and consequently eternal happiness” (CCC 1863). Trent agreed that the just “at times fall into at least light and daily sins, which are also called venial,” and that “they do not therefore cease to be just” (Session 6, chapter 11).

Because venial sins do not cut the soul off from grace, they need not be confessed. Trent said they “may be passed over without guilt, and be expiated by many other remedies” (Session 14, chapter 5). The Catechism still “strongly recommended” confessing them (CCC 1458), and teaches that the charity enkindled by the Eucharist “wipes away venial sins” (CCC 1394). Whatever temporal punishment remains must be “purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory” (CCC 1472).

The Distinction at a Glance

Why the Distinction Matters

The distinction is not a minor point of moral theology. It is the hinge on which Rome’s whole doctrine of salvation turns. Because justification is an infused grace residing in the soul, it can be lost; because it can be lost, the believer must know whether he has lost it; and because he must know, he needs a priest to judge the gravity of his sins and restore him through absolution. R. C. Sproul summarized Rome’s view in a single phrase: mortal sin “kills the grace of justification that resides in the soul of the believer.”

For the tender conscience this is no comfort. The penitent must weigh whether his matter was grave, his knowledge full, and his consent deliberate, and Trent required him to confess “all and individually the deadly sins” he remembers, with “the circumstances which change the species of a sin.” He can never be certain that he has done so. And the same conditions that make the burden crushing for the sensitive make it light for the careless; McCarthy observes that, “though the Bible teaches that all sins are mortal, the Church teaches that no sin is necessarily mortal.” This was the burden Luther carried in the monastery at Erfurt, confessing for hours at a time and never at peace, until he learned from Romans that the righteousness of God is not a quality we must preserve, but a gift received by faith.

The Reformation’s Answer

The Reformers rejected the distinction as Rome drew it, and evangelicals still do. Gregg Allison, in his assessment of the Catechism, writes that “evangelical theology decries this distinction between mortal and venial sins,” because “whether a sin is serious or minor, it results in guilt before God.” As Richard Muller notes, “against the medieval scholastics, both the Lutherans and the Reformed deny the distinction.” Their reason was simple. Scripture declares that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), without exception for small sins; that “the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20); and that “whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10). Calvin, answering the schoolmen directly, wrote:

Let the children of God remember that all sin is mortal, because it is rebellion against the will of God, and necessarily provokes his anger; and because it is a violation of the Law, against every violation of which, without exception, the judgment of God has been pronounced.

Calvin, Institutes, 2.8.59

Yet Calvin did not say that believers perish for every sin. He added at once: “The faults of the saints are indeed venial, not, however, in their own nature, but because, through the mercy of God, they obtain pardon.” Sin is venial, in other words, not because it is small but because Christ has paid for it. Zacharias Ursinus taught the same in his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, that “every sin in its own nature is mortal, and deserves eternal death,” and Francis Turretin put it more bluntly still: “We think all are mortal, none truly venial.”

The Westminster Standards gathered this teaching into a single question and answer:

Q. What doth every sin deserve? A. Every sin deserveth God’s wrath and curse, both in this life, and that which is to come.

Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 84

Thomas Watson, expounding that answer, gave the reason: “Sin is committed against an infinite majesty, therefore it is infinite, and the punishment must be infinite.” The smallness of a sin is measured not by the sinner’s intention but by the holiness of the God against whom it is committed.

Rome appeals chiefly to 1 John 5:16–17, which speaks of “a sin unto death” and “a sin not unto death.” Reformed interpreters have generally understood the “sin unto death” not as a class of sins that believers commit and recover from, but as the deliberate and final rejection of Christ by those who “went out from us” (1 John 2:19; compare Hebrews 6:4–6; Matthew 12:31–32). John’s purpose in the same letter is assurance: “that ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).

Degrees of Sin

Rejecting Rome’s categories did not mean treating all sins as equal. Jesus told Pilate that the one who delivered Him “hath the greater sin” (John 19:11), and He warned that it would be more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment than for Capernaum (Matthew 11:23–24). The Westminster Larger Catechism teaches that “some sins in themselves, and by reason of several aggravations, are more heinous in the sight of God than others” (Question 150). R. C. Sproul warned that evangelicals, in reacting against Rome, have sometimes “jumped to the conclusion that there are no distinctions between sins in Protestantism.” Calvin, as Sproul explains, held both truths together: some sins are far graver than others, but “no sin is mortal in the sense that it can destroy our saving grace.”

Even Rome’s Catechism preserves a word of Augustine that every Protestant can own: “Do not despise these sins which we call ‘light’: if you take them for light when you weigh them, tremble when you count them” (CCC 1863). The Reformers would only add that no amount of counting, confessing, or satisfying can pay for them.

The One Remedy for Every Sin

The gospel does not sort sins into those that need a priest and those that need only a prayer. It sends every sin, great and small, to the same cross. “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). When a believer falls, he does not fall out of grace, for “we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1–2). He confesses his sin to God, who “is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9), and he rests on the verdict already pronounced: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

As there is no sin so small but it deserves damnation; so there is no sin so great, that it can bring damnation upon those who truly repent.

Westminster Confession of Faith, 15.4

Roman Catholicism   Glossary of Catholic Terms