Prima Secundae
Lecture 224: Venial and Mortal Sin: Analogical Division and Distinctions

Transcript
================================================================================

It's funny to say that, doesn't it? Well, adultery or murder, that's against the eternal law, right? But venial sin is said to be a sin secundum rationum imperfectum, in imperfect, the notion of it, right? And in ordine ad peccatum mortality, right? And in order to, mortal sin. Just as accident is said to be being in order to substance, but according to an imperfect ratio of being. So it's a distinction of sin into what? Moral sin and venial sin is more like the distinction of being into accident and substance than like the distinction of number into odd and even, say, or even habit into virtue and vice, right? Habit into virtue and vice. Well, vice isn't as much a habit, unfortunately. Yeah, as virtue is, right, huh? You know? He beautifully says that, right, huh? And so you can kind of see that, right? You would say, you know, if you leave this room where you cease to be, what would you say? I want to qualify that bit, right? Because that would refer to your substantial being, right? That's being in the full sense, right, huh? See? But if you leave this room, you will cease to be in this room. If you stand up, you will cease to be sitting, right? You got to qualify it in that sense, right? But if you, you know, some terrorist out there shoot us for admitting the Trinity is like, then you will cease to be, right? Your soul will still be, but you will cease to be. That's beautiful, huh? Just as accident is said to be being in order to substance, right? It's something that exists in substance, right? But not by itself, huh? According to an imperfect ratio of being, right? For it's not against the law, right? Because the one sinning venially does not do what the law prohibits, right? Is there a law to not eat candy too much? Nor does it, what? Yeah, overlook that to which the law obliges by precept, right? But it does something apart from the law, right? Because it does not observe the mode of reason which the law, what, intends, huh? Now you've learned some real logic, right? So the genus is before the species, right? But one species is not before the other, right? So a dog is not said to be an animal before a cat. A cat is said to be an animal by some order to the dog. Don't know it yet. Yeah, yeah. Aristotle has a discussion there in the 11th book of the, excuse me, the 10th book of the wisdom, right? Why the distinction of male and female is not a distinction of species. He must have had a lot of fun doing with his wife. What the heck are you teaching now, Aristotle? There was a need to address that. Monsignor, you know, we got to text you like this, you know, you know, if he's teaching that, right? You know, he'd say that was important, you know? You know, teacher, because he's very good saying, you know. When Aristotle wrote this, he scratched on every other line. But he's talking about the brevity, you know, Aristotle, you know. And even Thomas, you know, maybe briefs sometimes when he's explaining something, you know, but he found these texts like this. You know, sometimes when he's, as you apply an objection, he'll say, you know, you'll name the kind of error, kind of mistake being made, right? You go back to those 13 kinds of mistake. He's like, oh, it's one of those, you know? You know, but it kind of gets you, you know, gets you kind of a little worked out there, you know? The good or bad, isn't it? Remember, we're talking about, is it logic being an art, you know, and how the word art is not being used in just, it's not used in just one sense, you know? It's not an art in the way in which the art of carpentry is an art, right, you know? It's like a lot of time, you know, and pointing out that this is a word that is not a genus, right? So these things. To the second it should be said, that's what one now says, that whether you eat or drink or do anything else, do all in the glory of God, right? And notice what Thomas says here. To the second it should be said that that precept of the apostle is affirmative, huh? And what's important about that? Whence does not obligate ad simpler, huh? So you may say, you know, precept, you know, you should pray, right? And, you know, who doesn't pray is going to be lost, right? It's very important to pray, but you're supposed to be praying always, actually. It's that kind of precept. What does Jerome say, you know, whether he eats or drinks or does anything else, always comes to mind, you know, Viniti ad judicium. But you always have to think about that every time you eat and drink. But not a bad thing to do, right, you know? You know, pick up the bottle there and, you know, have a drink and Viniti ad judicium, you know? I just need to get behind to life. Yeah. It suffices, therefore, that someone habitually, right, refers himself and all his things to what? God. So you should do that from time to time, especially when you go to, what, mass, right? Because then you're offering up these things to God, right? So it suffices that someone habitually refer himself and all that he does, all his things, to God in order that he not always, what, mortally sin, right, huh? Even though when, what, he does not refer some act actually to the glory of God. It seems to me you could say the same thing if you say, you know, you should always thank God for everything good, right? That's what I say, you know, thank him, you know, before meal or something, right? But you thank God for your bed last night? Or you thank God, I thank God for this chair, you know, but I don't have to stand here, I can sit down and, yeah, you know? Heat in the house this time of year? Yeah, yeah. Did you thank God for the heat in the house today? Yeah, see? Was that it? For venial sin does not exclude the habitual order of the human act to the glory of God, but only, what, actual. Because it does not exclude charity which habitually orders us to God, right? That's probably the reason why charity has to be a virtue, a habit, right? And not just an act, huh? Once it does not follow that the one who sins venially sins mortally, which is what the guy would say. That was a close one. The third should be said that the one who sins venially adheres to a temporal good, not as, what, fruens, enjoying it, because he does not constitute in it the, what, in, yeah? So I pick up the glass of wine and say, this is my purpose in life, to drink this. This is what life is all about, drinking some wine, right? Well, then I would be mortally sinning, right? See? But as using it, referring it to God, maybe not in act, but in what? Habit, huh? Now, what about the distinction between the commutable? and the two and the two good and the incommutable good, because those are what? Opposites, aren't they, right? Okay. He says the changeable good is not taken as the term contrapositus, that's being opposed, right? Okay. To the unchangeable good, except when the end is constituted in it, right? When it's made the end, right? For what is towards the end does not have the notion of the what? The end, yeah. So if you're pursuing that as the end of your life, drinking the wine, then you would be what? Opposed to God being the end of your life, right? My son's got a biography there of Chairman Mao. What an awful guy he was. A recent one by a husband and wife came, I think it was. No, I think it's a different one than that one, I think, yeah. That's the one about his love life or a homeless woman or something. Yeah, but bearing people alive were the nice things he did, you know. He's a nice guy, a real nice guy, you know. I can't imagine he could be quite that bad, you know. Resigned. Yeah, yeah, because it's kind of like, you know, it's like a fellow, you know, a person in power, you know, losing power, you know, because the idea of losing power was just the end, you know. Yeah. I remember one time when Nixon was being interviewed, you know, this was some years after he had got the pardon, you know, from… From what? From what? From President Ford and Ford. Yeah, from President Ford, yeah, yeah. And so somebody was saying, you know, wishing you had been punished, you know, something like that. He said, well, to lose all that power, he says, was punishment in itself, you know. It was, you know, to lose that kind of position, it was something, you know. And then what's his name? Who's the guy that did all those photographs of Mother Teresa there? Mugridge, you know. He said the reaction to press, you know, this whole thing was much more worse than anything Nixon did. You know, this kind of self-vaunting that they had. Okay, that's the end of that article, right? We've got to stop now, or what? 433, yeah? of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, Guardian Angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Deo gratias. God, your enlightenment, Guardian Angels, make the lights of our minds, or to illumine our images, and arouse us things that are more quickly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. I was reading the question on the teacher, right, in the De Veritate, and there's four articles, right? And the first one says, can man also be a teacher, or only God, right? Because Christ says, well, Christ is a teacher. The second one, very surprising, is whether man can be a teacher of himself. Because Thomas, I said, he's going to deny this, I know, but one of the objections is pretty good, you know, so the teacher enlightens the students, right? But we all have this active understanding, which enlightens us, therefore, we teach ourselves, right? So how can I answer this one? And then, the third article is, whether the angel can teach man, right? Then you get the idea of how he can strengthen the light of our mind, and move our images, and so on, right? And the fourth one is whether it belongs to the active or the contemplative life teaching. Kind of interesting, though, huh? They say, oh, there's a medieval debate where the man can teach himself, you know? Or where the angel can teach you, you know? Well, it's because I don't know anything here about the temptation of Christ, a little bit of a sight here, you know? But what's the order of the three temptations of Christ, now? The Gospel of Matthew we're talking about now, that's what we're being done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And this, of course, bond to the three things here in John's first epistle, right? Read you the English text here. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, right? And the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, right? So in the Greek there, the epithumia, right? Te sarcos, the flesh. And the epithumia, tone of thalmon, right? And the alazoneia, tubio, right? Isn't that the order in which Christ is tempted, right? First he turned the stones into bread so he could eat, right? That's the flesh, right? And then he shows all the kingdoms of the world, right? That's kind of avarice, right? And then finally, what? Pride, right, huh? Okay. Now, I'll talk a little bit about the names as you go in here, right? Who led Christ out to be, what? Tempted. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But what is he called there? What? The Spirit. No. The Spirit, yeah. The Spirit. Yeah. And of course the Thomas comes here and says, you know, it is the Holy Spirit, right? But here you're calling the Holy Spirit just the Spirit, period, right? Because the name Spirit, you know, with breath and so on is tied up more with what's proper to the name of the Holy Spirit, right? What his proceeding is, right? But now who's tempting him, right? No, he's not called the evil spirit there. Oh, the devil, right? Yeah. It's the Diabolus, right? Huh? Okay. But he's also called by Antonio Masiya, the what? The tempter, yeah. Oh, Pirazzo, right? The tempted one who's doing the tempting, right? He's really knows how to tempt, right? He's a master at this, you know. The rest of us are amateurs, right? But he's really knows how to tempt, right? So throughout the temptation, it said the Diabolus did this, the Diabolus led him up on top of the temple, the Diabolus, you know, okay? Now, does Christ there ever call him by name? The last one, right? But does he call him Diabolus there at the end? What does he call him? Satan, yeah, yeah. So you have these two names, the devil, right? Diabolus and Satana, right? Which I guess he says in Hebrew, Diabolus comes in the Greek. What do those two names mean? What is their etymology, so to speak? Diabolus, right? Which we usually translate to devil, right? And Satan or Satan, right? Yeah. Yeah, Satan means you should give adversary, which could also say enemy, right? Because that's your adversary, it's your enemy. And what does Diabolus mean, huh? Yeah, it means slander-er. So Diabolus, you know, in Greek is slander, right? And I was thinking, you know, I can see why he's called the enemy, right? Satan, right? It's interesting that Christ only calls them by name at the third one, which is the temptation for pride, right? The alazoneia, the alazoneia, right? The third one in John's epistle there, right? The first epistle. And, uh, but Christ's theory now really, that's the supreme attempt, right? And the most serious thing for pride, huh? And then he calls them enemy, right? Huh? Now, I was saying before, in this other text of it from John, that he speaks of the spirit of truth, right? Which is the Holy Spirit. And how I can understand that as being both the one who teaches us in some way, right? But also the one who proceeds from the truth itself, right? Okay? And then that was called the Pnuma Planes, huh? The spirit of error, right? So in the supreme court there, you know, decided on the abortion there back in the 70s, right? There the Pnuma Planes isn't quite active, right? And this is a great error, or to use the English word mistake, right? Huh? Now, am I justified saying the Pnuma Planes, right, is the devil, or Satan? Yeah. Or am I correct in saying that? What do you think? Okay? Well, I ran across an interesting text here in the 12th chapter of the Apocalypse, right? And people are familiar with the first part of it, because it's about the Blessed Virgin, you know, and he's spoken there as the dragon, right? Right? And he wants to, you know, consume her son, right? Her flesh, huh? And it's, you know, after the woman flees, right? And the woman fled into the wilderness where she hath a place prepared of God, so on. And there was what? Yeah, there was war in heaven, right? And Michael, now you should be interested in that, you know, that's your hero, I know. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, right? And the dragon fought and his angels, now dragon seems to be maybe a metaphor for the devil, right, huh? And prevailed not, either was there a place found anymore in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out. And the old, that old serpent, huh? Well, that goes back to, what? Yeah. And of course, the serpent is the one who deceived, what? Eve, right, huh? Okay. That old serpent called the devil. And Satan, right? See? So he says in the Greek there, huh? He says in the Greek there, huh? He says in the Greek there, huh? He says in the Greek there, right? He says in the Greek there, right? He says in the Greek there, right? He says in the Greek there, right? He says in the Greek there, right? He says in the Greek there, right? He says in the Greek there, right? He says in the Greek there, right? He says in the Greek there, right? He says in the Greek there, He says in the Greek there, right? He says in the Greek there, right? He says in the Greek there, right? by autonomous here right huh but then he adds the next part of the sentence um the region english first here uh that old serpent called the devil and satan which deceiveth the whole world ho plano now that's the greek word now i get the word planet down from the word plano because they wander okay whole plan on teen oikumene now that's the the earth right the whole lane on the whole earth right well it seems to me he's right to be the pluma platties right he's a spirit because he's a biblist well scripture there so we're up to uh article two here i believe in question 88 to the second one goes forward thus it seems that vigno and mortal sin do not differ in genus huh such that some uh that something is a mortal sin from its genus right the kind of sin it is and something is venial from its what genus uh tom's up to here you know what he says good and evil from genus is taken in human what acts by comparison to their matter or to their object right but according to any object or matter it is possible to sin mortally and what venial yeah for any changeable good man is able to love either below god right which is to sin venially or above god which is to sin mortally and therefore venial sin and mortal do not differ in genus right so is candy an object of venial mortal sin what if i love god more than candy or then if i love god more than god then that's a mortal sin right i love god more than god right i love god more than gold but then i love gold is only that's an interesting argument right moreover this hasn't said above a mortal sin is said to be what irreparable a venial sin to be repairable but to be irreparable belongs to sin that comes about from malice right which according to some people is said to be remissible right as opposed to sin that you do from weakness or something like that sort or ignorance so paul said he was ignorant right now he persecuted the church right so that could be a parable the one that comes to infirmity or ignorance just said to be remissible therefore mortal and venial sin do not differ as what oh yeah yeah what is committed from malice or what is committed from weakness or ignorance but according to this the sins don't differ in genus on their object right their matter but their cause therefore venial and mortal sin do not differ in genus so you gotta know porphyry right to know the genus is right moreover has said that sudden motions both of sensuality and reason are venial sins right so to doubt you know sudden doubt you know something comes in your mind that doesn't make a mortal sin does it right no it's not a but sudden motions are found in every genus of sin therefore there are not any venial sins from what genus thomas says again but tied us up right and i'm not thinking about it to see this little picture here huh you seen that yeah to entire knots hoping a judgment there doesn't apply it to this matter but i am i am not thinking about it to see this is what augustine says in his sermon about what purgatory huh where he enumerates certain genera of venial sins and certain genera of mortal sins so he must have thought this other way now we're really tied up huh answer it should be said and that pecatum venial is said from what yeah now a sin can be said to be venial in one way because it is it is obtained forgiveness right and thus ambrose says that every sin through penance becomes what venial right and this is said to be venial from the event another way it is said to be venial because it does not have in itself whence forgiveness would not follow right either totally or in part in part because since it has something in itself diminishing the guilt right huh as when it comes to be from what infirmity weakness or ignorance and this is said to be venial ex causa right so ex causa and ex eventu are the first two distinctions huh in total automa from this that is not take away the order to the last what in once it does not merit eternal punishment but temporal punishment and about this venial sin we what intend for the present right so can you bear in mind those three distinctions right because even a moral sin could become in the first sense what finial ex eventu right now about the first two it stands to reason that they do not have some determined genus right so even a mortal sin could be the first sense right and even you know the one from infirmity or ignorance could still be very serious matter right but there's some diminishing what do they say in the courtroom what do they say in the courtroom i get the exact term now as the famous courtroom case with the guys i blacked out Yeah. So you don't have a determined genus for the first two, right? But vinyu in the third way said can have a what? Determined genus, right? In that some sin is said to be vinyu from genus and some mortal from its genus according as genus or species of the act are determined from the what? Object, right? I think when you're little boys going into a confession that was the distinction made, right? You're talking about vinyu and morto in this third sense, weren't they? That's a moral sin for a vinyu sin, right? The father's leg moved. That was a sign that you had confessed a moral sin. Yeah, I know. I got ten. For when the will is carried towards something that as such, right? Secundum se, right? Is repugnant to charity, right? Through which man is or by which man is ordered to the last end, right? The sin from its very object as that it be mortal. Whence it is mortal from its genus. Whether it be either against the what? Love of God as blasphemy. Blasphemia. Perjury, right, huh? And things of this sort, right? Or if it's against the love of one's neighbor as, and it gives the two main examples there, homicide and adultery, right? And things of this sort. Whence sins of this sort are immortal, exogenerate, because they have an opposition to what? Charity, and therefore they separate us from God, and therefore we die, okay? That's what I call it mortal. Whenover, the will of the sinner is carried towards that which in itself contains some disorder, right? But is not, however, contrary to the love of God and neighbor, huh? Just as an idle word, right? Superfluous laugh. And others of the sort, huh? There's serious stuff here. And such sins are venial from their, what? Genus, huh? So that's clear enough, huh? The distinction of three senses of venial, right? And one sense in which he says that they do differ than genus, right? And that's this here, right? But the object that makes the sin mortal from genus in this third sense is one that is contrary to either the love of God or the love of, what? Neighbor, huh? And so blasphemy and perjury, right? Homicide and adultery, right, huh? And he's going to go ahead and add something. And because moral acts receive the aspect of good and bad not only from their object, right, but also from some disposition of the agent, as has been said above or had before. It happens that sometimes that which is a, what? Venial sin. Genus, by reason of its object, becomes mortal on the side of the, what? Agent, huh? What does this mean? Well, because either in it one constitutes his, what? Ultimate end. So superfluous laughter is my end of my, huh? Voltaire or something like that. Or because he orders it to something that is immortal sin ex genuine, right? As when someone orders an idle word to committing, what? Adultery. Superfluous resource, right? And so on. Likewise, also on the side of the agent, it can happen that some sin that is mortal from its, what? Genus becomes venial, right? On account of this, that the act is, what? That is not deliberated by reason, right? Which is the beginning of a, what? Bad act, right? As has been said above, about sudden motions of, what? Infidelity, right, huh? I think what would Thomas say that not believing God, or like, say, Eve didn't believe God, right? Which he believed, yeah. The old something, yeah. The old boy. The tumpter, right, huh? The old boy. You know? So that seems to me to be immortal sin from Genus, right, huh? If he had a sudden doubt, you know, because of some difficulty, right? And that would not be necessarily a mortal sin, huh? Because it's sudden and not to be deliberated, right? And people swear, you know, that always a mortal sin. I mean, there might be some, I hear people use the word even a Jesus, you know, sometimes in conversation, which one cannot approve, you know, but they kind of use it like, just like a thought, thinking about what it is, you know? It isn't necessarily a mortal sin, right? It's hard things to judge, of course, but that's much more, you know. Okay. To the first, therefore, it should be said that from this, that someone chooses that which is repugnant to divine, what? Charity. He is convicted to prefer that to, what? Divine charity. And consequently, to love it or himself more than, what? God, huh? And therefore, some sins from Genus, which are themselves, who plug to charity, have something that is loved above God, right? And thus, they are mortal from their very genus. And the second and third ones were taken from, what? These two other things, huh? The second should be said that that argument proceeds from the venial sin ex causa, right? And to the third, that argument proceeds from the sin that is venial on account of the imperfection of the, what? Act, huh? They used to teach us that in the early days, didn't they, huh? And have full consent, so to speak, or? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.