Coberst wrote:
"I was raised as a Catholic; I was taught by the nuns the Catholic doctrine regarding sin, punishment, and consciousness. Venial sins were like misdemeanors and mortal sins were like felonies. However, this is not a completely accurate analogy because if a person dies with venial sin on the soul s/he would be punished by having to spend time in purgatory before going to heaven but if a person died with mortal sin on the soul s/he went directly to hell for eternity.
Confession was the standard means for ‘erasing sin from the soul’. A confession was considered to be a ‘good confession’ only if the sinner confessed the sins to a priest and was truly sorry for having committed sin. A very important element of a good confession was an examination of consciousness, which meant the person must become fully conscious of having committed the sin.
Ignorance of the sin was no excuse just as ignorance of the law is no excuse. Herein lays the rub. Knowledge and consciousness of sin were necessary conditions for the erasure of sin from the soul in confession. "
Coberst-- you were introduced to the idea of existence of sin when you were a small child, and as a child you saw no reason to argue with this very important piece of church doctrine. Children do not know about sin unless they are taught it exists.This does not mean they are immoral little beings, my soon to be 3 year old grandson can tell you what is the right thing to do in a situation. He knows that a decision which hurts someone else is wrong, and he should try not to make his playmates cry. He will try to cover up such behaviour, but he has not sinned. He has done the wrong thing. Similarly bombing the heart out of a country on a spurious pretext is not a sin, it is not even evil, (another value-added word) it is just wrong, and wrong beyond redemption. There is no absolution possible for such an action.
So Coberst , when you discuss morality you are probably remembering, maybe unconsciously, the sins you committed and confessed to as a child, and do not understand how people can make judgements without the strong buttress of the acknowledgement of sin. In fact sin is a device used by a select band of people (maybe a church, but remember that the communists of China were fond of group confession of transgressions.) The point is the ONLY the people in charge can decide what is a sin, and only they can forgive (using the authority of the highest power they work for, that is in my examples- God or the commissariat).
Everyone on the planet is capable of being a morally motivated being. We are all however brainwashed into hate, sin and violence. Most of us do not want to be. The last sentence of your post was very insightful. To indoctrinate people to believe in the existence of the abtract term 'sin' allows them to commit sin, in the hope of absolution. If a person is personally resonsible for their own behaviour then no absolution is possible. Behaving morally is then a personal choice, and a rational choice, as it always is.
