Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
This is the official stance of Catholics as well. We know all people are saved through the Catholic Church, but we cannot judge if someone isn't a mystical member of the Catholic Church or not. We can tell you what makes up the matter of a grave sin, but we cannot tell you if any individual person has actually committed that sin which requires full knowledge and their own volition. We do not affirm that any specific person is in Hell or damned.
You do, however, affirm that specific people are saved. Canonisation, for instance, involves making the formal judgement that the person canonised is in Heaven.
In this world, at least, I think Catholicism tends to be more confident than Protestantism in making clear pronouncements about whether a person is currently in a state of grace or a state of sin. The sacramental economy is visible in Catholicism, whereas I think Protestants tend to emphasise the invisible church more.
Catholics have 0 confidence that any given person is in a state of mortal sin. I see people ask priests all the time if something was a mortal sin and they say something like, "that is grave matter but I cannot tell you if you committed a mortal sin. You need to tell me, what did you know at the time? Was there any cohersion, were you in a good state of mind..."
I think Catholics are very confident in their ability to guide people in examining their own consciences, but not in their ability to judge others.
And case in point with Saints, we don't cannonize saints on the strenth of how they appear on the outside but only after a confirmation from God in the form of an attributes miracle.
You've inserted the word 'mortal' there. Mortal sin, in Catholic theology, has three elements - it must concern a grave matter, it must be committed with full knowledge, and it must be committed with deliberate consent.
The grave matter can be determined objectively and externally. Knowledge and consent are where grey areas emerge, and is it is technically impossible to fully see into someone else's head, we thus cannot determine mortal sin with total reliability. Knowledge is the easier fork; for many mortal sins, e.g. murder, it is practically inconceivable that the sinner not know that the act is wrong. Consent is the trickiest, because consent can be made somewhat less than full by passions, addictions, mental disorders, or any other frailty. It is impossible to fully rule out the possibility of some such frailty.
This is thus the usual justification for hope in the situation of people who've committed suicide. Suicide is in theory a mortal sin - it concerns a grave matter, as it is murder, most Catholics can be reliably assumed to know why self-murder is wrong, and since suicide involves making a choice to kill yourself, consent seems pretty easy to observe. That was why for a while the standard line was that all suicide victims go straight to Hell. Nowadays, however, I think the line is that suicide in itself suggests that there was some sort of mitigating factor like a mental disorder.
In any case, I did not say mortal sin. I think the terminology appropriate to what I'm saying would be 'grave sin', which only requires the first of the three points of the mortal sin trident. Dying with unrepented grave sin does not necessarily mean you are damned, but grave sin is discernible from the outside, and Catholicism has various procedures for identifying and repenting of grave sin, and participation in various rites of the church (most notably the Eucharist) is contingent upon doing so.
Thus, for instance, Catholics do stress sometimes about who is or is not permitted to partake of communion, whereas in my experience the Protestant line is usually "examine your own conscience, and then decide" (cf. 1 Cor 11:28).
I think in Catholicism there is a kind of external economy of grace that the believer participates in. The Catholic Church is much more willing to list and define the parts of this economy, and state their implications for one's eternal welfare - in that sense I'd argue that Catholicism is, intentionally, a more legible religion than Protestantism. There are senses in which I'd say that Judaism and Islam are both even more legible than Catholicism, though I think it depends on the issue a little. Thus in this case, with both Muslims and Protestants being, I think, more reluctant to make definite statements about the saved than Catholics. Catholics don't make pronouncements recklessly or willy-nilly, but as you say, there are circumstances where they will definitively say that such-and-such is in Heaven.
Generally speaking you are correct in the specific points you make, but I think you're not really contradicting me in terms of the big picture.
Because you contrasted "State of Grace" vs "State of Sin." A person who has committed a venial sin is still in the state of grace. To contrast the State of Grace with a State of Sin I have to add the word "mortal" in there.
Catholic laity sometimes bay for this politician or that celebrity to be refused communion because of what looks like a public sin. You will note that these calls are almost never answered by the leadership. Even excommunication is not The End - a few people who were excommunicated are officially recognized saints!
Are you telling me that Protestants don't believe they can even tell what constitutes a sin or not, even when examining their own consciences?
I admit what was going through my mind when I wrote that, as a mental example of a good Protestant response to that question, was Joan of Arc's answer to the question of whether she was in a state of grace - if I am not, may God put me there; if I am, may God so keep me. Since that we cannot ourselves know whether we are, we should try to adopt the attitude that Joan did. In a sense it does not matter, because our obligation to always continue to put our trust in God and turn back to him is unchanged.
In any case, I'm certainly not saying that Protestants don't know what sins are. What I'm saying is that I think for Catholics the economy of grace is considered somewhat more visible than it is for Protestants. This is not about whether or not such-and-such thing is sinful, but rather about, with our limited human self-knowledge, estimating our own places in the larger economy of salvation.
From my perspective, the biggest difference is Catholics have the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which provides definitive ways to know a sin has been forgiven. Whereas Protestants have to hope they've been forgiven, and that ambiguity doesn't seem like a positive to me.
But to a Catholic, knowing that a specific sin has been forgiven does not equate to knowledege that one has sanctifying grace. Instead:
“Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved” (CCC 2005).
“no one can know with a certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to mistake, that he has obtained the grace of God” (The Council of Trent, Session 6, Chapter IX).
We can have very good reason to believe we are in a state of grace, and this belief is a requirement to receive communion worthily. We can't know we are with unmistakable divine faith. We can be mistaken about it.
Well, from my Protestant perspective, I do think that the sacrament of penance and reconciliation is unnecessary, but I would say that's because it's got a mistaken ecclesiology. Mutual confession and forgiveness is, of course, essential to the Christian life and to any Christian community, but I think the sacrament of penance institutionalises that in a way that is unnecessary.
If you'll pardon a personal story, I've flirted with conversion to Catholicism a few times, and something I found very odd, psychologically, was the idea that I should be recording or making some sort of mental list of my sins for purposes of confession. I think that often I am not conscious of my sins, or I do not recognise sins even in the process of committing them, or that both my motives and my actions are mixed, combining sin and righteousness in ways beyond my ability to extricate. There are some unambiguous sins - I know if I have stolen, or murdered, or committed adultery! - but those are very much the minority. Thus when I confess my sins, both in a church context and privately to God, I name (or bring to mind) specific sins that I feel guilt for, but I am also conscious that those are only the tip of the iceberg. I ask God to purify and transfigure my mixed motives, to make me aware of the sins I have not recognised, to correct and chasten my wayward heart toward those sins that I struggle to regret, and so on. I find the - pardon my language - mechanical nature of the sacrament of penance and reconciliation to be an obstacle to this holistic view of sin.
I don't think that, in general, I am in a state of grace right up until I impair it with a grave sin, which I think need a priest to absolve. It doesn't seem that binary to me. I think that I am constantly in a process of metanoia - I pray that God, through his grace, is mysteriously at work in me healing and transforming my sinful nature.
Naturally I don't expect a Catholic to agree with me. In principle I have no objection to a person making a confession to a priest or minister, and that priest or minister offering absolution. In fact I have no objection to a person doing that to another layperson. It is salutary in each case. So I don't think a Catholic is doing himself or herself spiritual harm by going to confession.
But I do think that the visible economy you get in Catholicism, the ledger of sins accumulated and absolved that I felt I was asked to start recording, is not the right way for Christians to think about sin, reconciliation, and grace.
I can speak to my experience with confession, examinations of conscience, etc. I have found it very positive for a lot of reasons, and like anyone who found the "one weird trick that works" I will extol its virtues without self-restraint.
It is good hygiene to do an examination of conscience before bed. I like the Ignatian way of reviewing the day and praising God for all that you did that was good, asking forgiveness for the good you failed to do, etc. I don't see how anyone can progress without these kinds of progress reports. Or maybe that's the point in contention itself, is progress possible or desirable?
I think progress is both possible and what God wants for us. God calls us to prayer and deep prayer is only possible by hating that which is antithetical to God - sin. There is no sin in God. That's putting it mildly. God hates sin. We cannot enter deep communion with God while still harboring deep attachments to sin. The sin in us will repel us from God. This is something I have experienced in myself and witnessed in others.
Is progress possible? Yes, it is. I understand your repulsion towards the idea of listing sins like they're a grocery list or something like that. That is unappealing to me as well.
For a penitent, they might start with a written examination of conscience, with a list of sins and checkmarks next to them. That's fine for someone still learning. But what most people discover, if they actually go with the recommendation of confessing every month (and this is probably only around 10% of active Cathoilcs who do this) is that they check fewer and fewer boxes until eventually they show up to their monthly confession and stare at the paper and realize... they don't know what to confess!
This happened to me. It's happened to many others I've spoken with. I had a few mortal sins that I kept repeating, or things that I hadn't realized was a mortal sin but once I learned that it was I found it hard to stop the habit. To be forthright about one of the sins, I lied a lot. Often because someone would assume something and I would go along with it because it was easier. Or because I made a mistake and wanted to cover it up. Little lies, big lies, it was hard for me to face the truth. I did this since childhood.
One family dinner, when I was 6 and my sister was 9 months old, my parents were asking if anyone would finish off a loaf of bread. I said, "I'll eat it!" but in a quiet voice. My parents thought it was my sister who said it! And I just went along with it, even after my mom would bring it up over and over again the next couple decades as a sign she knew my sister would be a great communicator.
It honestly felt like I couldn't help myself, this was a trait ingrained into me.
When I came back to the Church as an adult, I wanted to get serious about pursuing holiness. This meant regular examinations of conscience and regular confessions. And for the first time in my life I took it very seriously, humbling myself to say everything wrong I could think of without trying to excuse or justify myself.
And over the course of about two years, slowly, painfully, sometimes dragging myself to confession every week, sometimes once a month, finally, these persistent sins were uprooted in me, to the point where they are no longer even tempting.
And then what happened? Was I perfect? Oh, no.
Instead, examinations of conscience started to look very different. What was I failing to do? What virtues did I lack? Where did I resist the call of God today? The better I became the more there was to see. I may have remained in a state of grace for years now, but that doesn't mean I'm "done."
The sacrament of confession keeps you on that spiraling path of going forward, going further, seeing new things and new horizons. Healing your soul, hating your sin, finding God in unexpected places.
Once you're not confessing mortal sins, you get freedom and latitude to focus on a specific area of failure in your life. "I get distracted by my phone too much." "I'm being called to pray more and I'm not setting time for it." "My finances are ordered towards my own gratification instead of what is best for the Kingdom." Etc.
And then you hunker down and just focus on that one thing for the next however long it takes. The same way you got rid of your mortal sins, repeated confession, absolution, examining your conscience every day, keep going, keep progressing, see the virtue grow.
TL:DR, I don't think confession would impair what you already have going on, but add more horsepower to what you are already doing. If it's real, if Catholics are right, it actually is a means of getting graces you wouldn't get otherwise. It doesn't mean you stay on a checklist confession forever, or ever need to go to a checklist at all.
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