Can a failure to do good be a mortal sin? Jimmy Akin explains the concept of sins of omission and how they differ from sins of commission. Discover when a failure to act can be considered a grave sin that jeopardizes one’s salvation. Jimmy lays out the importance of fulfilling our obligations and the potential consequences of neglecting them.
Transcript:
Are mortal sins of omission a failure to do good works, and can we lose our salvation if we fail to do them?
Okay, so a sin of omission whether it’s mortal or not is a failure to do something and since we’re only obligated to do good things – we’re never obligated to do evil things or neutral things – then a sin of omission is going to be a sin where you refrain from doing some good work that you could have done. Now it is not obligatory in all situations that we do every good work we could possibly do. In fact It would be impossible for us to do every good work that we could possibly do because we have situations in life where we need to make a choice between different goods, so the only time that a sin of omission it’s not even going to be a sin if you have to choose between different goods there are options where you could choose one good or you could choose another good or you could choose something neutral, but if something is obligatory for you to do, and you refuse to do it, then it is a sin of omission not just an omission.
And if that sin does grave damage, if it has if it has if it has a grave matter involved, and if you do it knowingly and deliberately you refuse to do it, then it would turn into a mortal sin – so for example – and that would cost you your salvation unless you repent. So to give an example, one of the things that you’re required to do as a good is, if you’re married, you’re required to be faithful to your spouse. Fidelity is not just an absence of refraining from sleeping around on your spouse it’s actually a positive good in its own right, and so if you are not faithful to your spouse that has grave matter, and if you say I know this has grave matter and I’m I’m just I don’t care. I know it and I’m just gonna do it deliberately anyway, then that would become a mortal sin of omission.
To give another example that might be a little clearer, let’s suppose that you’re in a situation where where your spouse is about to die. Let’s say they’re about to be bit by a rattlesnake and they’ll die if they’re bit by the rattlesnake and you have the ability without endangering yourself to stop the rattlesnake from doing that, let’s say you got a bucket and all you got to do is put the bucket over the rattlesnake and stop it from biting your spouse. Well, okay stopping the rattlesnake is a good thing and you’re obligated to, you know, save the life of your spouse. If you reasonably can, you know, you’re not being asked to put your own life at danger, and if you say, you know, “I know I’m obligated to save the life of my spouse, but I just don’t care, I’m gonna let that rattlesnake bite,” then well, you’ve omitted doing a good so it’s an omission, and you were obligated to do it so it’s a sin of omission, and you did it knowingly and deliberately, and it involves grave matter, so it would be a mortal sin of omission. And that would jeopardize your salvation unless you repent.
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