Material and formal mortal sin, and an insidious form of scrupulosity

This post is aimed primarily at Catholic readers, and especially Catholic readers given to a certain mode of scrupulosity (a disorder where one is unduly and irrationally worried about one’s sinfulness) I will describe further on down. I will say a little about the distinction between material and formal sin, then discuss a special form of scrupulosity that is enabled by knowing the distinction, and end with some philosophical considerations that should help defuse this form of scrupulosity.

Background:

The Catholic tradition distinguishes material and formal sin. Material sin is an action that is objectively in itself against the moral law. Formal sin, on the other hand, is an action insofar as one is morally culpable for it. Formal sin requires that one believe the action to be wrong and that one be sufficiently free in performing the action. Talking of something as material sin, or material sin of a certain sort, is talking of the act in itself. Talking of it as formal sin, or a formal sin of a certain sort, is talking of the relation between the agent and the act.

One can have material sin without formal sin: if in a very difficult medical ethics case, a doctor is told by a panel of otherwise trustworthy bioethicists that an operation is permitted, and performs the operation, and it turns out the bioethicists were wrong, the doctor has committed a material sin, but is unlikely to be guilty of formal sin.

The distinction can also be used not simply to remove responsibility but to reduce it. The Catholic tradition distinguishes mortal sin, which separates one from God by a definitive (but forgiveable, since God’s grace is immense) act of rejection, from venial sin, which does not definitively reject God. Given this, you can have mortal material sin which is not formally mortal. In such a case, you might not be clear enough on the grave wrongness of the action or you might be insufficiently free for the sin to be formally mortal, although you have enough clarity and enough freedom for formal venial sin.

A form of scrupulosity:

At the same time, logically speaking, things can go in the other direction. You can have material sin without formal sin. If the difficult medical operation is in fact permissible, but the trustworthy bioethicists tell the doctor that it is wrong, and the doctor performs it while believing it to be wrong, the doctor commits a formal sin without a material sin.

Similarly, it should be logically possible to have a sin that is materially venially sinful but which is formally mortally sinful because the agent misjudges the act as much worse than it is.

In my late teens and 20s, I suffered a lot from scrupulosity: I was constantly afraid that I had committed a mortal sin, in a way that was disproportionate to my actual moral failings (which I had plenty of, but mainly they weren’t the ones I was scrupulous about). And the possibility of a materially venially sinful act that is formally mortally sinful worried me a lot. I would say to myself things like: “Granted, on reflection, this was not objectively a mortal sin, and maybe not even a sin at all, but maybe at the time I thought it was grave, and so I was formally mortally sinning.” And I would engage in fruitless and agonizing soul-searching to figure out what it was that I was thinking when I was engaging in the act. I know I am not alone in suffering from this.

But even though it is logically possible to have a formally mortal sin that is materially venial, it is a striking historical fact that the Catholic tradition typically uses the formal-material distinction to excuse rather than to accuse, to the point where one fairly recent writer in a very helpful piece on scrupulosity actually writes that it is impossible to have the materially venial but formally mortal combination.

I thought about this, and realized that there is actually an asymmetry between using the formal-material distinction to lower responsibility and using it to boost responsibility. Here it is. Cases where a materially mortal sin is formally venial due to the agent’s error are easy to get given our individual and communal fallenness. All that’s needed is that the agent have enough considerations—say, coming from errors circulating in the community—against the thesis that the act is gravely wrong to induce sufficient doubt to make the action as done by the agent no longer be a definitive rejection of God.

But cases where a materially venial sin becomes formally mortal due to the agent’s error require that the agent definitely see the action as wrong. And that requires a more thoroughgoing kind of epistemic malfunction. It’s not enough that error induce sufficient doubt—that’s quite easy, hence the commonality of the responsibility-reducing case—but the error has to sufficiently silence the truth to make the agent definitely believe the erroneous thing. For without definite belief that the action is gravely wrong we do not have formally mortal sin.

Imagine that Bob is committing gluttony by eating one more potato than he should, and due to some error—perhaps grounded in an eating disorder—he starts worrying that eating this potato is a mortally sinful case of gluttony, but he continues eating nonetheless. But here is something else that is likely: unless Bob is very far gone down the path of error, he likely has a bit of common sense testifying in him that eating an extra potato is not a serious matter. On the one hand, then, he has error pulling him to think that it is mortally sinful to eat the potato, but on the other hand, he has common sense. The result is very likely to be a divided mind, rather than a mind definitely believing that the action is mortally sinful, and hence it is very unlikely that the action be formally a mortal sin.

In other words, it is easy to muddy the waters enough to reduce responsibility, but it is a lot harder to come to the kind of definite erroneous belief that would be required to increase responsibility.

And a fortiori it is even harder to have a case where an action isn’t materially sinful at all but due to error it becomes formally mortally sinful. Again I think such cases are possible, but I expect they are quite rare.

Finally, I would think that the rare cases where the formal-material distinction functions to raise responsibility are going to be even rarer in Catholics. For Catholics not only have conscience, but they have the Church’s guidance, and so it is even harder for them to be definitely mistaken.

Actions that are gravely wrong for qualitative reasons

Some types of wrongdoing vary in degree of seriousness from minor to grave. Stealing a dollar from a billionaire is trivially wrong while stealing a thousand dollars from someone poor is gravely wrong. A poke in the back with a finger and breaking someone’s leg with a carefully executed kick can both be instances of battery, but the former is likely to be a minor wrong while the latter is apt to be grave.

On the other hand, there are types of wrongdoing that are always grave. An uninteresting (for my purposes) case is where the gravity is guaranteed because the description of wrongdoing includes a grave-making quantitative feature as in the case of “grand theft” or “grevious bodily harm”. The more interesting case is where for qualitative reasons the wrongdoing is always grave. For instance, murder and rape. There are no trivial murders or minor rapes.

Of course, even if a type of act is always seriously wrong, the degree of culpability might be slight, say due to lack of freedom or invincible ignorance. Think of someone brainwashed into murder, but who still has a slight sense of moral discomfort—although her action is gravely wrong, she may be only slightly culpable. My interest right now, however, is in the degree of wrongness rather than of culpability.

We can now distinguish types of wrongdoing that are always grave for qualitative reasons from those that are always grave merely for quantitative reasons. Here is a fairly precise characterization: if W is a type of wrongdoing that is always grave for qualitative reasons, then there is no sequence of acts, starting with a case of W, and with merely quantitative differences between the acts, such that the sequence ends with an act that isn’t grave. Grand theft and grevious bodily harm are examples of types of wrongdoings that are always grave merely for quantitative reasons.

On the other hand, it is intuitively plausible that murder and rape are not gravely wrong for merely quantitative reasons. If this intuition is correct, then we get some very interesting substantive consequences. In the case of rape, I’ve explored some relevant issues in a past post, so I want to focus on murder here.

The first consequence of taking murder to be always gravely wrong for qualitative reasons is that there is no continuous scale of mental abilities (whether of first or second potentiality) that takes us from people to lower animals. An unjustified killing of a lower animal is only a minor wrong (take this to constrain what “lower” means). If there were a continuous scale of mental abilities from people to lower animals, then murder would be gravely wrong only for quantitative reasons: because the victim’s mental abilities lie on such-and-such a position on the scale. So once we admit that murder is gravely wrong for qualitative reasons, we have to suppose a qualitative gap in the spectrum of mental abilities. This probably requires the rejection of naturalism.

A second consequence is that if killing a consenting adult in normal health is murder—which it is—then euthanasia is gravely wrong. For variation in health and comfort is merely quantitative, and one cannot go from a case of murder to something that isn’t gravely wrong by merely quantitative variation, since murder is always gravely wrong for qualitative reasons.

I suspect there are a number of other very interesting consequences of taking murder to be gravely wrong for qualitative reasons. I think these consequences will motivate some people to give up on the claim that murder is gravely wrong for qualitative reasons. But I think we should hold on to that claim and accept the consequences.

The unthinkable

Typically when we say that some course of action is unthinkable, we have already thought it.  Perhaps there is an equivocation, though.  Maybe what we mean is that the course of action is one that we can think about with theoretical reason, but cannot deliberate about with practical reason.  But isn't the revulsion from the course of action in fact a matter of the will?  Maybe it is a matter of the will, but not of the will in respect of deliberation?

I've seen a classic moral theology textbook say that if you've deliberated whether to commit a mortal sin, you've already committed a mortal sin.  Of course, it is presupposed here that you're aware that the action you're deliberating about is a mortal sin.  Maybe the idea is this.  Deliberation involves weighing the pros and cons of an action.  But as soon as you've realized that a course of action involves you in mortal sin, it is illegitimate to weigh the pros of the course of action.  If you do so, you're implicitly conditionally attaching your will to the mortal sin, conditionally on the pros being great enough.  It would be a mortal sin to explicitly conditionally attach your will to a mortal sin--for instance, to resolve to commit adultery if you win the lottery.  Whether the implicit conditional attachment in deliberation yields mortal sin is something I am not so sure about.  But it is surely sinful.

Of course this needs to be distinguished from a non-deliberative consideration of the benefits of a gravely wrong action.  There can be good reason to engage in such consideration.  For instance, one might try to think through the benefits of a sinful action in order to come up with a rhetorically powerful exhortation against the action, by contrasting the induced decay of soul with the temporariness of the benefits.

Spiritual sickness and spiritual death

There is a temptation for Catholics—also present for non-Catholic Christians but with different terminology—to settle for avoiding mortal sin. After all, if one has living faith and does not reject Christ's salvific grace through mortal sin, one will be saved. So why should one worry about venial sin?

Leaving aside the question of purgatory—for that is not the heart of the issue, but something more in the way of an effect of it—here is one thing that is wrong with this. In a state of mortal sin, one is bereft of living faith, of charity and of Christian hope. One is spiritually dead. If one is not a state of mortal sin, then one is spiritually alive. But surely we are not merely satisfied with being alive.

It would be silly to say: "I shall not go to the doctor. Yes, I have a great big ulcer, but after all, I am alive, and that is all that matters." While there may be contexts where it is appropriate to shout with joy "I am alive!" as if that was all that mattered—for instance, right after one's life (spiritual or physical) has just been saved. But as regards the body, we do not just want life. We want a life of health. One can be alive, but very ill, close to death. There is still reason to have the joy of life—there is a qualitative difference between that life and death—but that is not what we aspire to. (Here, of course, one recalls what Socrates says about how happiness is thought to require health of body and in fact requires health of soul.)

But there is a disanalogy between the physical illness of those who are physically alive and the spiritual illness of those who are spiritually alive. For while this particular physical illness may not win out, our mortal body is after all heading for the grave—perhaps unless the eschaton intervenes.[note 1] But while spiritually ill though in a state of grace, there is reason to hope—not just hope to overcome that particular illness, but to overcome them all, by the grace of Christ living in us. Thus we do have more reason to rejoice over being spiritually alive than over physically alive—but this rejoicing cannot lead to idleness, since after all, how much do we want to prolong our ill health?

Sharp cutoffs in the moral life

Ted Sider apparently has an argument (I reporting second-hand) that there is a continuum in the degree of sinfulness, but there is no continuum in the heaven-hell welfare spectrum, since there is a sharp jump in welfare as one moves from an eternity of suffering to an eternity of joy. Therefore, he concludes, divine judgment cannot be just if the outcomes are heaven or hell.

Now one way to answer this is to say that there really are sharp cutoffs in the moral life, such as that between those in a state of mortal sin and those not in a state of mortal sin. The cutoffs would not be defined by some kind of a moral arithmetic[note 1], but by a qualitative fact about the state of the person's will. Thus, Aquinas defines the state of mortal sin in terms of the lack of charity. Now, charity is a fairly sharply defined state of friendship with God (which state is always the fruit of grace). The mortal sinner lacks charity entirely, though the charity will be restored in repentance and forgiveness. Now, there might be a continuum in the degree of charity, say from zero to a hundred, but the difference between zero charity and even the tiniest bit of charity is deeply significant. Even a tiny bit of charity makes one fit for eternity with God (but the more charity there is, the more blissful that eternity will be). But a complete lack of charity makes one fit for damnation.

Is it plausible that there should be such sharp cutoffs in the moral life? Well, what led me to this reflection was watching the excellent 1953 film Pickup on South Street. The central character, Candy (Jean Peters), is a woman who has lived somewhat on the wrong side of the law, and is now trying to leave that life behind, but has one last task of greyish legality. However, she finds that she is enmeshed in a situation of Soviet espionage. And then it becomes clear that she sees a yawning gulf between mere crime and treason, and she assumes, perhaps wrongly, that other people living on the wrong side of the law see it this way, too. It is one thing, in her mind to be a pickpocket (though she is not one herself), and quite a different to work for the Reds. The film makes it plausible that there is indeed a sharp cutoff between other crimes and treason. It's almost as if treason were an allegory for mortal sin. See the film—it is really good. (If you have Netflix, it's available from their Watch Instantly section—that's how I watched it.)