If you’re not Catholic, you may be thinking: “But Alt! You guys throw these terms around—mortal sin; grave matter; venial sin—I don’t know what these mean.” I get it; it’s not you. Catholics conflate “mortal sin” and “grave matter” all the time—even those who know the difference and could rattle it off by rote if brought before the Inquisition. Often, some will speak as though there is only a tenuous difference at best, of no more note than the difference between mud and mire. “Abortion is a mortal sin!” they will cry.
The important difference between “grave matter” and “mortal sin.”
BY: Henry Matthew Alt • May 3, 2024 • Theology
American factionalist Cardinal Burke, who falsely accuses Joe Biden of being an “apostate,” and who despite the preposterous hopes of Pope Francis haters is not papabile, says that Pope Francis is in schism. Here is where canon law, which Burke presumably knows so well, doesn’t do his reputed sagacity any favors. Schism, says Canon 751, is “the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” How is it that Pope Francis refuses to submit to himself? Even Burke understood that accusing the pope of schism is a “contradiction.”
Words matter, and because words matter, they must be used precisely—particularly when you are talking about sins against the faith. Two years ago, Cardinal Burke falsely claimed that President Biden is an “apostate.” “Such a person,” Burke said, “who claims to be a Catholic and yet promotes in such an open, obdurate, and aggressive way a crime like procured abortion is in the state, at least, of apostasy.” This was madness. Cardinal Burke is a canon lawyer and ought to know better. Is it possible to count the errors in these words?