115. Spiritual vs. carnal sins
115. SPIRITUAL VS. CARNAL SINS
Are sins of the flesh more or less serious than spiritual sins?
. . . [C]arnal sins are of less guilt but of more shame than spiritual sins. . . . As the Philosopher himself says,. . . sins of intemperance are most worthy of reproach because they are about those pleasures which are common to us and irrational animals; hence by these sins man is, so to speak, brutalized, for which same reason Gregory says that they are more shameful. . . (But) spiritual sins are of greater guilt than carnal sins.
Modern people often confuse guilt and shame. This rarely means reducing shame to guilt, but almost always reducing guilt to shame. Shame is social: being seen and disapproved by others. Guilt is individual: being seen and disapproved by God and/or your own conscience. The reason modern people often reduce guilt to shame is that their individual conscience is weak; and the reason it is weak is that their religious conscience is weak. For it is in the face of God that we become most inward and most individuated. We are never so inescapably ourselves as when we are alone with God.
Guilt is in souls, not in bodies: . . . the soul can be the subject of guilt while the flesh, of itself, cannot be the subject of guilt . . . whatever accrues to the flesh from the corruption of the first sin . . . has the character not of guilt but of punishment (I-II,83,1).
Spiritual sins are of greater guilt than carnal sins. Yet this does not mean that each spiritual sin is of greater guilt than each carnal sin, but that . . . spiritual sins are more grievous than carnal sins other things being equal . . . because carnal sin, as such, is against the sinner’s own body, which he ought to love less, in the order of charity, than God and his neighbor, against whom he commits spiritual sins, and consequently spiritual sins, as such, are of greater guilt. . .
(Also,) carnal sins have a stronger impulse, viz. our innate concupiscence of the flesh. Therefore spiritual sins, as such, are of greater guilt (being more deliberate). . . .
The devil is said to rejoice chiefly in the sin of lust because it is of the greatest adhesion and man can with difficulty be withdrawn from it. . . .
(However,) Adultery belongs not only to the sin of lust but also to the sin of injustice . . . so that adultery is so much more grievous than theft as a man loves his wife more than his possessions (I-II,73,5).
Adultery is grave not mainly because it occurs when we sink to the level of addicted animals but because it gravely harms the person we promised to love forever. Its spiritual dimension is its worst dimension: it is an injustice, a lie, a betrayal of love, of a person, the most important person in your life, and of your children, and of the very institution of marriage and the family, and thus of human society.
The lusting of the flesh against the spirit, when the reason actually resists it, is not a sin but is matter for the exercise of virtue (1-11,80,3).
We often confuse temptation with sin. This is wrong for two reasons. (1) Satan, not God, tempts. God only allows it (Jas 1:13). (2) Sin produces guilt. Temptation does not. Even Jesus was tempted with all the temptations we are tempted with, since He was wholly human (Heb 4:15). But unlike us, He resisted all temptations. When you are tempted, do not think God has abandoned you. The more virtuous you are, the more the Devil will try to tempt you (Lk 22:31). Look what He did to Christ.