The Venial Kiss

Is kissing a mortal sin for the unmarried? Worried lovers may relax; it is only venial,* said Rome's clerical monthly, La Palestra del Clero, last week.

The kiss that started the discussion was confessed to his priest by a 15-year-old Italian village boy. Mortal sin, said the priest. The anguished youth went to a second confessor, who told him he had committed only a venial one. Back went the boy to the first priest, who in turn wrote to La Palestra del Clero for guidance.

There are two fundamental church documents on kissing, answered the journal's theological advisers: one by the Council of Vienne (1311-12), one by Pope Alexander VII, who reigned from 1655 to 1667. Both agree that if two unwed people kiss with intent to fornicate, they commit mortal sin, whether or not fornication follows. But if there is no such intention, if the kiss is only "a carnal delight limited to the act of kissing . . . if further consequences are neither indulged in nor thought of, the sin is only a venial sin."

Kissing that begins venial may turn mortal, warned La Palestra. "The spiritual direction of young adolescents," it summed up, "is delicate and difficult."

-Mortal sin condemns the unshriven sinner to hell, venial sin "merits only temporal punishment" and, unless expiated on earth, is paid for only by the pains of purgatory.

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