I recently had conversations with two people who both love the Lord and live a life striving for holiness. They said the same thing to me:
“I’m not normally scrupulous, but in ________ area of my life I’m afraid one slip up will be a mortal sin that sends me to hell.”

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I have had the same fear up until just a few years ago, it distorted my faith in ugly ways. But it is not what the Church teaches. It is not the Gospel. For a god who damns a person to hell just for breaking a rule is not a good god.

But our God is good.

Our God told us that he is the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep in the ditches and thorns until he finds it, the widow ceaselessly scouring her home for what has been lost, the father so eager to welcome his wayward son that he does not even let him finish his apology.

I think much of this fear comes from a lack of trust in our own conscience.
The Church’s teaching on conscience is so much more positive and freeing than how I often hear pastors and apologists speak about it (if they speak about it at all).

The Catechism teaches that the conscience “is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths” (CCC 1776).

Our conscience must be formed so that we can properly hear God’s voice directing our lives. The Church says that we form our conscience through regular interior prayer, reading scripture, paying attention to Church teaching, and examining our conscience.

A conscience can still error, so formation is a dynamic and perpetual thing, but the Church trusts that the Lord will direct the formed consciences of the faithful to do the good in any given circumstance.

If someone has a formed conscience, they can trust that following it won't condemn them. Actually, we are required to follow our conscience and are condemned if we don’t.

God speaks to us through our conscience and shows us our weaknesses and circumstances and, in light of that reality, the next step he wants us to take as we progress in a life of grace — even if that step does not yet fully meet the objective demands of the moral law.

None of this is to say that mortal sin isn't possible. The Church is clear that we have the radial freedom to reject God’s grace just as we have the radical freedom to love. But I think mortal sin looks a lot different than what most faithful Catholics suspect.

In his encyclical about hope, Pope Benedict described the kind of person who goes to hell and in doing so described the kinds of choices that would reject God's grace. In other words, Pope Benedict told us what a freely chosen mortal sin actually looks like.

Benedict said: "There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves...this is what we mean by the word Hell."

Mortal sin is not a technicality. It's not merely breaking a rule. It's not a slip up or a mistake. You cannot "fall" into mortal sin. It is a free and conscious choice to destroy our desire for truth and love.

The Catechism makes the astonishing claim that the "more we share the life of Christ and progress in his friendship, the more difficult it is to break away from him by mortal sin" (CCC 1395).

The more we grow in the life of grace — the more grace has made us like Christ — the less able we are to sin. Not because we become less free, but more free. Through grace, our minds and wills are being transformed to be like Christ's mind and will.

God shows us the behaviors that will lead to our freedom and happiness, he gives us the strength to live them out, and he transforms our hearts so that we desire to live that way.

This is true freedom: not only being able to live as Christ lived and love like Christ loved, but doing so with ease and joy because it is our own heart’s desire.

So if someone is genuinely growing in the life of grace, while mortal sin is indeed a possibility, it's going to be severe and obvious. It won’t be a mere slip up or technicality.

The Catechism says that the "education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart" (1784). Ministers and catechists, this scrupulous fear of mortal sin does not come out of nowhere. I learned it from others who thought they were passing on the true faith.

We must do better at helping the faithful trust their consciences and live in a life of freedom and peace. We must do better at revealing, and not distorting, the true character of God our Father.

What does a genuine catechesis on sin and conscience look like? And how does the Church ask us to accompany others in their weakness? I wrote an article about that for Homiletic & Pastoral Review: https://www.hprweb.com/2020/07/i-will-give-you-a-new-heart/