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According to Catholic social teaching, the purpose of political society is to promote peace. By peace is meant the “tranquility of order,” as St. Augustine called it—that is, the serenity that results from people living in proper relation to one another, acting justly toward one other, and helping the community to thrive.   We call the order of people properly relating to one another social justice and the peace that results civil peace, or peace within a community. …

As St. John says, “All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal” just as “there is sin which is mortal” (1 John 5:16-17). So what sin is mortal and what is not?  A mortal sin is one that “destroys in us the charity without which eternal beatitude is impossible. Unrepented, it brings eternal death” (CCC 1874). That’s what makes it “mortal,” or deadly: it cuts us off from God forever, unless it is “redeemed by repenta …