Fr John Flader: Of course you’ll sin again…

Q: In the act of contrition after confession I say “and with the help of thy grace I will not sin again”.  I have always had a problem with this since I know I will sin again. Sometimes to be safe I say “I will try not to sin again”. What should I say?

Your question troubles many people and it is a good time to answer it.
True sorrow for sin, or sorrow for having offended another person for that matter, always implies the determination to try not to do it again. Without this determination, which we call purpose of amendment, there is no true sorrow.
This determination lies between two extremes: on one hand the conviction or statement of fact that we will not sin again, and on the other an uncaring attitude that does not even try to avoid sinning. Let us first examine these extremes.
Firstly, as you say, we know we will sin again, no matter how hard we try not to. It is simply a consequence of the weakness of human nature wounded by original sin. With original sin comes the fomes peccati, the tinder of sin; that is, the tendency or facility to sin which we all experience.
Even St Paul speaks of his difficulty in avoiding sin: “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death” (Romans 7:21-24)?
And St John writes: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn 1:8).
No matter how determined we are to avoid it, we know that inevitably we will sin again. The Council of Trent tells us that we cannot avoid all sins except with a special grace of God: “If anyone says that a man once justified … can during his whole life avoid all sins, even those that are venial, except by a special privilege from God, as the Church holds in regard to the Blessed Virgin, let him be anathema” (Sess. VI, Can. 23).
Therefore, in the act of contrition when we say “I will not sin again,” we are not stating a fact, or even a conviction that we will not sin again. No one can have that conviction, since we know our weak and sinful nature.
But on the other hand, neither can we have the careless attitude of one who does not even try to avoid sinning because he knows he is going to fall anyway. That would not be sorrow at all.
This attitude is what some non-Catholics accuse us of having when we go to Confession – that we commit sins, go to Confession to be purified and then go back to our sinful ways without even trying to avoid them.
True sorrow implies a firm resolution or determination to do everything possible to avoid falling again into the sins we have just confessed.
The Council of Trent teaches that “the repentance of a Christian … includes … a determination to avoid sins and a hatred of them…” (Sess .VI, Chp. 14). We must both have a hatred or detestation of sin, seeing it as ugly and offensive to God, and a determination to avoid sins in the future.
We notice that the Council is saying only that we must have a “determination to avoid sins”, not a conviction that we will in fact avoid them.
This determination includes the resolution to avoid the occasions of sin. Thus if we have voluntarily put ourselves into occasions of sin such as associating with certain people, watching certain television programmes or films, looking at certain sites on the internet, etc, which have led us into sins, our purpose of amendment must include the resolution to avoid those occasions.
It should also include praying for help to avoid sinning, and doing penance, both to make up for past sins and to strengthen the will in grace for future battles.
If we have these dispositions, then our sorrow is true and genuine, and God will forgive us.
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