Motive
It is the motive for repentance (rather than the intensity of feeling) that distinguishes the two forms of contrition, and it is possible for perfect and imperfect contrition to be experienced simultaneously.
According to Catholic teaching, perfect contrition removes the guilt and eternal punishment due to mortal sin, even before the sinner has received absolution in the sacrament of penance. However, a Catholic is still bound, under Church law, to confess grave sins at the first opportunity.
Read more about this topic: Perfect Contrition
Famous quotes containing the word motive:
“There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men’s failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal’s natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle?”
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)
“He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, there are some harbors which they can never reach.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)