I have a question for the forum. When is gambling a sin? I know that many churches support gambling, with bingo and at my chapel raffles. But is gambling a sin? My father, who grew up before Vatican II told me that the priests used to tell him that gambling is a sin, but today many churches, including many traditional churches promote gambling.

Recently I had just asked a priest this question via email:

Is playing the lottery a sin?

No, as long as one does not waste money on it that should be spent on other things.

Most casinos are owned by Jєωs which should tell us all we need to know. Gambling was listed in the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as one of the things they would use to distract and degrade us.

Being a professional gambler would definitely be a mortal sin.

Catholics should not play the lottery, the Bible clearly condemns trying to make fast money and promotes honest work.

Being a professional gambler would definitely be a mortal sin.

Three will get you seven that you don't know the first thing about sin, mortal or otherwise.

The long-standing Vatican II-generated crisis in the Faith is particularly evident in the critical absence of sound catechesis, of which the quoted comment is a painful example.

I have a question for the forum. When is gambling a sin? I know that many churches support gambling, with bingo and at my chapel raffles. But is gambling a sin? My father, who grew up before Vatican II told me that the priests used to tell him that gambling is a sin, but today many churches, including many traditional churches promote gambling.

No offense meant to your father, Matto, but since I grew up during same era (b. 1945), the only explanation I can come up with for his getting the wrong end of this particular stick is that he didn't notice that the priests who gave him that line were aliens from the planet Mongo in clever disguise.

Not only did I frequently hear denials of the in se sinfulness of gambling from the pulpit, but the Ursuline nuns who taught me in grammar school made the very same point time and again—precisely to resist the assumption by me and their other charges that the narrowminded Protestant morality of the community at large, which mistakenly characterized the abuse of drinking and gambling and similar pastimes as proof of their innate immorality, ought to be taken as correct.

While it is undoubtedly true that Americanism was rife among the hierarchy in the thirties, forties, and fifties—something that made the USA fertile soil for the Vatican II mind-set when it came on the scene—it is also true that in practical terms, the moral and doctrinal catechesis that most Catholics received at the parish and parochial school level was extremely sound, not least in its profound reasonableness. In one of its central aspects, that catechesis understood—and taught us youngsters to understand—that essentially every human inclination and interest and impulse found in this terrestrial plane was subject to exaggeration and abuse and corruption. The fault was in us, however, not in the Creation which Our Good Lord had placed us in.

There is nothing inherently evil in gambling. The more protestant we become the more we believe it is. Why! I have a protestant friend who believes drinking wine is sinful.

It all depends on whether you control your gambling or your gambling controls you. In the former no sin; in the latter sin.

Gambling is a destructive vice and is something that should be criticized.

Having seen my grandfather go to Vegas and lose tons of money on this rediculous venture and waste of time, go ahead and call me Puritanical or whatever but I oppose gambling, except if it is a simple card game meant to have fun with your friends.

There is nothing inherently evil in gambling. The more protestant we become the more we believe it is. Why! I have a protestant friend who believes drinking wine is sinful.

It all depends on whether you control your gambling or your gambling controls you. In the former no sin; in the latter sin.

This. As with everything, one must exercise personal restrain and self-discipline as to not fall in sinful excesses.