Father Mike Schmitz: Questions
This page is a subcategory under the teaching already given to Father Mike Schmitz in file 12, Teachers. That file keeps his biblical teaching and his sermons. They stay where they are. This file does not move them, does not repeat them as if they belonged here, and does not replace them. What belongs here is a smaller thing: his practical answers to the ordinary "can I" questions of Catholic life, taken from Ascension Presents and set beside the Church's own answer. The channel is the same one named in the Teachers file:
https://www.youtube.com/@ascensionpresents
Father Mike Schmitz is a priest of the Diocese of Duluth and chaplain at the Newman Centre of the University of Minnesota Duluth. On Ascension Presents he has often answered the questions people actually ask a priest: about the body, about drink, about dating, about Confession, about Sunday, and about speech. The answers below are the Church's answers, spoken in the site's own words. They are not a transcript of his films, and they are not a debate with people who disagree. A Catholic who wants the reason goes to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and then, if the matter is personal, to a priest.
These answers do not replace the priest, Confession, or the Catechism. A mortal matter is taken to Confession. This page is a help for ordinary questions. It is not a tribunal, and it is not a permission slip. Where a film has been confirmed, it is embedded from Ascension Presents by the watch address YouTube gives. It is not downloaded, saved, or rehosted. Pressing play stops any other film on the site, so that a chant, a sermon, and a short answer are never left talking over one another. No photograph is printed here. A portrait of Father Mike was not fetched and confirmed from a source that could be named, so none is offered.
Eight films are kept. Each one was opened through YouTube's own oEmbed, and kept only because the author named there is Ascension Presents and the title is really his answer to a practical question. A film on the same channel that belongs to another speaker is not borrowed. A film from any other channel is not borrowed. Where no film of his could be confirmed, the Church's answer is given in a short paragraph, and the lack of a film is said plainly.
Can I get a tattoo?
A tattoo is not forbidden by the mere fact of being a tattoo. The Church does not list the mark itself among the acts that are intrinsically evil. The body, though, is not a blank wall. It is the body of a baptised person, a temple of the Holy Spirit, and it is to be treated with honour. A mark that is obscene, blasphemous, occult, or meant to degrade the person is not a fitting use of that body. A mark chosen in vanity, or in a rush the person will not still own in ten years, is at least a failure of prudence. The moral question is therefore not a slogan for or against ink. It is whether this permanent mark tells the truth about who the person is called to be, and whether it can still be lived with.
The title YouTube gives the film is: Can I Get a Tattoo?
Can I smoke?
No film of Father Mike answering the smoking question was confirmed on Ascension Presents. None is embedded. The Church's answer does not wait on a film.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, at paragraph 2290, names the virtue of temperance, which disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco, or medicine. Tobacco is therefore not in the same class as an act the Church calls intrinsically evil, and it is not in the same class as drunkenness, which that same paragraph joins to grave guilt when it endangers safety. Smoking remains a use of the body. Life and physical health are precious gifts, and the faithful must take reasonable care of them (CCC 2288). A habit that seriously damages health, or an addiction that steals freedom and the duty owed to one's family, offends that care and can become grave. A person who is enslaved to it should say so in Confession rather than call the habit a private taste. Temperance is the measure: not a panic about every cigarette, and not a pretence that the body does not matter.
Can I drink alcohol?
Yes, a Catholic may drink alcohol. Wine is treated in Scripture as a gift that gladdens the heart, and the Lord Himself gave wine at Cana and took the cup at the Last Supper. The Church has never taught that alcohol is unclean. What the Church condemns is drunkenness. Temperance forbids the excess that takes away the use of reason (CCC 2290). To drink until one cannot judge, speak, or keep from harming oneself or another is grave matter, and it is named as such. The drink that remains inside reason, shared with gratitude and without scandal, is permitted to the lay faithful and to priests alike. The person who knows that one drink becomes many is bound to act on that knowledge, not to quote the wedding at Cana against his own conscience.
The title YouTube gives the film is: Catholics, Alcohol, and Drinking
Can an unmarried couple spend the night together?
No. The sexual act belongs to marriage, and only to marriage. Fornication, which is sexual relations between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman, is gravely contrary to the dignity of the persons and of human sexuality (CCC 2353). Spending the night together is the ordinary near occasion of that sin, and a near occasion of grave sin is not a neutral sleeping arrangement. It is also a public word, whether the couple means it or not. Cohabitation and the so-called trial marriage are not the Church's path into the sacrament (CCC 2390 and 2391). Chastity before marriage is a real demand, not a mood the couple may postpone until the wedding morning. Affection is not the same thing as taking the rights of spouses. A couple that has already fallen should go to Confession, not rearrange the doctrine to match the night.
The title YouTube gives the film is: 3 Reasons Catholic Couples Don't Spend the Night Together Before Marriage
Can I go to Confession over the phone?
No. The sacrament of Penance is not a message left for a priest, and it is not a video call. The Church celebrates it as a meeting of persons: the penitent accuses himself, and the priest, standing in the person of Christ, absolves. Individual and integral confession is the only ordinary means by which a member of the faithful who is conscious of grave sin is reconciled (Code of Canon Law, canon 960; CCC 1484). The Church has not given the telephone, a text, or a screen as that meeting. If a person truly cannot reach a priest, perfect contrition, born of the love of God above all things, together with the firm resolution to confess as soon as confession becomes possible, obtains forgiveness even of mortal sins (CCC 1452). That is a mercy for impossibility. It is not a convenience for a person who would rather not enter the confessional. When a priest can be reached, the person goes.
The title YouTube gives the film is: Can I Go to Confession over the Phone?
Can I pray if I am in a state of mortal sin?
Yes. Pray, and then go to Confession. Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart and turns a person away from God by a grave matter, chosen with full knowledge and deliberate consent (CCC 1855 and 1857). It does not lock the door of prayer. The desire to pray after a fall is already grace drawing the person back. What prayer must not become is a way of staying away from the sacrament while receiving Holy Communion as if nothing had happened. Anyone conscious of grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before going to Communion, unless a grave reason urges otherwise and there is no opportunity to confess, in which case the person remembers the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition and to confess as soon as possible (CCC 1385 and 1457). Prayer, yes. The Eucharist, not until the person is restored. A mortal matter is taken to Confession.
The title YouTube gives the film is: Praying in a State of Mortal Sin
Do I have to go to Mass on Sunday?
Yes, unless a serious reason excuses you. The Sunday Eucharist is the foundation and confirmation of all Christian practice. On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass (CCC 2180 and 2181). Those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin (CCC 2181). The serious reasons that excuse are real ones: illness, the care of infants, or a dispensation from one's own pastor. Not feeling like it, and not "getting anything out of it," are not among them. If participation is impossible for a serious reason, the day is still kept as a day of prayer, of works of mercy, and of rest from unnecessary work (CCC 2183 and 2185). A person who has stayed away by choice does not repair the absence by a private prayer at the kitchen table. That person goes to Confession, and then returns to Mass.
The title YouTube gives the film is: Do I Have to Go to Mass? Sunday Obligation Explained
Can I pass on what I heard about someone?
Not as a rule, and never for sport. The honour of a person's name is not the speaker's property. The Catechism forbids rash judgement, detraction, and calumny (CCC 2477). Detraction, without an objectively valid reason, discloses another's faults to people who did not know them. Calumny harms a reputation by remarks contrary to the truth. Curiosity is not a valid reason. Neither is the wish to be interesting at table. There are times when the truth about a fault must be told: to protect the innocent, to warn a person who has a right to know, or to seek a remedy from someone who can give it. Those cases are narrow. They are not a licence to repeat a story because it is true, or because everyone else already seems to know. If the speech was sinful, it belongs in Confession, and the harm done to a name should be repaired as far as it can be.
The title YouTube gives the film is: 3 Questions to Ask to Prevent Gossiping
Can I sin by accident?
An accident, in the plain sense of an act not freely chosen, is not a sin. Sin is in the will. For a sin to be mortal, three things must come together: grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent (CCC 1857). Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, and other factors (CCC 1735). Unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offence, though no one is deemed ignorant of the principles of the moral law written on the conscience (CCC 1860). Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not lessen, but increase, the voluntary character of a sin (CCC 1859). A mistake is confessed as a mistake, not dressed up as a sin one did not commit, and not used as a cover for a choice one did commit. Where the person truly does not know whether the act was free and grave, the ordinary place to ask is Confession, not a comment box.
The title YouTube gives the film is: Can I Sin on Accident? 😬
What this page does not do
The biblical path and the sermons stay in file 12. The Bible in a Year is not moved here. This page does not collect every talk Father Mike has given, and it does not pretend that eight films are a moral theology. They are a help for ordinary questions: the tattoo, the drink, the night spent together, Confession at a distance, prayer after a fall, the Sunday obligation, talk about a neighbour, and the difference between a sin and an accident. Smoking is taught from the Catechism because no film of his on that question was confirmed. A further practical question that is not on this page is taken to the Catechism, and then to the person's own priest.
These answers do not replace the priest, Confession, or the Catechism. A mortal matter is taken to Confession. This page is a help for ordinary questions. Pressing play stops any other film on the site.