I would not speak of it ‘as more or less sinful in God’s eyes’. There are ‘mortal’ sins that are a conscientious rejection of a good, or acceptance of an evil with full consent. Then there are ‘those’ who through ignorance or unwillingly submit to a sin. What is sin? It is not always a ‘separation’ from God, though separation will always be a grave matter and thus sinful. More likely, it is ‘turning one’s face away from God.’ In other words, ignoring Him (though you know the precepts and admonitions from the Church and you defy your own conscience): this is self-will as opposed to God’s Will. 

We may well be quite close, so let me clarify that ‘sin to death’ is what we see unrepentant serious sin to be. That is a complete willful separation from God and a denial that God can or will forgive any sin if one is truly repentant. The classification as serious or mortal comes from the fact that these are complete and conscious ‘principle fractures’ and not merely acts that incidentally or unknowingly harm our relationship with God. It is helpful for us to be able to spot the difference and sometimes the difference can be very subtle.

I really do think that the guidance to recognizing mortal or serious sin is rather straight forward as a principle: serious, in that it is clearly a break with one of the 2 Great Commandments; that I had knowledge that it was a grave sin when I committed the offense and finally, I was not coerced in some way to offend God: in other words, knowingly and with my freewill. Not too hard a concept really.

If we were to ‘enumerate’ every sin, then the list would be as vast as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on a beach. What you might call lists reveal principles and Christ boiled those principles down into a mere 2 for our better understanding: love of God and love of neighbor (with an implied love of self and love also implies a type of respect and is deserving of obedient submission). All the billions of particular sins fall into one or the other. We wear these principles inwardly in our conscience if we were lucky enough to have them formed through right Christian principles as we matured. It allows us to investigate a particular fault and see if it is sinful or not. Since Christ abided by the Law of Moses and the Law of the OT Church, it would seem that in matters of the ‘dos’ and ‘don’t dos’ we have many witnesses and statements by Christ or His apostles to help us in that discernment. To discount, nullify or morph such direction into a new unrecognized guide to morality seems to be nothing short of mental gymnastics. At my age I am not supple enough to go through such contortions. I prefer the saints and the teachings that guided them to become saints. When enneagrams, centering prayer and acceptance of homosexual acts are found to have the profound effect of keeping us in close contact with God and helps us keep our face turned always toward Him then many saints will follow. Until I see the saintly produce I will continue to view these ‘fruits’ as of the same value to my spiritual life as the fruit that Adam and Eve partook: forbidden fruit.

There is here the danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I think there is an inherent presumptuousness that we somehow can and will discern something different and that it will somehow really be quite better than what has gone before. We might do well to recognize that many things which were norms were learned the hard way and contain much wisdom. Sodom and Gomorrah (whether the story is merely instructional or actual history) seemed to have left folks with a traditional understanding; but we have altered the meaning of the story today and we seem to claim that we can somehow produce these same sorts of societies in a way that won’t separate us from the face of God or bring His wrath down upon us. Such an approach seems hypothetical and idealistic and I think it very wrongheaded.