A Question on Sloth

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Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question.

I have problems related to severe anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One of the problems that people with PTSD have is that they recurringly see their traumatic memories replayed in their head.

It feels like almost every day this will hit me when I am just going about my business. When this happens, the only thing that I know that will help is to drop what I am doing, go home, and lie in bed. It has gotten a lot better than it used to be, but I still spend more time lying down than most people do.

This makes me feel really guilty because I know that I could be doing something productive with my life for God, but instead I am lying around in bed for hours every day. I am working toward being able to pray this off, but I am still struggling with it.

Every time that I have gone to confession I have confessed slothfulness, with sincere repentence and sorrow in my heart for all of the selfish time that I’ve spent wastefully, lying in bed. But I feel really distressed about continuing to have to address this in the confessional, as I just don’t understand why I can’t overcome this.

I don’t feel comfortable giving an explanation to my priest that I have problems with PTSD, as I do not talk about it ‘in real life.’ He is my regular confessor and knows a little about the reasons behind my anxiety problems, but it was very uncomfortable talking about it during my first confession and I have not wanted to bring it up since.

I feel like he might be angry with me as he always tells me in what I think is an angry manner that I have to try harder than I am trying to ‘find joy.’ I feel very guilty because I have not done that sufficiently.

So my questions are,
  1. Does my psychological condition lessen the amount of culpability I have over being slothful?
  2. Is it a sin that I am not emotionally happy and my priest directed me to try harder to be?
Thank you so much.
 
Obviously, you are concerned with couching the information in such a way that your confessor will have a knee jerk reaction. The priest is a people too and people are subject to knee jerk reactions. In this case not to call it Sin.

It is clear to me that the practice of Christianity is all about what you value as opposed to how well you perform. Your medical condition is a hardship that inhibits your ability to perform. What matters is not your inability to perform, but your appreciation for the need to perform. Paradoxically, you will have Sinned if you felt no guilt, but since you feel guilt, ironically, you are either without or with little Sin. In all likelihood there is a little something you could do better and it is your failure in that little thing, and not the big things, where your Sin resides. Permit your condition to strengthen your appreciation and love of those things lacking in Sin.
 
Eat a Balance diet
Exercise regularly
See Doc for physical/Rx
Pray for your Priest
 
In response to your second question, “2. Is it a sin that I am not emotionally happy and my priest directed me to try harder to be?” Again, it is a value system as in a set of values. Clearly, it is not a Sin to be unhappy, but if your faith were perfect even then, Was our Lord Jesus Christ happy at the moment of His death? Having said that, there is a relationship between faith and happiness. It is just that happiness is not what we seek per se. We desire meaning. A meaningful life is in a sense a happy life though it will often be unhappy in many ways.

Confer
Catholic Answers Forums > Forums > Apologetics > Moral Theology
Title: Are you sweet?
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=743498

It is about trying. Whether you achieve your goal to be happy or find meaning in misery is somewhat beside the point.

It is sweet to try. Not so sweet never to bother with it.
 
You were called by the Church to try to find happiness as an act of faith, not necessarily to achieve this goal if it should prove unattainable. Failure is to be expected. Do not be that person who never tried. When it is time for Our Lord Jesus Christ to come for you and He asks you, “Did you try?” Say to Him who is Love, “Yes Lord, I tried.” When He asks you, “Did you succeed?” Say to Him who is Goodness, “No, Lord, I failed.” What will Our Lord Jesus Christ say? “Never was I concerned with whether or not you succeeded or failed. We are of one heart. For this you shall enter the Kingdom of God.”

Making the Sign of the Cross

Luke 2:14
“Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”
nasb.scripturetext.com/luke/2.htm
 
I made the sign of the cross. I became curious and looked it up. What is its significance beyond what I already know?

orthodoxwiki.org/Sign_of_the_Cross

The Sign of the Cross … represents loving God with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength.

From the same web page as above.
I liked what Saint Peter of Damascus (12th Century) had to say:

Then we should also marvel how demons and various diseases are dispelled by the sign of the precious and life-giving Cross, … The two fingers and single hand with which it is made represent the Lord Jesus Christ crucified, and He is thereby acknowledged to exist in two natures and one hypostasis or person. The use of the right hand betokens His infinite power and the fact that He sits at the right hand of the Father. That the sign begins with a downward movement from above signifies His descent to us from heaven. Again, the movement of the hand from the right side to the left drives away our enemies and declares that by His invincible power the Lord overcame the devil, … .

From the same web page as above.
… Thus by using two fingers, one would profess the two natures in Christ.
 
Fulcrum said:
Luke 2:14
“Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”
nasb.scripturetext.com/luke/2.htm
Click to expand...
What might an atheist say in response to this? An atheist might say, “What peace?” Why can your faith be betrayed in the little things and not so much the big things? The analogy made by Our Lord Jesus Christ explains it. Faith begins as a mustard seed. What is the significance of the heart? The heart is what keeps us alive. It does so more directly than the brain. It is closer and more central to your identity as a living organism than the brain. The heart is about life and what it means to be alive. Physics, for example, is the study of dead matter. We are not dead. The heart is at the crux of this conundrum.

An atheist would say we are simply an expression/manifestation of dead matter. How this occurs they don’t know. They posit this as a matter of faith. It is a useful working assumption for scientists. A working assumption and a fact are not the same thing. It is a fact that we are not dead. The faithful posit that aliveness is not an expression/manifestation of dead matter. Aliveness came first and aliveness is fundamental as opposed to a construct. Atheists assume that it is a construct.

How does something that is alive express itself? Therein lies the answer. It begins as a mustard seed, then it grows.

If you feel that I have hijacked this thread, you will have denied God for you are preoccupied with death, not life. The brain is preoccupied with death. Our heart is not. Our heart is preoccupied with what it means to be alive.

Luke 2:14 is a blessing. It is a thing your heart will comprehend. If you see with your heart, you will understand its significance. If you see with your head, you won’t.

Your heart says, “Be strong. The odds don’t matter. Success or failure is irrelevant.”
 
I am going to make a reference to Abraham Lincoln though you would think it could be unwise to do so. Abraham Lincoln had heart. He had moxy. It is your heart that tells you to make a stand once again.

greatamericanhistory.net/lincolnsfaith.htm
There is little doubt that Lincoln, as a young man, went through a period of skepticism towards Christianity.

It is natural to struggle with faith. The struggle is not indicative. Life is struggle. It does not indicate that you have a lack of faith. The struggle in fact can be an indicator of great faith.

mercifultruth.com/lincoln.html
Lincoln wrote an essay about 1833 on predestinated universal salvation in criticism of the orthodox doctrine of endless punishment.

I have alluded to this in a thread I did not initiate, but one that I’ve posted to
Catholic Answers Forums > Forums > Catholic Living > Spirituality
Title: Are most of us going to hell?
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=740578
Web Page 4, Post 55
Fulcrum said:
Since God can forgive Sin, the capacity to Sin is not the criteria. You are preoccupied with the capacity of man to Sin. Do you require a trillion souls to keep you company in the after life?

Does the devil trust God? God giveth and God taketh. Devil zero. God takes it ALL.
Click to expand...
The problem is the situation is ambiguous. How do I look at it? I think of Hell as a black hole. It has been discovered that black holes give off what is known as Hawking radiation and thereby slowly evaporate. The amount of time a black hole needs to evaporate, however, is often measured in billions of years. If we think life on Earth is hell and the average human life span is say 100 years, if Hell is a black hole the degree in which you will suffer before your suffering finally ends could be a billion times that. If the trap you are caught in lasts say a billion years, you might get out since

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe: “The best estimate of the age of the universe is 13.75 ± 0.11 billion years …”

there might be time to get free, but what if the time needed for the black hole to evaporate were greater than the age of the universe? In such a trap you might be stuck there for all eternity. As such the situation is ambiguous. Perhaps there are hells that are not eternal much as the Church teaches, namely Purgatory, and hells that are eternal.

For all practical purposes a billion years would be an eternity. Either way, eternal or eternal for all practical purposes, it is not a place you want to end up in.

The Protestants in their effort to distance themselves from the Church have been exploring these ambiguities.
 
AssisiFollower said:
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question.

I have problems related to severe anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One of the problems that people with PTSD have is that they recurringly see their traumatic memories replayed in their head.

It feels like almost every day this will hit me when I am just going about my business. When this happens, the only thing that I know that will help is to drop what I am doing, go home, and lie in bed. It has gotten a lot better than it used to be, but I still spend more time lying down than most people do.

This makes me feel really guilty because I know that I could be doing something productive with my life for God, but instead I am lying around in bed for hours every day. I am working toward being able to pray this off, but I am still struggling with it.

Every time that I have gone to confession I have confessed slothfulness, with sincere repentence and sorrow in my heart for all of the selfish time that I’ve spent wastefully, lying in bed. But I feel really distressed about continuing to have to address this in the confessional, as I just don’t understand why I can’t overcome this.

I don’t feel comfortable giving an explanation to my priest that I have problems with PTSD, as I do not talk about it ‘in real life.’ He is my regular confessor and knows a little about the reasons behind my anxiety problems, but it was very uncomfortable talking about it during my first confession and I have not wanted to bring it up since.

I feel like he might be angry with me as he always tells me in what I think is an angry manner that I have to try harder than I am trying to ‘find joy.’ I feel very guilty because I have not done that sufficiently.

So my questions are,
  1. Does my psychological condition lessen the amount of culpability I have over being slothful?
  2. Is it a sin that I am not emotionally happy and my priest directed me to try harder to be?
Thank you so much.
Click to expand...
I have the same problem! God bless you and keep the faith!👍
 
AssisiFollower have you considered the possibility that your interest is not so much not to Sin, but to recover? You feel powerless. You obviously desire control. Sin is something you can control.

I know what it is to experience trauma. In my case, I know what it is to be a rape victim without being a rape victim. It is the worst possible place to be in. It concerns a woman and it was like something out of the film The Exorcist. Her cruelty was without bound. It was as violent as something could be without being violent. The violence was psychological and the psychological violence was maximal. I cried for years. It is known that such violence is more damaging than physical violence. Why was she as violent as she was? Ironically, it was because I was in love with her. A long, but interesting story.
 
How did I emerge from this trauma? There is little in my life to mask the wounds. I have been wounded many times. I got to know God in a way I never thought I would. Perhaps there is a reason why I am fond of the Fifteen Prayers of Saint Bridget of Sweden. God endured a terrible trauma which was both psychological and physical for our benefit and salvation.
 
Getting back to what I wrote on black holes, don’t fall in. I said that for levity sake, anyway the time it takes for a black hole to evaporate is a function of its mass. Massive black holes like those at the center of galaxies will take billions of years to evaporate, but smaller black holes it is believed do not take nearly as long. A microscopic black hole could take only a fraction of a second to evaporate. And so I believe it is possible to get trapped in such black holes in a spiritual sense that perhaps take a life time to climb out of or in some cases a microsecond.

This analogy not only makes intellectual sense to me, but also one that is grounded in experience. This horror that I endured, it was as if I had imploded much like a dying sun implodes; surrounded on all sides.
 
I did not Sin. I was honorable. The force exerted on me was Satanic.
 
Not only was I honorable. I endured my suffering with honor. Why? Because I honored myself too greatly to do otherwise. I honored that love that was in my heart and the heart that bore such love.
 
They say what does not kill you makes you stronger. A day came for a most Holy thing. When I used my strength to save another.

I imparted to you a most Holy thing. Do not squander what I’ve given you.
 
AssisiFollower said:
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question.

I have problems related to severe anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One of the problems that people with PTSD have is that they recurringly see their traumatic memories replayed in their head.

It feels like almost every day this will hit me when I am just going about my business. When this happens, the only thing that I know that will help is to drop what I am doing, go home, and lie in bed. It has gotten a lot better than it used to be, but I still spend more time lying down than most people do.

This makes me feel really guilty because I know that I could be doing something productive with my life for God, but instead I am lying around in bed for hours every day. I am working toward being able to pray this off, but I am still struggling with it.

Every time that I have gone to confession I have confessed slothfulness, with sincere repentence and sorrow in my heart for all of the selfish time that I’ve spent wastefully, lying in bed. But I feel really distressed about continuing to have to address this in the confessional, as I just don’t understand why I can’t overcome this.

I don’t feel comfortable giving an explanation to my priest that I have problems with PTSD, as I do not talk about it ‘in real life.’ He is my regular confessor and knows a little about the reasons behind my anxiety problems, but it was very uncomfortable talking about it during my first confession and I have not wanted to bring it up since.

I feel like he might be angry with me as he always tells me in what I think is an angry manner that I have to try harder than I am trying to ‘find joy.’ I feel very guilty because I have not done that sufficiently.

So my questions are,
  1. Does my psychological condition lessen the amount of culpability I have over being slothful?
  2. Is it a sin that I am not emotionally happy and my priest directed me to try harder to be?
Thank you so much.
Click to expand...
Is there a possibility of confessing to a different priest? Maybe you just need a different point of view or an alternative option in your confessions right now.

If you do decide and are able to go to another priest you might want to wait awhile to explain the question of sloth vs. PTSD/depression/anxiety right away (it might be best to get to know the new priest and get a feel for how he would likely respond). I’d like to point out that doubtful sins don’t have to be confessed. You have doubt as to whether you have even committed the sin of sloth.

It may well be that you are doing the very best thing you can do, in your current circumstances, to take care of your health and “recharge your batteries” so that later on in your life you’ll be ready to do great things for Our Lord! 🙂 So if I were you, I’d hold off on even confessing it unless you have certain knowledge that on one given day you were truly being lazy for no good reason. Spiritual direction may also help in discerning some of this, if a good spiritual director is available to you.

You might want to jot down a list of Scriptures or songs (one favorite of mine is John Michael Talbot’s version of “Holy Darkness” - about the dark night of the soul). Figure out if it helps you more to read a really “down in the pit” reading, such as Psalm 22 - which begins “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” so that you know Jesus has gone through sufferings as we have and understands . . . or on the other end a rejoicing or comforting verse. (Example - Romans 8:38-39). Or to start with the one that acknowledges your pains and fears, then progress in prayer to the one that helps you really believe that God has already won, and that Satan is just trying to drag us down. Whatever helps YOU.

Finally, consider that by taking a “time out” you may be doing the safest thing which is a form of charity. If you’re beset by flashbacks, it’s probably not the best time to be out on the road, or even trying to interact with other people.

God bless you, and I will pray that your struggle lessens. :hug3: :angel1:
 
Thank you, 3DOCTORS; your helpful advice was I think just what I needed. (:
 
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