I am trying to make right in the sight of God, after a slight hiatus that took me on a spiritual journey which brought me back to the Church. It has been nearly 2 years since my last confession, and that was when I was going quite regularly, almost weekly, for a time. As I am trying to work on my examination of conscience, I am worried about things that happened before this 2 year period, things that I didn’t confess before both because I had forgotten about them at the time, and that I doubted whether they were actually sinful.
I read through the scrupulous 10 commandments, which would indicate that some of the things I’m doubtful of I need not worry about. But I don’t think I fit the category. The things I’m doubtful of are things that happened once, briefly, and many, many years ago, when I was an adolescent. In particular, I’m concerned about briefly entertaining a thought I had in response to a comment made by an elderly relative of mine who indicated she was concerned for her safety. My gut reaction was to protect her at all costs, and the thought of poisoning the person she feared came to mind. If I remember correctly, I only thought about this “plan” for less than a day, but I did think about it. At the time, I did not think of it as something bad - I saw it as defending this elderly relative of mine. Like I said, I was young. In retrospect, of course, many other “solutions” come to mind that would likewise protect her without harming anyone. I never had a similar thought about anyone else.
A couple years later, I joined the military, and of course as part of the training we were taught to seek blood of “the enemy”. Although I understand that the church’s stance on war is that it can be justifiable, I personally am a pacifist now. I have no qualms about the thoughts I had about “shooting to kill”, in the military, probably bc my mentality was that it was about self-defense (kill or be killed). And since this earlier episode with the thoughts to kill was also based on a perceived defense of the elderly relative, I am left confused as to whether this needs to be confessed.
Another question would be this - if one confesses to sex outside of marriage without going into details of the circumstances (ie. the marital status of the persons involved), does this absolve one from all the acts in that category? Or would premarital sex be one sin, and sex with someone in separation from their spouse be an additional sin?
I don’t want to have these sorts of things hanging over my head after my next confession. I’m on the straight-and-narrow road now, and I have been drawing closer to God, and I want to focus on more frequent confessions and working on sins that are still rearing their ugly head in my life today, not things that I never struggle with anymore.
I know I can err on the side of caution and confess to be on the safe side, but the thing is that these are very ugly things that I’d rather not bring up unless absolutely necessary. I already have sorrow for these and have amended my life to not repeating them.
) in which he discussed the psychology of temptations. They can help anyone understand the matter of sin and temptations.