Dreamed the Sin AND the Confession

[DaveBj]

I have a very active, vivid dream life, and I sometimes share what I dream with my wife, who doesn’t dream at all. It’s sort of a point of amusement between us–my wierd dreams.

Sometimes my dreams involve sinful activities, and my wife has expressed concern that I need to confess those activities or proclivities; however, I am convinced (by discussion here as well as by material from other Catholic sources) that dreams are out of our control and do not need to be confessed. (I would make an exception for a lucid dream, where I take control of that dream and turn it to sinful purposes, but that’s not what’s under discussion here.)

Fast forward to the other day. While sleeping off a mid-shift, I had a sexual dream (don’t remember any details; only that I had it). Later during the day’s sleep I dreamed that I was going to our parish priest to confess the activity in the earlier dream.

I guess if the sin is in a dream, then a dreamed confession covers it?



DaveBj

 

[vluvski]

You are correct, dreamt sins are not sins at all. Fr. Serpa answered my same question on AAA. Even dreams where we feel as if we’ve made a conscious decision to sin, even if in a state of half-sleep, are not sins, period, according to Fr. Serpa.

Any sin that could be attached to the dream would have happenned sometime before going to bed by not guarding one’s thoughts against lust or rage or whatever.

I think the reason we sometimes feel responsible for dreamt sins is that our past behavior leads us to believe that we might have done the same thing if we faced that situation in real life. You probably wouldn’t feel obligated to confess something positively absurd, but if you dreamt about a sin you might be tempted to commit in real life, you feel halfway responsible for it. The bottom line is that it is not a sin. You may, however, feel free to confess it just the same in order to feel better.

Dreamt confessions probably only work for dreamt sins, kind of like how dreaming I turned in my homework assignment didn’t get me credit for the assignment. (This really happened to me a couple years ago, luckily the teacher laughed and let me turn it in late!)

 

[marcadam]

DaveBj:

…(I would make an exception for a lucid dream, where I take control of that dream and turn it to sinful purposes, but that’s not what’s under discussion here.)

A small addition to vluvski’s good advice: since while in the subconscious state we do not have all our faculties about us, even “sins” committed while in a “lucid dream” state would not be sinful.