F
FormerlyScrupulous
Guest
I wanted to share some of my thoughts and experiences on this condition because I know how painful and malignant it can be. Scruples caused me to have a pervasively warped view of God, myself, and others. I was so afraid that I would “give consent to a bad thought” that I would sometimes shout in my head for fear of even hearing one. I was so excessively and irrationally critical of my own emotions and mental states that I was inevitably extremely critical of other people (which was itself, of course, sinful, something I never lost sight of and which only fueled my scruples more). I rarely felt the “love of God”. I would say words of love in vocal prayer but couldn’t really believe them. Sometimes I felt like God was a sort of tyrant who watched my every thought ready to throw me into Hell as soon as I slipped - and then I would fear that I had sinned mortally for feeling that way.
The basic way I overcame scruples is not new so I won’t say too much about it. I took communion even with these “doubtful mortal sins of thought” on my conscience. I took a view, in spite of my inclinations, that these scruples were essentially morbid, a sort of neurosis or mental illness. I prayed to Mary to remove them and kept in mind Sirach 33:5 “The heart of a fool is like a cart wheel, and his thoughts like a turning axle,” that is to say, to grow in wisdom we have to use our reason to observe with detachment and sometimes completely ignore our feelings, no matter how strong they might be.
Instead I want to share in these posts the fruits of the victory God gave me. A major problem with the way people talk about scruples and “consenting to a thought” is to say that the consent is sinful if it is “deliberate”. People take “deliberate” to mean “on purpose” when the Latin adjective means something more like “resolved” or even “with deliberation.” All bad thoughts are somewhat “willed”, they come from our concupiscence. If I’m walking down the street and see two sticks in the form of a cross, and am about to step on them, and at the last second think “Oh to hell with it! F*** it!” and step on them, that is not a true mortally sinful thought. It happened to fast. What did I even mean by thinking that? Was I rejecting God, rejecting my scruples, or expressing frustration generally? There’s no way to know. There’s no way to know because it wasn’t a truly deliberate thought. If I’m reading the Gospel accounts of the passion and resurrection and think “These don’t even mesh up… maybe some of it isn’t real…”, acknowledge the doubt without embracing it, and then later do some research to resolve my doubts, that is not a sin. If I’m thinking about something innocent and drift into something impure and then think “I don’t want to think this” and try to distract myself that is not a sin: as soon as my higher reason truly became aware of it I rejected it.
Even if it took a few seconds (like if I’m daydreaming or fatigued) for my higher reason to become engaged it’s not a mortal sin. You need full knowledge AND full, resolved consent present both together at the same time. (cont’d)
The basic way I overcame scruples is not new so I won’t say too much about it. I took communion even with these “doubtful mortal sins of thought” on my conscience. I took a view, in spite of my inclinations, that these scruples were essentially morbid, a sort of neurosis or mental illness. I prayed to Mary to remove them and kept in mind Sirach 33:5 “The heart of a fool is like a cart wheel, and his thoughts like a turning axle,” that is to say, to grow in wisdom we have to use our reason to observe with detachment and sometimes completely ignore our feelings, no matter how strong they might be.
Instead I want to share in these posts the fruits of the victory God gave me. A major problem with the way people talk about scruples and “consenting to a thought” is to say that the consent is sinful if it is “deliberate”. People take “deliberate” to mean “on purpose” when the Latin adjective means something more like “resolved” or even “with deliberation.” All bad thoughts are somewhat “willed”, they come from our concupiscence. If I’m walking down the street and see two sticks in the form of a cross, and am about to step on them, and at the last second think “Oh to hell with it! F*** it!” and step on them, that is not a true mortally sinful thought. It happened to fast. What did I even mean by thinking that? Was I rejecting God, rejecting my scruples, or expressing frustration generally? There’s no way to know. There’s no way to know because it wasn’t a truly deliberate thought. If I’m reading the Gospel accounts of the passion and resurrection and think “These don’t even mesh up… maybe some of it isn’t real…”, acknowledge the doubt without embracing it, and then later do some research to resolve my doubts, that is not a sin. If I’m thinking about something innocent and drift into something impure and then think “I don’t want to think this” and try to distract myself that is not a sin: as soon as my higher reason truly became aware of it I rejected it.
Even if it took a few seconds (like if I’m daydreaming or fatigued) for my higher reason to become engaged it’s not a mortal sin. You need full knowledge AND full, resolved consent present both together at the same time. (cont’d)
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