Is this wrong?

[DrewC]

I was a smoker for about a year and I asked my priest if it was a sin and he said no as long as you dont start puffing on 3 or 4 packs a day so I was fine with it. Now Im quitting smoking and im using smokeless tobacco and for some reason I feel it is a sin and God wont let me into Heaven for it. Now keep in mind I am a bit of a scuptulist so I dont know what to think. Can someone help me?

 

[Other_Eric]

I was a smoker for about a year and I asked my priest if it was a sin and he said no as long as you dont start puffing on 3 or 4 packs a day so I was fine with it. Now Im quitting smoking and im using smokeless tobacco and for some reason I feel it is a sin and God wont let me into Heaven for it. Now keep in mind I am a bit of a scuptulist so I dont know what to think. Can someone help me?

At the end of the day the only positive argument that can be made for smoking is a hedonistic one. To seek pleasure at the expense of one’s health is unseemly. Nevertheless, you are in the process of quitting and attempting to overcome a chemical dependency. This is admirable. If smoking is a sin, and I tend to think it may very well be, then in your case, given your chemical dependency, your culpability is mitigated if not altogether annihilated once it is understood that you are quitting.

 

[rpp]

I do not want to start an “is smoking a sin?” debate.

Whichever side you fall on, most agree that it is not generally desireable to have any personal habit or activity that offends the people around you, whether it be smoking or biting your fingernails.

I would say that I think scrupulosity is a much more serious spiritual problem than smoking probably is.

To quit smoking is good. Whether it is sinful or not does not matter. Anything that gets bewtween you and God should be eliminated to the best of your ability. By anything I would include any activity, even supposedly good activity, that distances you from God, inhibits your prayer life, interferes with your duties assigned by God, like parenthood, or is stumbling blcok to performing corporal works of mercy.

Even too much prayer can be bad. Should parents spend 14 hours a day in the Adoration chapel and ignore therr children? Of course not.