Stole items, what should I do?

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bgn2000

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Stole computer parts and the likes from stores along with food. I can’t bring them back because the barcodes and all that are off them. The priest in confessions said I need to restore things somehow. Anyone got any suggestions? Would counting the overall costs and donating that to charity like St.Vincent De Paul be good enough?
 
bgn2000 said:
Stole computer parts and the likes from stores along with food. I can’t bring them back because the barcodes and all that are off them. The priest in confessions said I need to restore things somehow. Anyone got any suggestions? Would counting the overall costs and donating that to charity like St.Vincent De Paul be good enough?
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It is good that you have confessed stealing these items. Your sin is forgiven.

Your priest is correct, however, that you must make reparation for the stolen items. To do this, your first obligation is to try and return the value of the items to their previous owner, and then if that is impossible, you should donate to charity.

You should first try to return the items (or at least an equivalent of their value) to the stores from which you stole them. Then, if this is impossible, give to charity.
 
bgn2000 said:
Stole computer parts and the likes from stores along with food. I can’t bring them back because the barcodes and all that are off them. The priest in confessions said I need to restore things somehow. Anyone got any suggestions? Would counting the overall costs and donating that to charity like St.Vincent De Paul be good enough?
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I would also donate to charity, that seems a very good idea!
 
You could send a money order or cash to the owner(s) amounting to the whole cost.

Good thing you don’t live in the Old Covenant; you would have had to restore several times the amount, or something like that.
 
JPUSC said:
Maybe you can mail back the items anonymously.
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This

Don’t donate stolen items to charity. It might bite you in the kiester pretty hard down the road if the charity finds out they’re stolen. It’s hot merchendise. There’s always risk involved when it’s moved, especially in the public sphere. Return it anonymously.
 
BookofJames said:
This

Don’t donate stolen items to charity. It might bite you in the kiester pretty hard down the road if the charity finds out they’re stolen. It’s hot merchandise. There’s always risk involved when it’s moved, especially in the public sphere. Return it anonymously.
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Returning the items isn’t possible, since I don’t even have the box anymore. They’d just have to give it to a store employee or throw it away, it can’t be sold again. It’s a graphics card by the way.

Calculating the cost and sending that amount to a charity or the company I think would be the only options.
 
bgn2000 said:
Returning the items isn’t possible, since I don’t even have the box anymore. They’d just have to give it to a store employee or throw it away, it can’t be sold again. It’s a graphics card by the way.

Calculating the cost and sending that amount to a charity or the company I think would be the only options.
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Good, then. Mail the company a quantity of cash equivalent (or as near equivalent as you can) to the stolen value.
 
Donate the cost of the item to charity or to the company that lost its merchandise.
 
It’s the company from which you stole the items that you’ve hurt, so it’s to that company you should make reparation. Put yourself in their shoes. If you were a business owner–perhaps struggling as many are now–and someone stole from you then donated the value of the items to a charity chosen by that person (it could be a Catholic charity, it could be Planned Parenthood…you get the idea), would you the business owner think that was right? Donate to charity, by all means, but do it on your own dime.

It is good that you confessed your sin.👍
 
bgn2000 said:
Stole computer parts and the likes from stores along with food. I can’t bring them back because the barcodes and all that are off them. The priest in confessions said I need to restore things somehow. Anyone got any suggestions? Would counting the overall costs and donating that to charity like St.Vincent De Paul be good enough?
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You should return the stolen items and confess what you did then accept the punishment, if any, the law provides. You need to take responsibility for your actions.
 
tjones80 said:
You should return the stolen items and confess what you did then accept the punishment, if any, the law provides. You need to take responsibility for your actions.
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In reference to the bolded text, you could not be more wrong in what you say there.

There is a longstanding principle that a penitent is not required to make public satisfaction for occult acts:

From the Code of Canon Law:

Can 1340 §2. A public penance is never to be imposed for an occult transgression.

From the 1964 Roman Ritual:
  1. He must not impose a public penance for sins that are secret, no matter what their enormity.
    From the S. Theol. II-II-62-6
Although a man is not bound to reveal his crime to other men, yet is he bound to reveal it to God in confession; and so he may make restitution of another’s property through the priest to whom he confesses.

This is not to say that the items should not be returned or appropriate monetary compensation be given, where it is possible. That is a matter of commutative justice.

(Having said that, in today’s world of corporate bookkeeping, it is likely that the store – unless it is a total mom-and-pop operation – is incapable of accepting money in such a fashion unless it can be definitively linked to an item in inventory…and the OP said that the barcodes were gone, so it would not be possible in this case)
 
Go ahead and buy some cans of soup for the poor and ask God again for forgiveness, we can’t undo what we have done but we can still carry in our hearts the great commandment and be the daughter and the sons.

If you felt you were tempted by Satan in your actions when you drop the soup off then this is the message of charity you want to send to the evil one. When you do this the poor will be the end benefactor of my reconciliation with Christ. Hit the devil where it hurts.

Now do what Jesus said and go and sin no more.
 
Cristiano said:
I can see reasons why you would prefer that but in reality it is not a form of reparation. It would only be a form of penance.
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Most companies do not have the capability of accepting donations from random, anonymous individuals. A cashier will be in as much trouble if $100 extra shows up in the till as if $100 is missing from the till.

In order for a store that uses any kind of an automated inventory system to be able to accept that kind of reparation is if the OP was to be able to list the inventory items by barcode and quantity and provide the payment (with tax) that corresponds to the price of those items. If, hypothetically, he was able to do that, then the store could manually enter the barcode and quantity into a POS terminal and then put the money (money order) into the till. Barring that, the store’s (chain’s) accounting department would be able to do the same thing.

But the OP said he didn’t have the barcodes for the items any more. So therefore, there’s no way to process the transaction and to account for the cash. A manual Journal Entry just randomly adding $100 to their books would be looked at VERY suspiciously by corporate auditors.

The bottom line is that when the store(s) do(es) its next periodic inventory verification, the items will be identified as shrinkage and their costs will be written off of the store’s income taxes. Even if it could happen, a journal entry adding $100 to the books won’t change that.

So actually going and restoring commutative justice is next to impossible…the only possible exception is a mom-and-pop that still does books manually without benefit of an automated inventory system…then, if the money order (or cash) got to one of the principals, it would be possible for them to make a manual journal entry. But that’s just about the only way it could happen.

If you’d like to test that theory, the next time you’re at Walmart, Target, or some other corporate store, go up to the customer service window and try to give them $5. Tell them your son/daughter/grandson/granddaughter/niece/nephew or whatever owned up to stealing a couple of candy bars and you wanted to make it right. They will praise you, thank you, comment that they wish more people were honest like you, and so on…but they won’t take your money (unless you actually have the candy so they can scan it).

I did so with a nefarious nephew several years ago who actually lifted some candy from a Wally World…and bragged about it at home. I wanted “to teach him a lesson”. I had him in tow so that they could appropriately reprove him and so on. And that’s exactly what they did (along with a fatherly, “have you learned your lesson, son?”)

When I came to better understand how accounting systems worked a few years later, I understood why that happened.

So knowing that there is not too much way for commutative justice to actually be restored (except in certain very specific instances…), the next question is: how does one endeavor to restore the right order of things. As I said above, there’s not to much way that one can, in today’s computerized world, restore the damage to the other party, at least the OP could make sure that there is no benefit on his end from the illicit commutation. At least he doesn’t profit from something immoral.

And the purpose of restitution is to restore commutative justice.
 
markomalley said:
Most companies do not have the capability of accepting donations from random, anonymous individuals. A cashier will be in as much trouble if $100 extra shows up in the till as if $100 is missing from the till.

In order for a store that uses any kind of an automated inventory system to be able to accept that kind of reparation is if the OP was to be able to list the inventory items by barcode and quantity and provide the payment (with tax) that corresponds to the price of those items. If, hypothetically, he was able to do that, then the store could manually enter the barcode and quantity into a POS terminal and then put the money (money order) into the till. Barring that, the store’s (chain’s) accounting department would be able to do the same thing.

But the OP said he didn’t have the barcodes for the items any more. So therefore, there’s no way to process the transaction and to account for the cash. A manual Journal Entry just randomly adding $100 to their books would be looked at VERY suspiciously by corporate auditors.

The bottom line is that when the store(s) do(es) its next periodic inventory verification, the items will be identified as shrinkage and their costs will be written off of the store’s income taxes. Even if it could happen, a journal entry adding $100 to the books won’t change that.

So actually going and restoring commutative justice is next to impossible…the only possible exception is a mom-and-pop that still does books manually without benefit of an automated inventory system…then, if the money order (or cash) got to one of the principals, it would be possible for them to make a manual journal entry. But that’s just about the only way it could happen.

If you’d like to test that theory, the next time you’re at Walmart, Target, or some other corporate store, go up to the customer service window and try to give them $5. Tell them your son/daughter/grandson/granddaughter/niece/nephew or whatever owned up to stealing a couple of candy bars and you wanted to make it right. They will praise you, thank you, comment that they wish more people were honest like you, and so on…but they won’t take your money (unless you actually have the candy so they can scan it).

I did so with a nefarious nephew several years ago who actually lifted some candy from a Wally World…and bragged about it at home. I wanted “to teach him a lesson”. I had him in tow so that they could appropriately reprove him and so on. And that’s exactly what they did (along with a fatherly, “have you learned your lesson, son?”)

When I came to better understand how accounting systems worked a few years later, I understood why that happened.

So knowing that there is not too much way for commutative justice to actually be restored (except in certain very specific instances…), the next question is: how does one endeavor to restore the right order of things. As I said above, there’s not to much way that one can, in today’s computerized world, restore the damage to the other party, at least the OP could make sure that there is no benefit on his end from the illicit commutation. At least he doesn’t profit from something immoral.

And the purpose of restitution is to restore commutative justice.
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This is a great post.

Even so, were it me, I would write a letter to the manager of the store, anonymously, enclosing payment.

You owe them the money.

Your duty is to repay it.

To them.

It’s not for you to worry about their accounting systems or how they’re going to account for it.

That’s their problem.

Sarah x 🙂
 
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