Ten Commandments for the Scrupulous

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Wow - those were great! I think a lot of people would benefit from them, even though they are not officially “scrupulous.” Look at all the posts we have asking if this or that is a mortal sin, and at the people who think they’re in mortal sin if they do something and find out later that it is wrong. That final point about God’s love is very powerful.

Betsy
 
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baltobetsy:
Wow - those were great! I think a lot of people would benefit from them, even though they are not officially “scrupulous.” Look at all the posts we have asking if this or that is a mortal sin, and at the people who think they’re in mortal sin if they do something and find out later that it is wrong. That final point about God’s love is very powerful.

Betsy
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I must admit that I have been acused of being scrupulous more than once! I am a very analytical person who wants to make sure he is doing God’s will in everything! I found this article helpfull and thought others with the same struggles would too.

God bless you!
 
These are fantastic! I’m having problems with scrupulosity because one Sunday way back in Easter, I went to my church and asked the associate pastor if he could hear my confession. I went to confession the day before, to the same priest. It actually did happen to be a mortal isn, but not knowing what it was, he said in an annoying voice that the sin wasn’t grave. He asked me “are you killing anyone . . . are you stealing from the poor?” I said no to both. He said “then it’s not grave”. That would actually be helpful to someone who actually was scrupulous, but it went in the reverse for me. He told me to say an act of contrition on my way to confession. This didn’t help. I felt as though I was receiving the Eucharist unworthily, although, I didn’t go against what the priest said, since he was speaking in persona Christi. From that time on, I didn’t trust anything that I did. I didn’t go back to confession at my parish for months. Instead, in those months, I went to other parishes around my town for confession, 2 different ones as a matter of fact. One parish had confessions sometimes on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. The other had confessions on Wednesdays. I was struggling with a particular sin at the time. I felt an even more frequent urge and temptation to commit the sin after that experience, and even worse, I felt like everything I did that didn’t exactly “seem right” a mortal sin, a sin so bad I had to go confess it. I felt like I had to go to confession for everything, so the confession on Wednesday, Saturday, and if I felt like I did something that bad between Saturday evening and Sunday morning, on Sunday made it feel like this is what I had to do to be able to go to receive communion.

I need to stop here because my post is getting too long, I’ll continue on the next post.:
 
Continuing . . .

Also, since I didn’t go to confession at my home parish, I found myself also not frequently going to Sunday mass at my home parish. The three Sundays I can remember going to mass for at my home parish was Corpus Christi Sunday, Holy Trinity Sunday, and Fathers Day. The rest of the time, I usually went to the one with the more confession opps. I can only remember one Sunday when I went to the other because I was in that part of town. It finally took a turn for the worst when I started going to churches asking for abrupt confessions, although I knew and understood that parish priests were busy and had other things to do besides hearing overly-scrupulous people’s confessions. I was talking to a priest about the “validity” of a penance, and then we started talking about my urge to go to confession when the church didn’t offer it. We had a discussion on how confession is a SERIOUS thing, and how if you can’t stay in the state of grace for at least one week after confession, where is your contrition? A priest once told me in the confessional “someone can slip on a banana peel once, but if they make the same mistake over and over again, you begin to wonder”. That’s what was happening to me. I grew absolutely tired of this cycle I was in. I knew it was leading to a nightmare. I finally decided that I would have to go to my parish for confession sometime, so I decided to do it that Saturday. The associate pastor had been replaced, because he was moved by the diocese to be a retreat center chaplain. This one was different, so I saw the opprotunity to be absolutely open and bare my soul to him. The first thing he said after I confessed my sins was “that was a good confession”. “That was a good confession.” The words kept playing in my mind, and after a second or too, a smile spread accross my face for the first time in a long time in confession. He let me know that my confession was a good confession. It made me feel 100 times better. TODAY WAS THE FIRST TIME IN MONTHS THAT I SPACED AT LEAST A WEEK BETWEEN TWO OF MY CONFESSIONS!!! Can you believe it? All it took was standing in the mercy of God, the morale boost that the priest gave, and finally STAYING AT MY HOME PARISH! When you first start going to confession, and they tell you “if you’re struggling with a sin, keep going to the same priest about it”, do you listen. Well, I didn’t. I was a flop who went from priest to priest and I couldn’t get it to leave, this thing like an itch on my back that I couldn’t reach. It was bothering me, but I realized that I don’t need to go to confession all the time! I don’t need to go for every little thing! That was a real step forward. I’m now working on not going to confession unless it’s at my home parish which only offers it on Saturdays, accept for maybe Advent, and definitely Lent. That way, I can place a distinguishable week or two weeks between my confessions and not have to say sheepishly “it’s been (blank) days since my last confession”. It you, or anyone else is having problems with this, tell them about this and let them know that there is a way to solve the problem: facing your biggest fear, no matter what it may be. :thumbsup
 
These are great. I know I suffer from this, albeit in a more diminished fashion that I bet some people do. But I have been talking myself into thinking that every sin is a mortal sin. I am glad to have read through this article and help me along in this.
 
Thank you so much for providing this link to the Ten Commandments for the Scrupulous–they are really helpful and comforting. God bless!
 
Thanks because I’ve seen this article before but lost it and could not find it on the net.

Scott
 
Father Thomas Santa has also authored a wonderful book, Understanding Scrupulousity, which is available from Catholic Answers
 
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