What exactly is scrupulosity? How can we tell if someone has it?

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Kei1h Tis_Bearself
Let me tell you, one of the things about protestantism (I was greatly affected by protestant thinking when younger) is that it makes you feel like you have no hope of avoiding sin. It would put me in so much sadness, thinking I could never defeat my sins with God’s power.
And then if you sin, you don’t have any assurance of forgiveness except a feeling. It’s awful!

I was a Protestant for over 40 years…I have never heard a Protestant from any denomination “feel like you have no hope of avoiding sin”…or that “you don’t have any assurance of forgiveness except a feeling”…all of that is totally against anything Protestants believe about forgiveness and salvation…just to be clear on that…of course that may have been your experience…and it’s sad you felt that…but for you to say it’s one of the things about Protestantism in general…absolutely false
 
Peebo said:
I’m wondering if this is basically a Catholic problem
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I don’t think it is a Catholic problem. The issue is obsession which is an anxiety issue. Protestants can have religious anxiety just as much as Catholics. A severely anxious person’s problem isn’t a particular religion but the anxiety. For me Catholicism has actually helped me with my anxieties, particularly intrusive thoughts.
 
It depends entirely on the sect, protestantism doesn’t have too many umbrella dogmas.

But, for instance, thinking it was impossible to avoid sin. Why did I think this? Because that was what I had heard Luther thought, that avoiding sin was impossible. That the human condition was so depraved, that there was not a way we could be sanctified, and hence that is why justification and sanctification are separate in protestant ideas, because I can’t be sanctified in any full way, only had to rely upon Jesus’ Work. Is it the most doctrinally correct thing? I don’t know. But, when I learned of the Catholic idea that you can be sanctified by God’s Grace completely by God to be in the state of Grace when you die, that…I didn’t have to wallow in sin forever…I still almost tear up just writing this.

And what I mean is that there was no confessional. You could confess to God, but as I did not have a special ability to talk with God like some mystics do, I couldn’t be assured except of thinking and trusting that my trite little prayer was good enough.
 
Yes scruples “can” be a form or effect of OCD - but that does not mean that if one struggles with scruples that one has OCD.
 
Not any more 🙂

(sorry could not resist the joke - and truth that they do not suffer such anymore - but yes they did while walking these earthly hills)
 
Ones confessor can assist one both in judging if one struggles with such - and with working to overcome such.

Your question brings to light that there is a distinction between a “delicate conscience” which is rather aware of even rather small sins and seeks earnestly to avoid them (though rather more peacefully) and scrupulosity which among other things can rather tend to see sin where sin is not or fear it where it should not be feared etc etc A delicate conscience is a good thing to have. Scrupulosity on the other hand is something to work against with the help of a regular confessor.
 
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