Tag: ScrupulosityIs it a sin to have bad thoughts? How do I deal with bad thoughts? How can I be sure to avoid the unforgivable sin?
A: Your question itself contains a lot of wisdom. Actually, it also contains a lot of questions (three, to be exact). Before answering them, we need to make one more distinction. For someone who is already actively and sincerely trying to follow Christ, bad thoughts may be flashed directly by the devil, as you point out, but there may also be two other sources. First, they could flash up from our own subconscious. If someone has undergone a conversion (or reversion) after spending years in a self-centered, sinful lifestyle, echoes of that lifestyle will still reverberate under the surface of the mind. From time to time, they may break the surface and grasp at the conscious mind, trying to regain a hold on the will. In this case, the bad thoughts are not planted directly by the devil. If we resist these last gasps of our old habits, they will gradually lose energy and their appearances will decrease in frequency. Second, bad thoughts can be the result of carelessness. We are surrounded by non-Christian, and often un-Christian mental influences: images on the Web, billboards, and advertisements; ideas in news articles, movies, books, and television shows; anti-values woven into music and secular art. If we allow ourselves to imbibe these toxins, they will have their effect later on, stirring up thoughts that would pull us away from friendship with Christ. Guarding the Castle Thus, the first answer to your third question: we can grow in purity of thought by guarding our senses and minds from toxic input. This may seem a bit puritan in a pluralistic society, but it is only common sense. We are careful about the food we put into our body, because we know that it affects our physical health. We should be even more careful about what we purposely let into our minds and hearts, because that will affect our spiritual health. (Another favorite image used by spiritual writers is that of a drawbridge and a castle. You don’t let down the drawbridge when enemies come knocking; you keep it securely in place to protect the castle from invasion.) A wife who regularly reads grocery-store romance novels (which are a subtle form of pornography), or who daily drinks in the titillating sensuality of your typical soap opera, is clogging her marital arteries and setting herself up for a spiritual heart attack. A husband who goes to strip bars “just for business,” spends more time with atheist buddies than with fellow Christ-seekers, and doesn’t take the initiative to protect himself from Internet pornography is not keeping in spiritual shape. In both cases, “bad thoughts” and blasphemous ideas will pop up more and more frequently, even without the devil’s direct provocation. In these cases, we are at least partially responsible for the evil thoughts that come up to tempt us, and we should confess this negligence in the sacrament of reconciliation, and God will give us strength to be more coherent. Spiritual Self-Defense One other tactic useful for developing purity of thought consists in responding positively to the bad thoughts that do come up, whatever their source. As you mention in your question, once we recognize the flash of a bad thought, the last thing we want to do is pay attention to it. If you can simply ignore it and get back to doing God’s will with your whole mind and heart, great. But if the bad thoughts are violent and insistent, ignoring them is not always easy. In those cases, we need to have a prearranged plan. We need to be ready to counteract them with prayer as we try to turn our attention back to God’s will. This can be a simple vocal prayer, like the Our Father or the Hail Mary. It can be a favorite verse from Scripture used as a shield against evil (e.g. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” Ps 23:1). I recently heard the example of a man battling to overcome sexual temptations who committed himself to singing hymns until the sensual thoughts dispersed – he said that he ended up memorizing four whole verses to more than a dozen hymns in his efforts to grow in purity! If we fail to fight actively, with a spirit of faith, against the evil thoughts that tempt us, or if our efforts to fight them are lackadaisical, then we should confess this negligence in the sacrament of reconciliation, and God will give us strength to be more courageous. Circumstantial Evidence This brings us to your first question about where to draw the line. If you know that certain circumstances (the use of particular media, or physical tiredness and stress, as you mention) tend to increase the intensity, frequency, or seductive power of evil thoughts, you have a responsibility to make a decent effort to avoid those circumstances. Eighty hour work weeks may win you the promotion you covet, but is winning that promotion worth exposing yourself to the occasions of sin? Jesus didn’t think so: “What, then, will anyone gain by winning the whole world and forfeiting his life?” (Mt 16:26) At times, however, the circumstances are out of our control (needy babies make for sleepless nights). That’s when our Lord is inviting us to lean more fully on him, and on the means for perseverance that he gives us (the sacraments, prayer, healthy friendships, a loving spouse…). If you are actively making a decent effort to do your part to live a Christ-centered, balanced life and to grow in purity of thought, and still the evil ideas and images plague you, they really do not qualify as material for confession. They are more like bad spiritual weather. In this sense, it is worth mentioning that many saints experienced violent and intense temptations to blasphemy towards the end of their lives, when they were well advanced in the spiritual life. The devil sent these temptations to cause confusion and to try and steal away their confidence in God and their peace of soul. If that happens to you, put up your umbrella of prayer and obedience to God’s will, and endure the storm for as long as the Lord allows it. As you do so, you will exercise all the major Christian virtues, thereby growing in holiness and building up the Church. Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC Scrupulosity SeriesDear friends, I have updated the Scrupulosity Series Links for easier access to all the posts on scrupulosity. Either click here or look to the far right column under Topical Series and click on the topic. Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him Dan Is “Catholic guilt” bad? What about those who use it to criticize the Church?
A: This is not uncommon, and I think your instinct is right; their joking about “Catholic guilt” may actually be a providential opportunity. I will share some thoughts, hoping that you can use them to spark a fruitful, healing conversation the next time one of your friends takes refuge behind this rhetorical shield. A Critique of the Critique Some people who have left the Church (actively or passively) use the concept of Catholic guilt to help justify their exit. They explain that as they grew up in the Catholic Church, they were constantly badgered about sin, and were taught that God is angry and vindictive, watching over our every move, just waiting for a chance to catch us doing wrong and condemn us. This negative view of God and religion stifled their spiritual growth, they go on to say. They didn’t think it was healthy, or fair, and they didn’t like it, so one Sunday they walked out the doors of their parish Church after Mass and simply didn’t come back. In one sense, this evaluation of the Church’s view on sin is correct: the Catholic Church is energetically against sin. We believe that sin is real, destructive, and to be avoided at all costs. Jesus even said we should cut off our hand or gouge out our eye if they caused us to sin (see Mark 9:38-50). (By the way, he didn’t mean that literally – after all, how can our hand or eye “cause” us to sin? Sin is always a free choice of our will against God’s will, and those choices stem from our heart.) Sin is the number one enemy of God and the human race, and so it is also the number one enemy of each one of our lives, the biggest obstacle to the happiness and fulfillment we crave. But the next part of the fallen away Catholic’s critique isn’t so obvious – the part about God being constantly angry and our spiritual lives being stunted by guilt. In fact, that critique comes from a misunderstanding of what the Church teaches about guilt. If we can have in our minds the right understanding of guilt, we may be able to avoid straying off the good path ourselves, and help our wandering brethren come back into friendship with Christ. Good Guilt Basically, there are two kinds of guilt: good guilt and bad guilt. To use a rather clumsy analogy, good guilt is like a spiritual nervous system. Our physical nervous system is designed (at least in part) to help us recognize and avoid physical danger. So, for example, when we touch a hot piece of metal, our immediate reaction is to pull away, so we don’t get burned or damaged by it. Or, to take another example, if smoke from a fire seeps into a room, we start finding it hard to breathe; we start coughing. These are signs from our physical nervous system that we better get out of that room before we suffocate. Imagine if your nervous system was malfunctioning, and it wasn’t able to warn you about these kinds of bodily threats – you would be in an extremely dangerous situation. Well, good guilt, healthy guilt, performs this same function for our souls. Physical health is good for our bodies in the same way as moral health is good for our souls. And moral health means doing good actions and avoiding evil actions. If our conscience is in good condition, it will register guilt when we commit, or toy with committing, evil actions. That guilt is a warning against performing or persisting in evil actions, because committing evil strains or breaks our friendship with God and damages our interior peace and integrity, just as a hot piece of metal will damage our skin and breathing smoke will damage our lungs. In this sense, the Bible’s and the Church’s warnings against sin are not the expressions of an angry and vindictive God. On the contrary, they are a sign of God’s infinite love; he knows that committing evil, even though it sometimes appears to give us a short term benefit, is destructive, both for ourselves and for others. In fact, the “punishment” for sin isn’t something that God adds on, the way a judge in a court of law sentences a criminal. Rather, it consists precisely in the pain and misery caused by the sin itself; it is the result of the sin – just as the child who plays with knives even when his parents warn him not to suffers pain and misery when he cuts himself. It would be a mean and selfish God that didn’t warn us about the destructive consequences of evil actions. But it is a good and wise God who has given us the gift of a conscience, which helps us experience good guilt to warn us against committing sins, and to move us to repent if we have committed them. Bad Guilt The second kind of guilt is bad guilt. This occurs when we feel guilty without having done anything wrong. This is the kind of unhealthy guilt that can stifle our spiritual and emotional maturity by leading to moral confusion. Unhealthy guilt makes us blame ourselves for things that are not blameworthy, or for things outside the purview of our responsibility. When we do that, we become emotionally and spiritually tangled up, almost paralyzed, because escape from this feeling of false guilt is impossible: we cannot be forgiven for something we were not responsible for, or for something that wasn’t a sin. Bad guilt becomes like a cul-de-sac; we go round and round in our minds trying to find mercy and a fresh start, but we can’t. It drains our energy and inhibits us from growing in our friendship with God and others, because we don’t feel worthy of their love, and so we keep them at a distance. Bad guilt can come from at least two sources. First, it can come from not distinguishing between sins and simple mistakes. For example, if I sincerely forget to send my mom a mother’s day card, I may have strong feelings of regret, but I shouldn’t feel morally guilty about it (even if she tries to make me feel guilty) – it was just a mistake, an oversight, not a morally evil act. If, on the other hand, I purposely avoid calling my mom on her birthday because I’m nursing resentment about something she said five years ago and I actually want to make her suffer, then I should to feel guilty; Christians honor their parents, they don’t hold grudges against them. Second, bad guilt can result from experiencing a defective authority figure (authority figures are supposed to help form our consciences, our ability to identify moral good and evil). This happens often in families that go through a divorce. The pain and conflict between the parents inhibit them from giving proper love and discipline to the children. As a result, the children begin to feel responsible for the problems their parents are having; they blame themselves for the neglect they are experiencing. Or take the example of an unhappy, angry priest who is in charge of teaching the faith to the children of his parish. Every week he rants and raves about how sinful and evil people are, and how painful the punishments of hell will be. He never speaks about the unlimited mercy of God, which is always ready to forgive us. He never speaks about the goodness of our heavenly Father, who has prepared a place for each one of us in heaven. He never speaks about the wonderful mission that each one of us has received in this life, a mission that only we can accomplish. Instead, he focuses over and over again, week after week, on the fires of hell and the selfish tendencies of our hearts, drilling into the children a lopsided and distorted conception of God, and of themselves. Over time, that can feed bad guilt, an unhealthy feeling of guilt simply for being alive, as if our existence itself were some kind of sin. Nothing is worse for our relationship with God than that. And if someone leaves the Catholic Church because of this kind of experience, it would be unwise, but understandable. Seeking a Solution In either case, whether we are dealing with good guilt or bad guilt, the remedy is the same: returning to the loving embrace of God our Father and Christ our Lord. If we are experiencing good guilt, we need to repent and ask for forgiveness and mercy, which Jesus Christ won for us by suffering on the cross. God never runs out of mercy; he is always eager to dish it out. In fact, he invented the sacrament of confession in order to make dishing out his mercy as tangible a thing as possible. If we are experiencing bad guilt, then we need to go to God in prayer, reading and reflecting on the Bible, God’s own Word, which assures us, over and over again, that we are infinitely valuable in God’s eyes, that he is always thinking of us, that we have nothing to fear. Sin is real, and it matters; but God’s mercy is even more real, and it matters more. As the Catechism puts it, “The victory that Christ won over sin has given us greater blessings than those which sin had taken from us” (#420). I pray that the next time a friend or acquaintance jibes you about Catholic guilt, these ideas will help you speak to them about what they really need to hear: the transforming power of Christ’s saving grace. Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC Understanding and overcoming scrupulosity – Part II
A: The word “scrupulous” comes from a Latin word meaning “pebble.” Like a scale that registers the weight of even the tiniest pebble, the scrupulous conscience is thrown into doubts about its love for God and fidelity to God’s will by tiny faults or questions that, objectively, should not disturb its peace. Scrupulous people feel intense anxiety after confession: “Did I confess everything? Did I confess sincerely? Did I explain everything sufficiently?” They also often feel debilitating anxiety about whether or not they are truly in the state of grace, and whether they should receive communion (when we sincerely doubt whether we are in the state of grace, we should make as sincere an act of contrition as we can, and then receive holy Communion). As we explained in the last post, this condition of over-sensitivity can cause great interior suffering. Whether scruples arise from a combination of personality and circumstance, or whether they are more developed and a true trial allowed by God and sent by the devil, the direct remedy is the same. It consists of practicing the virtue of obedience. This is simpler for those in the religious life than in the lay life. Nevertheless, the principle is the same. Scrupulosity is like a temporary darkening of the conscience; one’s interior compass has gone haywire and you can’t tell what direction you are going in. The only way out is to let oneself be guided by an objective party, a confessor or a spiritual director who knows how to listen, is experienced in the spiritual life and in guiding others, and whom you can trust solidly. If you don’t have a regular confessor or spiritual director, but you find yourself suffering from scruples, that should be a good motivation to ask God to help you find one, then go looking. The Task of Obedience The very nature of the cure, firm and faith-guided obedience to a trustworthy confessor or spiritual director, shows why God at times permits his children (us) to suffer this painful trial: it is an excellent workout for the virtue of humility, and it is a sure way to purify us from hidden attachments. In our day and age, a lax and lazy conscience is more often met than a scrupulous one. In either case, however, the first sign that we are deviating from the true path of moral and spiritual growth is usually inner turbulence. Our God is a God of peace, and his peace goes deep. When we lose it, that may be because we are trying to paddle through the shallow muskeg of an apparent shortcut. Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek Understanding and overcoming scrupulosity – Part I
A: First thing: if you are sincerely concerned about not taking sin too lightly, you can rest assured that you are not taking sin too lightly. If, on the other hand, you find yourself convinced that you really don’t sin and don’t ever need to go to confession, then you are probably taking sin too lightly. All the saints were keenly aware that they were sinners and made good use of the sacrament of confession. Now on to the heart of your question. Scrupulosity is oversensitivity to faults. It consists in seeing sin where there is no sin, which causes us to become emotionally tense and spiritually tied up in knots. It paralyzes the will, fills the mind with turbulence, and can cause intense interior suffering. Since it comes in different forms and from different sources (and since the word itself is slippery), there is no single solution. We’ll tackle this one in two parts. First we’ll look at the types and causes of scrupulosity, then we’ll examine the practical question of what to do about it. Sin Matters Sin is disobedience to God’s express will. It is a rebellion against God, a breaking of the eternal law. As such, it offends God (just as teenagers who insult their parents offend their parents). As a result, it disrupts, weakens, or ruptures our friendship with God. And since friendship with God is the whole purpose of our existence, sin is our arch-enemy, the source of all unhappiness and tragedy. Today’s culture tends to minimize and belittle sin. What matters to a hedonistic, relativistic consumer society is comfort and personal autonomy. Where does sin fit into an ethos like that? There is no eternal law to break, no universal moral order against which to rebel, no Father to offend. This poisonous ethos has a powerful ally inside each one of us: our fallen human nature. We have an enemy within. We tend towards self-centeredness (to which any parent of a two-year-old will eloquently attest). This is why most spiritual directors would agree that a scrupulous conscience is less common than its co-conspirator, a lax conscience. The essential evil of sin explains why St Teresa and St John of the Cross so fervently exhort us to mercilessly excise every sinful habit and tame every wild tendency. We must give no quarter to sin and make no compromise with temptation – just ask Eve. Sometimes the term scrupulous or scruples is used by folks who have made a pact with certain personal sins in order to criticize other folks who have refused to make treaties with the devil. Their conscience is bothering them, and the presence of people more upright than themselves exacerbates the bother, so they use the label “scrupulous” as a shield. Personality-Based Scrupulosity Scrupulosity understood properly, however, is an authentic spiritual difficulty. It comes most often in two forms. The first is related to certain personalities. Whether by temperament, upbringing, or a combination, some people have a strong tendency towards perfectionism. When they begin taking seriously the adventure of holiness, this tendency can help, usually by energizing their efforts and giving them staying power in the face of difficulties. But the same tendency can tangle things up. God works patiently; perfectionist tend to be impatient. This impatience can take the guise of paralyzing discouragement or even desperation in the face of one’s imperfections. Keenly aware of their shortcomings, these personalities often equate holiness with impeccability – they can start straining out gnats while they still need to stop swallowing camels. An interior flash of self-centered anger or impatience, for example, is rightly recognized as a fault – it flows from the selfish tendencies in the soul, tendencies which are un-Christlike and need to be purified. But God is less interested in the selfish flash itself than in how we react to such things. As soon as we recognize it, we should reign it in, like a dog that wants to run out of its leash. Exerting our faith and willpower to keep that selfish flesh from turning into self-righteous judgments, wounding words, or spiteful actions – that’s what should concern us. If we think we have already sinned just because the flash flashed, we are being scrupulous. Our sinful tendencies are not sins; they can be the source of sins, if we let them. But if, with God’s grace, we fight against them, the powers of our soul will gradually be trained to react less violently and less selfishly. In that way, we grow in virtue. Turmoil and Temptation The second form of scrupulosity comes from the devil in the form of a temptation. In this spiritual attack, the person who is sincerely seeking holiness and has made progress towards it is suddenly confronted with doubts about what God’s will really is for them. If sin can be understood as rebellious disobedience to God’s will, holiness is its contrary: loving obedience to God’s will. But what if you start seeing God’s will everywhere? What if you start thinking that choosing which outfit to wear has as much moral and spiritual weight as obeying the commandment against murder? Well, you think to yourself, what I wear does matter to God – he wants me to reflect his dignity, but he also wants me to avoid ostentation and provocation. So what is his will for me? Which outfit should I wear?… These kind of doubts can also come in even more subtle forms. We experience a flash of interior anger; we govern it as Christ would have us; all is well. But then, we start wondering why the flash happened in the first place. Did I encourage it without realizing it? Did I allow a selfish thought to take root in my mind, and the thought bore the fruit of that flash? Am I doing something to displease God that I don’t even realize?… And we find ourselves in a labyrinth of doubts and “what ifs” and “maybes” that really torture the soul and won’t leave it in peace. It is a trial, and it can be severe, that many saints have undergone. Sometimes this second kind of scrupulosity can also derive from psychological conditions that are clinically treatable, chemical imbalances or wounds from trauma. It is not always easy to tell the difference. Usually it takes looking at other factors and behavior patterns in a person’s life, not just the scrupulosity itself. Those are the common manifestations of scrupulosity, or over-sensitivity to faults. More could be said about each one, but that’s enough to lay the groundwork for the next post, which will examine some tactics for dealing with scrupulosity in practice. Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC |
|
|
Q: Father John, I know more than a few people who are fallen-away Catholics. They make fun the Church sometimes, or they make fun of me. But my question has to do with “Catholic guilt.” They mention this sometimes and smirk, like it’s some kind of inside joke on me. I am not sure what they mean by this, but I have a sense that it’s holding them back living their faith. I would like to be able to help them. Can you give me any direction?
Q: Father John, I seem to be struggling with scrupulosity. However, when I read St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, they exhort that any small sin or attachment can keep us from union with God. How do I know if I am scrupulous or just sensitive to sin? How do I avoid taking sin too lightly? If I am scrupulous, how do I overcome it?
Q: Father John, I seem to be struggling with scrupulosity. However, when I read St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, they exhort that any small sin or attachment can keep us from union with God. How do I know if I am scrupulous or just sensitive to sin? How do I avoid taking sin too lightly? If I am scrupulous, how do I overcome it?
