|
|
|
I am
beginning to realize that I need some professional help, and yet I am having
a hard time accepting that. I have always tried to figure my problems out
by myself, and yet have never been able to do this. I have lived outwardly
as a “normal person” . . . while interiorly hiding terrible
guilt feelings and mental anguish. I do not dare tell anyone the truth about
me, that I have lived with secret interior misery and despair. I spend a
lot of time helping others, while all the while feeling like a total
hypocrite. . . . This problem is not new—looking back,
I can see a pattern of real spiritual scruples and false guilt from [my
childhood] and had a real spiritual dilemma that I did not know how to
handle and did not trust the adults in my life.
[Eventually] I . . . realized I had wasted
the best years of my life, had never loved or been loved, and I had health
problems and depression. I had spent the majority of my life hiding the anguish
inside of me and not being able to turn to anyone. . . .
[Now] I am struggling to practice my Catholic Faith again. Yet, I
am running into the same old scruple patterns.
I decided to turn to an anonymous priest for help, and e-mailed
an “ask a priest website.” Here is . . . his response which was
upsetting.
If you can help me, I would appreciate it.
Dear Friend in Christ,
You say you don’t want to encourage scruples. With all due respect,
your entire message to me is classic scrupulosity. You are beating yourself
up and badly!! The more you frustrate yourself as to whether this or that
is a venial or mortal sin, the more you focus constantly on the frustration
of having distracting thoughts, then the more you are going to fall into the
pattern. You really need some professional help because you are a walking
advertisement for why one must be careful of living a life of scrupulosity.
You can get better with professional help and, I will bet you, you will not
be hurting yourself so much with all these gyrations of scrupulosity and
false guilt. Good luck. Get help now. God bless.
|
 Lord! where is that priest’s
tact and compassion? He sort of has the right idea, yet still he misses the
point. In fact, I have reproduced your long letter and his comments here
just to show how psychologically complicated the matter about scruples can
be.
So let’s begin with some
background information necessary to understand the origin of
scruples.
The Background:
Knowing and Not-knowing
Every child born into this world
is born into a pre-existing social world of language, science, technology,
art, literature, and so on. But even more profound than the mystery of the
sum total of all this factual information is the mystery of the child’s
own body. The child finds itself literally at the mercy of biological
processes—eating, vomiting, defecation, urination, bleeding, reproduction,
and death—that it can neither control nor comprehend. Thus the child
will feel excluded and will believe—rightly so—that the world
“knows” something that he or she does not know. Right from the
beginning, then, the child is located in the unknown surrounded by
a profound emotional space of “not knowing” and feeling “left
out.”
Moreover, when children are
criticized and humiliated by others, they can develop the belief that others
are deliberately withholding knowledge from them, and this belief
can cause the children to burn with anger at their
parents in particular and the world in general. Such children can develop
an intense desperation to want to figure out everything in advance, before
risking doing anything, so as to avoid further feelings of
humiliation.
It’s an awkward, uncomfortable,
and frustrating place to be—and so we all devote considerable energy
to overcoming the feeling of “not knowing.”
• |
We might seek out
intellectual knowledge through formal education. |
• |
We might engage in
scientific research. |
• |
We might join country
clubs, gangs, cults, cliques, or any other social organization that purports
to offer some secret “knowledge.” |
• |
We might search through
myriads of pornographic images hoping for the special privilege of seeing
what is usually kept hidden. |
•
|
We might seek out
“carnal knowledge” through the body of another person and attempt
to locate the psychological agony of our bodily mystery in the
pleasure—or pain—of the other. |
• |
We might create our
own fantasy worlds—with thoughts and images
of eroticism, heroism, revenge, or destruction—in which we can “figure
it out” on our own so as to possess the power and recognition we so
desperately crave. |
Nevertheless, all the
“knowledge” that we can find in the world is nothing but a thin
veil that hangs over the dark anguish of helplessly “not knowing.”
Standing before the veil, suspecting our “not knowing,” we feel
confused, wretched, weak, useless—and
angry.
Because it is this anger—and
your fear of it and your hiding it—that fuels the problem of scruples,
let’s explore how it happens.
The Unconscious
Conflict of Scruples
You might be afraid that everyone
who reads this question will know exactly who you are—and yet you are
just one of millions, in every parish of every diocese of every country.
I’ve seen this problem with men and women, with the laity, with religious,
and with priests. It’s all the same thing: “If anyone knew what
I was really like, they wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”
Even as you try to confess—even as you ask for help—you are
unconsciously hiding something.
When you
are tormented with scruples you are essentially caught in an unconscious
conflict, such that even as you are confessing your sins you are secretly
trying to hide them. |
|
So, what exactly are you
trying to hide? Well, let’s find out by considering some practical guidance
about scruples and see where that takes us.
The Psychological
Motive
It may seem surprising, but you
don’t have to confess the psychological thoughts and fantasies about
which you have scruples; instead, endeavor to discover the underlying
psychological motive for the thoughts and
fantasies.[1]
For example, while you’re
praying the Rosary, you might find yourself drifting
into fantasies—often sexual, but not
always—based in memories from things you did in the past. If you notice
what’s happening and break out of the fantasy, then you can say, “Why
am I thinking about such-and-such right in the middle of the Rosary? What’s
going on?” Then put the Rosary “on pause” and start examining
what has been happening to you recently and how you feel about it
all.
In that
examination you might discover some event from
the day—or from recent days—that left you feeling helpless or useless
or weak in some way. Then make yourself deal with that event by confessing
your weakness and helplessness and implore God for the strength to endure
the pain and for the guidance to deal with the problem. In other words, the
fantasy is a sort of intoxication, a drug-like “hit” that covers
up the pain you don’t want to accept.
Interpretation,
not Fear
Given the information above,
you can learn to listen to and interpret your
fantasies, rather than act them out or fear
them, and thus you will be guided into real healing
for your psychological pain.
Feeling true sorrow for your
behavior, you can open your mind and your heart to move past your mistakes
into purification: to learn, to grow and to be formed by God.
|
Note here that
someone who pays close attention to details out of love for the work
at hand acts virtuously, whereas someone who obsesses about details out of
fear that something bad might happen if everything is not done perfectly
acts with the characteristics of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. |
|
 Then, when you
have learned to be wretched {gracefully}, and
can trust in Christ’s mercy and His inexhaustible
love for all sinners, you can remain confident that
no matter what you do, Christ will never abandon you and that He will ceaselessly
call you into repentance and
draw you back to His grace.
Well, so far, so good. But
there’s a catch here, isn’t there?
Anger and
Self-condemnation
You cannot trust in God, however,
if you’re angry at Him. “What!?” you ask. “Angry at
God ? I’m a devout
Catholic!”
Well, sit down and listen to
a shocking piece of psychology here.
Yes, you are angry at
God because you’re angry at your parents, especially your
father. But, because it’s too psychologically
terrifying for some persons to be openly angry at someone so close to them
as their father, they turn their anger to someone more distant: God the
Father.
Now, why would you be angry with
your parents? Well, you’re angry with them because of their failures
in leading you into a proper knowing of the
world. You’re angry because you were left having to figure out everything
for yourself. As a child, you wanted nurturance, guidance, explanations,
and emotional and physical protection, but for one reason or another your
parents failed you. They may have been absent
physically or emotionally, and in that absence they essentially disabled
you psychologically and spiritually.
As a result, you feel hurt and
irritated at your parents, and those feelings lead you to impulses of hatred
and anger. But that is not all. Some part of you enjoys your disability
because it allows you a means of expressing your hatred and getting revenge
on your parents; that is, you throw your disability back in their faces as
evidence that they have failed you, and in that very act of “throwing
your disability in their faces” you get the satisfaction of hurting
them—and that hurting of them is your revenge.
Thus you have stumbled into the
odd dynamic of self-condemnation: in
hurting yourself, you find a clever way to hurt others.
Self-condemnation
and Scruples
In reaching this point of
self-condemnation, some individuals will openly reject their faith and leave
the Church. This act itself is a form of self-sabotage, and it illustrates
the point that many people will send themselves to hell in order to get
revenge on others.
Other individuals, however, will
not make an open break with their faith. They are angry at their parents,
yes, and they are angry at all authority, too, but their anger takes the
form of varying levels of conscious resentment mixed with hidden
unconscious anger.
Consequently, these persons find
themselves in the conflict of wanting to serve God while at the same time
wanting to hurt others. So when it comes to self-scrutiny and confessing
sins, they unconsciously hide the very sins they try to confess.
And there you have it: scruples.
You’re overly concerned about things that might be sins in order
to hide the real sin of your secret anger at God.
The Solution:
Salvation Depends on Love not on Human Perfection
In his first letter, Saint John
tells us to love not just in word or speech but in deed and truth (1 John
3:18), and he reminds us that in this love we shall know that we belong
to the truth (1 John 3:19).
|
Christ chose
ordinary men, not scholars and theologians, to be His Apostles and disciples.
Why? To demonstrate that the Church He was establishing would grow through
God’s grace, not through mere human intelligence.
So keep in mind
that your salvation depends on your willingness to grow in love, not on
your human perfection. |
|
This knowing that comes
from love is the only knowledge we really need. When we understand
love to be a plain matter of
suffering and
self-sacrifice, we do not need to fret about
questions such as “Does God really want me to do this?” or “How
do I know this is enough?” or “Is this really a sin?” or
“Have I really done anything wrong?”
Consequently, when you’re paralyzed by scruples, you are really stuck in an unconscious belief that God has some preordained plan for you that, through your own efforts, you have to discover and put into practice in order to please God. The truth, however, is that all God wants from any of us is to learn to love Him by maintaining a constant awareness of His presence in all things.
• |
When you are praying and distractions
interfere with your concentration, say to yourself, “It’s OK. I
don’t have to repeat the prayer until I get it perfect. My intent is
love; I don’t have to be perfect to love.” |
• |
When
fantasies and “blasphemous” thoughts
intrude into your mind, if you try to fight them they will only get more
intense, and you will become more anxious. The key here is to understand
that God does not hold against us the things we think spontaneously, nor
does He expect us to stop all spontaneous thoughts; all He wants from us
is to grow in love by recognizing that certain thoughts are offenses to love
and to tell ourselves so—and then to draw our awareness back to Him.
Therefore, say to yourself,
“It’s OK. I know these thoughts are an offense to love, and I
don’t really intend to carry them out in actions. My intent is love;
I don’t have to be perfect in not having intruding thoughts. So let’s
return to the prayer.” |
Learning from
Mistakes
When we make the decision to
commit ourselves to love, we, by definition, set aside all acts of revenge,
both in regard to others and in regard to ourselves. This is an absolute
decision; when our lives are governed by a commitment to learn and grow from
our mistakes, we are freed from being stuck in
fear.
The knowing that comes
from love is, therefore, an elegant, simple solution to scruples.
But it’s not easy. Hatred
and revenge are such sweet delicacies in our social
culture that hardly anyone wants to let go of them. Yet giving up revenge
and committing yourself to a life of pure love
is your only choice—other than sending yourself to hell
to get your revenge.
God asks of you only that you
openly admit your mistakes to Him and to be willing to learn from them. So
rejoice, no scruples can hide here; every mistake, from small simple mistakes
to large sins, can be overcome just by asking God to teach you whatever you
need to learn from them to set yourself on the spiritual path of overcoming
the temptations to make those same mistakes again. You don’t have to
worry if the sin needed to be confessed or if you confessed perfectly enough;
just repent, confess, ask God to show you how to learn from your mistakes—for the sake of learning rather than for the sake of trying to be perfect.
Ask this from your heart and
really mean it.
Moreover, accept all things,
no matter how emotionally painful, as coming from God to teach you to grow
in your love for, and trust in, Him. God wants you
to be holy, not to bury yourself in
blame.
Notes
1. Even though you need not confess these thoughts
and fantasies, it is still necessary to understand their psychological meaning
in the context of your personal life experiences. You can achieve this
understanding through personal scrutiny or through spiritual direction that
uses psychotherapeutic techniques.
What the
Catechism of the Catholic Church says:
1452 When
it arises from a love by which God is loved above all else, contrition is
called “perfect” (contrition of charity). Such contrition remits
venial sins; it also obtains forgiveness of mortal sins if it includes the
firm resolution to have recourse to sacramental confession as soon as
possible.
1458 Without being strictly necessary, confession of everyday
faults (venial sins) is nevertheless strongly recommended by the Church.
Indeed the regular confession of our venial sins helps us form our conscience,
fight against evil tendencies, let ourselves be healed by Christ and progress
in the life of the Spirit. By receiving more frequently through this sacrament
the gift of the Father’s mercy, we are spurred to be merciful as he
is merciful.
1855 Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of
man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who
is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to
him.
1861 Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom,
as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the privation of
sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed
by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ’s
kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make
choices for ever, with no turning back. However, although we can judge that
an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons
to the justice and mercy of God.
|
