VII. On Scrupulous Conscience

171. A scruple is an empty apprehension, and the fear and anxiety arising from this, that there is sin somewhere where there is none; or grave sin, where there is only light sin. Therefore a scrupulous conscience is that conscience which, from some vain cause, doubts concerning the honesty of some action, and therefore fears concerning sin. Fear of this kind can very well stand with a determinate judgment concerning the honesty of the thing; for it rests only on a light and empty motive. But if that fear is with a determinate judgment that something is a sin which in reality is not, this judgment, insofar as it proceeds from an empty motive and afflicts and troubles the soul, can indeed be called a scruple, or a scrupulous conscience, speaking broadly; but properly it is a vincibly erroneous conscience. Likewise there can be a scruple with a true practical doubt whether this is a sin or not, from an empty motive, suspecting perhaps that there is sin, without any determinate judgment that it is or is not a sin. And thus again it is a scruple or scrupulous conscience broadly so called, but properly it is a doubtful conscience. - Ferraris Supplem. v. Scrupulus.

Scrupulous conscience differs from tender conscience. For the latter is a conscience recognizing, fearing, and fleeing both grave and light sins; and it also strives to avoid simple imperfections, as much as it can with divine grace.

172. Is it lawful to act with a scrupulous conscience? - The response is clear from the two following propositions in this number and the next. - It is lawful to act with a scrupulous conscience, while the scruple remains, provided that it is judged to be a scruple and is contemned as such. Nor indeed is it necessary that, for individual acts, this express judgment be formed, that it is a scruple; but it suffices that one act against it from the judgment of experience of past acts. - Reason 1 is that the scrupulous person acting thus has a prudent motive for contemning the dictate of a scrupulous conscience; because a scruple proceeds from a light foundation, and consequently does not take away a judgment otherwise certain or probable; and because confessors and theologians commonly say that scruples are to be laid aside, or, if they cannot be laid aside, are to be contemned. Reason 2 is that then there is had at least a virtual judgment of that contempt of scruples. - Suarez tr. 3, d. 12, s. ult.; L. l. 1, n. 18, 19.

He who is scrupulous, without knowing or noticing that he is scrupulous, or at least scrupulous in this action, cannot act against the scrupulous conscience, if a judgment concerning sin is formed, or a doubt concerning it is had. - The reason is that such a person would freely choose that which he judges evil, or concerning which he doubts whether it is evil.

173. Whence do scruples proceed? - The causes of scruples, dispositive, permissive, effective, occasional, are some intrinsic, others extrinsic. - The intrinsic causes of scruples are: 1. The natural constitution of the body, very much disposed to suspicions and fears, such as a melancholic disposition. 2. Weak health of the head, especially in women. 3. Ignorance, by which someone does not well perceive the precepts of God and of the Church. 4. Hidden pride, by which someone trusts too much in his own judgment. 5. Excessive abstinence and immoderate vigils, by which, the head being weakened, the soul is easily disturbed. 6. Immoderate and indiscreet fervor. - But the extrinsic causes of scruples are: 1. God, who permits scruples in the just, so that, thus purged, they may advance more; in the tepid, that they may perform the offices of Christian piety more fervently; in penitents, that they may pay the penalty of past sins. Scruples are judged to be from God if those agitated by them become better. - 2. The demon, who, "God permitting, can move melancholic humors in man, through which the imagination can either err or be disturbed toward inordinate fear." St. Antoninus, 1 p., t. 3, c. 10. Scruples are judged to come from the demon if the scrupulous person senses that he is being led to tepidity, drawn back from virtue, and especially inclined to despair. - 3. The society of the scrupulous, especially if scrupulous persons are ruled by their counsels, and frequently converse with them concerning things of the soul; for those with whom we associate, these we most easily imitate. - 4. Reading books which are too rigid, "establishing harder precepts which the human condition cannot sustain"; St. Ambrose on Psalm 118; little by little, without sensing it, we assent to the opinions to which we devote ourselves.

174. What are the signs of a scrupulous conscience? - "1. Obstinacy of judgment, by which the scrupulous person refuses to obey the counsels of the wise, consults various persons, but acquiesces in the judgment of none; indeed, the more persons he hears, the more perplexed he becomes. - 2. Frequent change of judgment from light motives, whence arises inconstancy in acting, and disturbance of mind, especially in external operations, for instance in the celebration of Mass, etc. - 3. To have impertinent reflections upon many circumstances which were present in the action or could have been present." L. l. 1, n. 11. - 4. If he thinks that he sins in that in which pious men find no sin at all; if he recites his prayers anxiously and continually begins them anew; if he makes no end of examining his conscience, and explains every smallest thing, and often even repeats it in Confession. - 5. If he uses ridiculous signs, gestures, and other ways for laying aside scruples. - 6. If the confessor, or another prudent man, has judged him scrupulous. - La-Croix l. 1, n. 515 seqq.

175. What are the remedies of a scrupulous conscience? - 1. To contemn scruples, to act against them, and not to cherish them by thought. "A scrupulous person is sometimes bound by a grave obligation to operate against scruples, since from the anxiety of scruples he can fear grave harm in spiritual progress, or in the health of body or mind." L. l. 1, n. 17, 13. - 2. To acquiesce in the judgment of the confessor, or of another pious and learned man. "For this above all can be called the principal, indeed the only, remedy of infirm persons of this kind... Deprived of this anchor of obedience, they can never be healed." L. l. 1, n. 12, 13, 16. "After a scrupulous person has received the response or example of one confessor or good man, he ought not to consult others, lest he become accustomed to cherishing useless anxieties longer." Sporer n. 108. - 3. To look upon the life and custom of good men as a rule, and to avoid the conversation of other scrupulous persons; likewise to abstain from the reading of books that excite scruples. L. 1, n. 2. - 4. Before he acts, not to judge anything to be a sin unless he knows it certainly, lest from an error of conscience he in fact sin. After the operation, let him use "the rule wisely handed down by the Doctors, namely, that those who are of a fearful conscience, unless they know morally certainly that they have consented to grave sin, are to be judged immune from sin; for it is impossible that sin should enter into a soul abhorring it without being clearly recognized by it." L. l. 1, n. 15; Suarez tr. 3, d. 12, s. ult. - 5. To accustom himself to following the milder sentences and even the less safe ones. Busemb. apud La-Croix, l. c. "For the scrupulous, that rule handed down by Blessed Albert the Great and St. Antoninus is to be observed: Between the hard and benign sentence concerning precepts, the benign interpretation, other things being equal, is to be made." L. l. 1, n. 19. - 6. Never to be idle; because idleness fills the imagination with scrupulous thoughts. L. l. 1, n. 12. - 7. To destroy the causes of scruples; for example, let the melancholic person evacuate black bile by medicines, let the obstinate break his own judgment, let the proud person not trust his own prudence, let the rude seek instruction, let the timid meditate on the goodness of God, which does not impose precepts reducing one to madness. - 8. Earnestly and confidently to commend himself to God, who consoles us in all our tribulation, 2 Cor. 1:4; L. l. 1, n. 12.

176. It will also be useful to know the privileges of the scrupulous: 1. that a scrupulous person in acting is not bound to apply examination and diligence except a very moderate one, nor so much as others; and that, while a scruple troubles him and counsel is not at hand, he can freely do what he wishes, unless it is certain and evident that it is a sin. Cf. Vasquez in 1. 2, d. 57. - 2. That he is bound to repeat nothing from past Confessions, unless he certainly knows that it was mortal and that he was not rightly confessed. But he is not certain so long as he doubts. Hence Laymann advises that a scrupulous person never confess doubts and scruples. And Sa, v. dubium, and others say that he is not bound to confess except those things which he can swear to be mortal and never to have been confessed. - The reason of each privilege is that in the scrupulous person reason is disturbed by excessive fear of sinning, so that he cannot rightly examine the matter. Hence, granted that he has not confessed something, nevertheless he is not bound, with such great harm and danger of perpetual anxiety, to procure the integrity of confession, since lesser difficulties often excuse from it. L. l. 6, n. 476, 477. - 3. "Indeed, sometimes someone can be so troubled by scruples that, although it seems certain to him that he has not said certain things, still he is not bound to confess them." L. l. 1, n. 16.

177. What ought to be the manner of acting of the confessor with the scrupulous? - It is contained in these rules: 1. Let him be patient and full of charity, since the care of the scrupulous is long and arduous, and their condition most wretched. - 2. Let him be discreet, so that he may rightly know what is the origin of the scruples in the penitent; and whether he is scrupulous in all things, or only in one, so that he may be able to remedy the evils congruently. - 3. Let him be prudent, namely in prescribing rules, which indeed ought to be general; for scrupulous persons are almost never able to accommodate themselves to particular rules, because they cannot apply them to themselves. Indeed, they always doubt whether the case was sufficiently explained and understood, whether the rule prescribed to them was well accommodated to that case. - 4. Let him be brief and dictatorial in his responses; and let him define all things, as far as he can, promptly and firmly; otherwise the penitent would be confirmed in his anxiety by the authority of the confessor himself.

178. Especially let the confessor note that for the most part scruples turn around three things: 1. that assent has been given to any evil thought which presents itself to the mind, for example, against faith, chastity, charity; 2. that past Confessions were null, or even sacrilegious, either because of defect of integrity, or because of imperfection of sorrow; 3. that in every action there seems to be sin or danger of sin.

179. If the first, let him command the penitent that he altogether despise fears of this kind, and teach him that not depraved thoughts, but depraved consents, are sins. Often it will also be expedient to impose on the scrupulous person that the penitent abstain from Confession of thoughts of this kind, unless he knows so certainly that he consented to them that he can at once swear it. "Nor is there reason that we be terrified because of the duration of time, or the vehemence of the thought, for these also often are natural and involuntary, and sometimes from fear afterwards appear greater than they really were." Suarez d. 12, s. ult. "See to it, however, that you diligently notice that the demon, or sense itself, sometimes injects temptations into certain persons, especially the scrupulous, under an utterance expressing consent, in this or a similar way: I will to sin, I will to consent; although nevertheless no consent of the will is present, which is not to be sought from incidental words, but from the proper act itself of the higher will." Ithur. Cas. 18, n. 5; Elbel de Act. hum. 226 seqq.

And Lehmkuhl, Cases of Conscience, ed. 3, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1907, On Human Acts, Concup., (1), Case (9), R. 2: "The mind can be occupied for a sufficiently long time with those impure matters, without full advertence and full consent being present, which nevertheless is required for mortal sin." And if someone, "noticing more fully, struck by fear, flees to prayer, it sufficiently shows that he had not previously fully consented, nor is guilty of mortal sin." And concerning the Rule of Human Acts, Scrupulous Conscience, Case (17), R. 2: "If someone is habitually in that state in which he would rather die than offend God, he ought by no means to be troubled by those various temptations against chastity, nor by those which have progressed even to a sense of joy and satisfaction (or of natural desire). For this affection and that sense is not yet voluntary consent, in which alone sin consists. It can indeed happen that sometimes some venial negligence insinuates itself; but this is human misery, which should teach continual humility and vigilance, not fear and anxiety." And again concerning Sin, Advertence necessary for sin, Case (37), R. 2: "It can altogether happen that someone clings for a sufficiently long time to a thought of preceding delectation, before full advertence of mortal malice has in reality been present."

180. If the second, and the penitent has already at another time completed a general Confession, or for some notable time has been accustomed to approach Penance diligently and piously, let him impose on this person that he no longer think about past faults, nor say any more word about them, unless he can swear that he certainly perpetrated those mortal sins, and never laid them down in Confession. But if after a Confession duly made he returns, then let the confessor dismiss him unheard, commanding him to approach Communion. Thus St. Bernard conducted himself, who is said to have said to a certain priest who wished to abstain from the celebration of Mass because of scruples: Go and celebrate on my faith, and he was freed. Nor say: Would that he who speaks thus were another Bernard! "Whoever says this," says St. Antoninus from Gerson, "errs: for you have not committed yourself into the hands of a man because he is learned, because he is pious; but because he is placed over you."

181. If the third, let the confessor impose that he act freely and despise scruples; indeed that he operate against them as often as evident sin does not appear; because, generally speaking, these persons, because of reason disturbed by that excessive fear, think sin is present where it is not. Hence it is necessary to enjoin on them a precept that they overcome scruples, lest they become useless both to themselves and to others; and that afterwards they by no means accuse themselves in Confession concerning such actions. "For it is not necessary that a scruple be driven away speculatively, but practically, nor in such a way that it is not felt, but that it is not consented to through a determinate judgment." Suarez l. c., n. 4. In this matter it is to be noted that even if it can happen that they sometimes err materially by acting thus, nevertheless they will not sin formally by reason of the obedience which they render to the confessor; because then they do not obey man, but God saying: He who hears you, hears me, and he who despises you, despises me. Nor indeed "in moral matters is omnimodal certainty to be sought, and doubt, which perhaps in others would be reasonable, is to be judged as nothing in the scrupulous person." Suarez l. c., n. 6. - L. l. 1, n. 12, 19; La-Croix l. 1, n. 527 seqq.

182. Are scruples useful? - "Scruple... for some space of time, helps not a little the soul which gives itself to spiritual exercises; indeed it greatly purges and cleanses such a soul by separating it very much from every species (appearance) of sin according to that saying of Gregory, It belongs to good minds to recognize fault where there is no fault." St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, Rules on Scruples, 3; La-Croix l. 1, n. 513. - But if they are protracted for a long time, "scruples are harmful, first to the body, because they destroy health, weaken the head, often reduce a man to madness, often shorten life; then to the soul, which they render entangled, desolate, perplexed, sometimes despairing; they confuse the intellect, disturb the power of judging, often render the whole man, endowed with distinguished talents, unfit for all functions; moreover they impede many good works, waste time with many vain and useless thoughts, etc." La-Croix l. c., n. 514.