Scrupulosity

“ There are persons who look upon scrupulosity as a virtue, confounding it with delicacy of conscience, whereas it is, on the contrary, not only a defect but one of a most dangerous character. The devout and learned Gerson says that a scrupulous conscience often does more injury to the soul than one that is too lax and remiss. ”

“ The spiritual physician must be able to distinguish scrupulosity from spiritual diseases or conditions that are similar, lest he prescribe what is not suitable for the case. Example: A person of tender conscience should continue in that state, a person of scrupulous conscience needs instruction that he may put aside his erroneous views; a scrupulous person stands in need of special guidance. He must also recognize that scrupulosity is a mental illness that at times requires the expert treatment of a psychiatrist. ”

“ By reason of object, scruples may center on only one or, at most, a few moral activities, e.g., duties of charity, or sins against chastity, or they may embrace the whole moral life of the individual. By reason of extension, some scruples are limited to interior actions, others extend to external manifestations. By reason of duration, scruples may be classified as intermittent, or temporary, and quasi-permanent which is characteristic of the constitutionally scrupulous person whose physical and psychical disposition incline him to scrupulosity. ”

“ If they are more scrupulous than lax, the case is less difficult, as they incline rather to the safer side, and it will suffice to apply the remedies indicated above for laxity and scrupulosity, as they are needed. Example: Titus, on account of scrupulosity, spends too much time at his prayers, and thus neglects the exercise and recreation which are necessary for his health. He should be instructed to limit his devotions, to have a regular time for them each day, and to realize that he has an obligation to take proper care of his health. ”

“ Prudence. Some persons pretend scrupulosity in order to get a name for holiness, or to make a good impression; needless to say, they must be dealt with cautiously, as they often prove very unscrupulous. With a person who is really scrupulous, the spiritual director must carefully obtain all the knowledge necessary to ascertain the true state of soul, prudently bring the individual to recognize that he is a sick person, help to restore his confidence in himself, in his confessor, in God, etc. ”

“ They must not yield to their scruples. As was said above, scrupulosity is not a conscience, but only the counterfeit appearance of a conscience; not a help to the soul, but a grave drawback and danger. Hence, the scrupulous must learn to despise their foolish fears and imaginations. (b) They must follow blindly the commands of a prudent spiritual director. To attempt to make decisions for themselves is a harrowing experience for scrupulous persons, and one fraught with great peril. ”

“ Scrupulosity in this matter is far less dangerous than indifference. We are in continual peril of falling into confusions and equivocations; let all our faculties be awake to the risk,—let them all watch against it. ”

“ The same anxiety, the same consciousness of personal sin which led in barbarous times to what has been described, show themselves in civilized life as well. In this quieter period, their great manifestation is scrupulosity: a care about the ritual of life ”

“ Most authors admit a constitutional disposition to scrupulosity, just as there is one to its quasi-genus, psychasthenia. Reductively this might involve disorders in the vago-sympathetic nervous system and the neuro-endocrine system. (b) psychical—the cause is attributed to too low a psychic tension. The inability to cope with obsessions and the attacks of phobias serve to exhaust the individual ”

“ Nervous children need outdoor exercise more than anything else. When nervousness takes the form of religious scrupulosity in school-children and novices do not immediately apply a moral theology to them—call in a physician that has common-sense, because there is a nervous scrupulosity which is much more frequently met with than the purely spiritual form. ”

“ Remedies for scrupulosity Whose Cause Is Physical.— (a) The physician is the proper person to care for bodily ills; hence, a scrupulous person who is troubled with headaches, dizziness, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, nervousness, hallucinations, etc., should go to a competent and conscientious specialist in the healing art. Removal of the causes of hurry and worry, moderate but sufficient diet, fresh air and exercise, and especially congenial occupation and surroundings are by general consent included among the best natural cures. ”

“ As a further manifestation of anxious expectation we may mention the frequent tendency observed in morally sensitive persons to pangs of conscience, scrupulosity, and pedantry, which varies as it were, from the normal to its aggravation as doubting mania. ”

“ A scruple is a little sharp stone formerly used as a measure of weight. Pharmacists always have scruples. There is nothing so torturing as to walk with one or several of these pebbles in the shoe. Spiritual scruples serve the same purpose for the conscience. They torture and torment; they make devotion and prayer impossible, and blind the conscience; they weaken the mind, exhaust the bodily forces, and cause a disease that not infrequently comes to a climax in despair or insanity.
A scrupulous conscience is not to be followed as a standard of right and wrong, because it is unreasonable. ”

“ Antoninus, Cajetanus, Navarrus, Sanchez, Bonacina, Cordovius, Castropalao, and the Doctors of Salamanca, with others, that the scrupulous person is bound, under strict obligation, to act in opposition to scruples, when from such scruples there is reason to apprehend grievous harm happening to soul or body, such as the loss of health, or of intellect; wherefore scrupulous persons ought to have greater scruple at not obeying the confessor than at acting in opposition to their scruples. ”

“ If you sow to the flesh, you will of the flesh reap corruption; corruption—deterioration, whether of health, of intellect, of character in some shape or other. You know not, and no man knows, what the curse will be like; but the curse will surely come. The thing which is done cannot be undone ”

“ His sores bred worms, the scabs were like clods of dust, and his skin was broken; so evil was the disease which cleaved fast to him. See what vile bodies we have, and what little reason we have to pamper them or be proud of them; they have in themselves the principles of their own corruption: as fond as we are of them now, the time may come when we may loathe them and long to get rid of them. ”

“ Similar attempts to shift the burden of disease and sin from one's self to another person, or to an animal or thing, have been common in ancient and modern Europe. Grave writers of antiquity recommended that, if a man be stung by a scorpion, he should sit upon an ass with his face to the tail, or whisper in the ear of the ass, “A scorpion has stung me”; in either case, they thought, the pain would be transferred from the man to the ass.453 A Roman cure for fever was to pare the patient's nails, and stick the parings with wax upon a neighbour's door before sunrise ”

“ Touching for the King’s Evil. Perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which lingered about our English kings was the notion that they could heal scrofula by their touch. The disease was accordingly known as the King’s Evil;17.5 and on the analogy of the Polynesian superstitions which I have cited, we may perhaps conjecture that the skin disease of scrofula was originally supposed to be caused as well as cured by the king’s touch. ”

“ UPON SCRUPLES. It was Blessed Francis' opinion that scruples have their origin in a cunning self-esteem. I call it cunning because it is so subtle and crafty as to deceive even those who are troubled by it. As a proof of this assertion he evidenced the fact that "those who suffer from this malady will not acquiesce in the judgment of their directors, however discreet and enlightened in the ways of God they may be; obstinately clinging to their own opinions instead of, by humble submission, accepting the remedies and consequent peace offered to them. ”

“ I feel no reluctance, my friends to be thus explicit. Time was, when these emotions would be hidden with immeasurable solicitude, from every human eye. Alas! these airy and fleeting impulses of shame are gone. My scruples were preposterous and criminal. They are bred in all hearts, by a perverse and vicious education, and they would still have maintained their place in my heart, had not my portion been set in misery. My errors have taught me thus much wisdom; that those sentiments which we ought not to disclose, it is criminal to harbour. ”

“ Of one thing, however, we may be certain, and that is, the effect of familiarity in removing those inconvenient asperities called scruples, which nature is continually casting up to preserve the triumph of the good over the evil ”

“ Neither can all men make use of the remedy that is prescribed for the cure of this distemper, which is, that when such scruples cannot be removed by reason, then either men should forbear the thinking upon such things from whence scruples are apt to arise, or they should break them down by violence, and go over the belly of their scruple to the performance of their action. ”

“ What a dreadful inheritance is the gout, the scurvy, or the King’s evil, to transmit to our offspring! how happy had it been for the heir of many a great estate, had he been born a beggar, 8rather than to inherit his father’s fortunes at the expence of inheriting his diseases!
A person labouring under any incurable malady ought not to marry. He thereby not only shortens his own life, but transmits misery to others: but when both parties are deeply tainted with the scrophula, the scurvy, or the like, the effects must be still worse. ”

“ In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.
Scro. Can you—can you sit down?
Gho. I can.
Scro. Do it, then.
Gho. You don't believe in me?
Scro. I don't.
Gho. What evidence do you require of my reality beyond that of your senses?
Scro. I don't know.
Gho. Why do you doubt your senses?
Scro. Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an under-done potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are. ”

“ Thus we see, that the bravest Men of the Universe, may be terrified, if they give way to their own chimerical Ideas; and that it is only for want of searching into the Causes of the Phœnomena of Nature, that People disturb themselves in this Manner, with such groundless and unphilosophical Apprehensions. However, a great deal may be said in Favour of Men, troubled with the Scurvy, the Concomitants of which Disorder, are generally Faintings and the Hip, and Horrors without any Ground for them; which leads me to say something upon an Error, relative to that Sea Disorder, the Scurvy. ”

“ Tension and anxiety are associated if the act or external ritual is not performed.
For the confessor, the recognition of a scrupulous person is not too difficult. The penitent’s own difficulties present the first and most obvious sign, e.g., irrational doubts about consent to temptation, as to the gravity of a sin, etc., and undue concern about circumstances. Concomitant signs confirming the judgment that a person is scrupulous include:
(a) Obstinacy of judgment; Although the scrupulous person seeks advice, frequently from many confessors, he tends to follow his own judgment. ”

“ Our original corruptions are the sickness and disease of the soul, an habitual indisposition; our actual transgressions are the wounds of the soul, which put conscience to pain, if it be not seared and senseless. ”

“ And crookedness in people is deformity, and every one dreads and turns away from deformity. It seemed queer to think that I had been willing to let myself be deformed that way,—when I didn't have to be—It would be worse to have your heart crooked, than your spine, too,—and it would show just as plainly, when it had once worked to the surface. ”

“ ARTICLE VIII.—THE DIRECTION OF THE SCRUPULOUS. Persons who are scrupulous about the recitation of the Hours should have help from their confessors, who should deal specifically with any of the scruples which arise in the daily task. Scruples generally concern the necessary intention, the necessary attention, pronunciation, and the time necessary for a good and faithful recitation of the canonical Hours. How should a confessor deal with scruples about intention? ”

“ Nothing so effectually dispels it as a winter in a warm climate. I speak now from my own experience.
There is a disease not less common, hardly less formidable, often more distressing, more repulsive, than consumption. It is scrofula—that taint in the blood by which the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto and beyond the third and fourth generation. It often throws around its victims the charms of a strange beauty and a precocious, spiritual, intelligence. But the wise physician regards with anxious forbodings these signs so prized by loving friends. ”

“ Above all, the ravages of scurvy are peculiarly distressing, and tend most to dishearten: even those in perfect health become alarmed, and, from that circumstance alone, often participate in the dreadful evil. ”