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CHAPTER V
CONFESSION AND SCRUPULOSITY
WE have said that the psychological basis of Christian
confession is a common human need which cannot be denied. The |
longing for an opportunity to open one’s heart, cast off all |
disguise, is a normal psychological occurrence; but it can be |
misused, or undergo an abnormal increase in intensity.
Confession then becomes an end in itself.
We must therefore consider the problems of the morbidly
scrupulous: people in whom a state of psychic disorder is
rationalised in such a manner that they believe their
psychological problems are really ethical or spiritual. Matters that.do
not involve the conscience of a normal, healthy person become
sins for these oversensitive individuals. They are governed by fear,
and so interpret their unrest that their conscience is always
troubled and the desire for repentance becomes insistent.
What is Scrupulosity?
In ancient religious literature the term ‘scrupulous’ was used
to describe people who could not distinguish between what was
allowed and what forbidden, and those who were continually
troubled by an ungrounded fear of sin. The word ‘scruple’ is
derived from the Latin, scrupilus, which means a small, sharp
stone.
Nowadays it is generally acknowledged that scrupulosity has
its ground in a pathological state of mind. It is related to the
conditions that find expression in ‘phobias’, of which the
commonest are fear of open spaces, of being alone in the dark or of
being shut in a room.
The Catholic psychologist, Chrysostom Schulte! says very
rightly that modern teaching about neurosis should lead us to
discard the idea of scrupulosity as a religious attribute. The
condition should be recognised as psychoneurotic or psycho- /
pathic and described as ‘religious mental suffering’.
1 Was der Seelsorger von nervisen Seelenleiden wissen muss, Paderborn, 1936.
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