Tenacious scruple comes with obstinacy
The word scruple comes from the Latin scrupulu and means pebble, embarrassment, restlessness, fear, but, in a moral sense, designates a reason, often insignificant. However, it can express the excessive restlessness that expresses conscience for futile reasons of having offended God.
This type of scruple can be of a natural aspect ( physical and moral illness ), producing a disorder in the person’s life, leading him to a kind of nervous depression and to thoughts of obsession in relation to the sin committed. In the moral aspect, the person is immersed in unimportant things, in the desire to be absolutely sure of things, making him have an ill-informed and obstinate spirit, seeing God always as a judge.
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The case can become serious and serious if the scrupulous person lives both the physical and moral cause in this way, so that it will be difficult to cure. So you need psychological and, above all, spiritual help.
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.: Feeling of guilt, barrier to accepting God’s love
.: Feeling of guilt can be destructive or it can be constructive
However, not everything is a physical or spiritual disease (devil). God can allow a person to have difficulty dealing with his scruples in order to prove him, atoning for his faults and thus taking him to a greater degree of holiness. As well as to free her from pride, especially from vain complacency. On the other hand, we must not forget that, many times, this feeling comes from the devil, who wants to throw disturbances in the victim’s soul, persuading him to always find himself in mortal sin and, thus, preventing him from communing or confessing, embarrassing her as to the real gravity of her state of sin.
How to identify this type of scruple?
Part of the person sees sin where it does not exist. However, tenacious scruple is accompanied by obstinacy. For this reason, we need to distinguish between delicate and scrupulous conscience. The first [delicate conscience] loves God fervently, and, in order to please Him, avoids sin, however small the sin; has a real horror of sin. He knows his own weakness, he is afraid of God. He is aware of serious and venial sin. And the second, [the scrupulous one], is guided by a certain selfishness, which makes her wish with excessive anxiety,the security of being in grace. The victim too, after making many confessions, keeps looking at the past, thinking that she has not been forgiven, so she keeps confessing the same sins over and over. The scrupulous person fears a lot when he has bad thoughts and images, especially when dangerous and obscene. Thus, he is martyred for having consented to them; therefore, he goes into mortal despair.
