[Question]{.underline}: What are scruples?
[Answer]{.underline}: The term “scruple” has two meanings. The first is the general sense of the term, as commonly employed in speech, as for example when a person is said to be “scrupulously honest.” It refers to a person with a delicate conscience and a healthy fear of sin that makes him shrink from its slightest approach. A person of delicate conscience has a scruple when he has good reason to doubt whether a moral act is good or bad, whereas persons of lax conscience have no such concerns or scruples. It is in this sense that God sends scruples to generous souls as a help to the purification of their souls and the development of a more delicate conscience.
However, there is a pathological meaning of the term “scruple,” namely a morbid fear of doing wrong, or having done wrong, for insignificant and unreasonable motives. This is accompanied by anxiety and is frequently an obsessive fear that causes great distress and upset of soul. It is in this sense that scrupulosity is a disorder of the soul that destroys peace of soul and trust and confidence in God. In this disorder the person is unable to formulate a certain practical judgment concerning the morality of his own acts, although he may be perfectly capable of making an abstract judgment and applying it to others. The consequent groundless fear causes a state of agonized hesitancy and doubt that cannot be resolved by an ordinary reasoning process. This paralyzes the soul in the practice of virtue and is an impediment to advancement in the spiritual life. It is imperative that such a person follow strictly and blindly the advice of a trusted, prudent spiritual director, as Father Casey tells him in Dealing with Scruples: “What you need is not a book but a good confessor to whom you will confess regularly and whose directions you must obey with absolute and childlike simplicity. That obedience will come hard to you… You simply must keep to one confessor and do exactly what he tells you, with full confidence” (p. 7).
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.