Would you say that ice cream flavors are particularly important? After all, picking one is not a life-changing decision. That is, until you stop to examine how it affects you or others. For example, if you are courting a newfound love who insists on a strawberry sundae, your flavor choice might be a bit more important.
To evaluate a choice, you must consider the intention when making that choice. Choosing an ice cream flavor to please someone else is different than choosing your own favorite flavor. Acting for another’s happiness is morally different than doing something simply to please yourself.
This relationship of a choice to the intention behind it is the most essential element when it comes to questions of sin. If you seek to be obedient to God’s law, all your choices must be seen in this light. Every act has consequences—some are intended and predictable, and some are unforeseen and may or may not be desirable. For example, your new friend may be delighted with a strawberry sundae or, on the other hand, may develop a stomachache after eating it.
Only God can foresee all consequences. This is true no matter how major or minor the case may be. For example, if I come upon a man threatening a group of children with a knife, and I grab a rock and beat him into unconsciousness, is my violence against him sinful, or is it virtuous? My intention is to stop him from harming children, so, with that intention, it is a virtuous act. Even though harming another person is in itself evil, I have chosen the lesser evil: harming the violent man instead of letting him harm the children. Choosing the lesser of two evils is a virtuous choice. But, what if I got carried away and harmed him more than was necessary to stop him? Then, my action may be sinful.
This ambiguity is the source of scrupulosity. Scrupulous people consider the possible results of every choice and expect to make an omniscient (“divine know-it-all”) decision. Someone who is scrupulous may confuse the difference between his or her ability to know the future and God’s omniscience. The scrupulous person must simply remind him- or herself, “I am not God.”
If you are scrupulous, you can take comfort in the knowledge that you desire to avoid evil (vice) and do what is good (virtue). If you remember this basic stance in life, you can worry less about the possibility of sinning. Sinfulness requires that you deliberately choose to do what you know to be wrong or refuse to do what you know to be right. If the choice you make, with your limited knowledge, seems to be good, then you have not sinned. God takes your limitations into account and is not offended, no matter the consequences. You did the best you could do.
And so, to go back to the ice-cream parlor with your friend, if you are sure that your friend wants a certain flavor, and you purposely buy a different flavor because your friend “can’t tell me what to do,” you are not honoring your friendship. If you make no effort to remember your friend’s favorite flavor or fail to ask what he or she prefers, perhaps you are a mediocre friend, and you will want to work on that.
Every person has limitations. We have differences in our upbringing, intelligence, knowledge, health, energy, and so on. No two of us think the same way or react the same way in every situation. But each of us is made in God’s image, and each of us reflects a face of God that no other person can reflect, even as we are slowly and imperfectly growing in holiness. Ρ
Fr. Robert Fenili CSsR is a retired Redemptorist priest whose ministry was mainly in educating members of the Congregation by the training of new members in its seminary and college. He also published books or translations of material for retreats and directed in-service programs for active personnel. He spent several years as a member of the international governing council in Rome which allowed him to visit Redemptorist ministries throughout the world. He also served in parishes and retreat centers.