Cardinal Basil Hume (1923–1999) once told a story about his mother. After baking cookies one day, she said, “Son, I’m going to leave this cookie jar right here on the table. But don’t you dare sneak in and eat any of them. Remember: God is watching you!”
As a child, young Basil never touched the cookie jar.
Years later, Cardinal Hume said the lesson struck him with new force. If he had secretly reached into the jar and taken a cookie, God would not have punished him. Instead, God would have said, “Basil, they’re so good! Have another!”
Not everyone has a powerful teaching memory like Cardinal Hume’s, but each of us is invited, at some point, to move from a formal relationship with God to one that is deeply personal. This movement draws us away from fear of punishment and toward the hope that God delights in our lives and choices.
The transition is not automatic, and it unfolds differently for each person. Sadly, some never make it—not because they are bad, but because the journey can be difficult. Some obstacles are manageable, while others, such as scrupulosity, are far more challenging. Scrupulosity is not impossible to overcome, but it can be difficult to manage.
I believe the greatest obstacle that scrupulous people face is not simply a challenging relationship with God. Rather, their primary relationship may be with the Church—more precisely, with its system of sin, confession, contrition, grace, and mercy—rather than with God himself. This distinction is essential to understanding scrupulosity. God is personal, and Christians worship a Trinitarian God. Moral theology, by contrast, is a system, not a person; one cannot have a living relationship with a system. A system can define, interpret, and set boundaries, but that is very different from a personal relationship.
Consider the energy you spend in the obsessive and compulsive surge of OCD as you frantically search for the answer you seek in the Catechism, in canon law, or from a social media personality you often consult for direction. Now imagine redirecting that same time and energy from a frantic search for clarity to quiet rest in the presence of God. No answers, no definitions, no certainty—only the calm and confidence of knowing you are a beloved child of God.
For people with the scrupulous disorder, the idea of having an experience of “resting in the Lord” sounds unattainable. I understand that the loudest voice in the silence is not calming at first. It is the voice of the scrupulosity shouting, “Pay attention to me!” That voice must be resisted. There is no peace in the confused and demanding world of scrupulosity; there is only chaos.
I often remind people who suffer from scrupulosity that the wisest and healthiest choice is to avoid triggering the disorder. In this case, that means stepping away from the system and resisting the pull of both obsession and compulsion.
One common trigger is the examination of conscience, a useful spiritual tool for those who do not struggle with scrupulosity. For the scrupulous person, however, it can create a false sense of sinfulness, often centered on serious or grave sin. Rather than using the examination for honest reflection, the person may engage with it anxiously, asking, How guilty am I of all these sins? That is not how people without scrupulosity typically experience the examination. These people can usually set aside most of the listed examples and focus instead on particular actions or weaknesses they know they have engaged in. For the scrupulous, though, the experience is entirely different, marked by intensity and dread.
Another trigger that encourages obsession and compulsion is any one of a myriad of novenas to the saints or for a particular grace or blessing. For the scrupulous, novenas are often experiences of intense anxiety and worry about the so-called “quality” of their prayer or the focus they believe a novena demands. Producing even more anxiety is the doubt: Do I have to start the novena over again because I was distracted or because I might have missed something?
Non-scrupulous people accept each of the foregoing examples as normal human behaviors and responses. Nothing more is required to fulfill the obligation. If it could only be so simple for the scrupulous! Unfortunately, for every example I provide, and for countless other examples that I have not discussed here, there is some saint or, worse, some social media commentator who has said or will say something that seems to confirm what the scrupulous person fears, thus confirming the anxiety generated.
I repeat, almost word for word, what I wrote about earlier in this reflection: Consider the energy spent in the obsessive and compulsive surge of OCD as you frantically search for errors or mistakes in your novena practice. Now imagine redirecting that same time and energy from a frantic search for perfection to quiet rest in the presence of God. No answers, no definitions, no certainty, no perfection required—only the calm and confidence of knowing you are a beloved child of God.
A personal relationship with God is essential for the spiritual life. In contrast, combat and jousting with a system that was intended to aid you in reaching the experience of union with the Lord, and that has failed you spectacularly because of the disorder, needs to be disengaged.