Examining our Conscience

Friends

Peace be with you. 

Last week, I walked through the “how to” of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I hope it gave the essential steps in a way to assuage any fears people have of not remembering how to go. Today, I’d like to reflect with you on what sins we should bring to confession.This begins with what we call an Examination of Conscience, a document that generally asks us a series of questions meant to get us to reflect on the sins we have committed.  As in the last column, let me admit there are several examinations of conscience out there. On the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops there are seven: 1, Examination of Conscience based on the Ten Commandments, 2 Examination of Conscience in the Public Square 3. Examination of Conscience in Light of Catholic Social Teaching 4. Examination of Conscience for Children 5. Examination of Conscience for Young Adults 6. Examination of Conscience for Single People 7. Examination of Conscience for Married Persons. The EWTN website has one based on the Ten Commandments that seems very thorough to me. There’s a website called Beginningcatholic.com that has another thorough one involving the Ten Commandments and the Precepts of the Church. There are too many other good ones to list here but I’ll print off a few and make them available outside the confessional. 

I suggest sitting down with an Examination of Conscience and reading it over to get a sense of the breadth of the questions it asks. If it is bringing up some things you’ve never thought about, try using it for two or three times. Then try switching to another Examination to find out if it works better for you. If not, maybe try another once or twice to see how it works. Chances are you’ll find one that works for a while but will eventually have to switch because it has grown stale, and that’s okay. Ultimately, we probably all have sins we know we should confess but examinations of conscience can make sure we are being thorough. 

The Church asks that we confess in “number and kind”, meaning we not only confess what we’ve done but the number of times we’ve done it and whether we were aware it was a sin when we did it. Why? What’s the difference between a husband who has committed adultery against his wife one time versus the husband who has committed adultery several times over the course of a series of years? Both scenarios involve a person who has sinned and is seeking forgiveness. The first person, however, hopefully made one mistake for which (hopefully) he can seek forgiveness and not ever do again. The man who has repeatedly committed adultery is in a different scenario and probably needs some help, especially if it is with the same woman repeatedly. Both men have wreaked havoc in the lives of their wives, any children they may have, and the person with whom they committed adultery, but the magnitude of that damage is probably very different for both. What happens if you can’t remember the exact number of times you’ve done something? You can say “several times” or “more than ten times” or “several hundred times”. 

The “kind” part of the above statement has to do, as I indicated, with whether we knew it was sinful at the time we did it. If we know something is sinful that is a serious matter and still do it, that is different than if we do something without knowing it is sinful. Believe it or not, abortion is an example of this. There are people who are told by trusted religious people that having an abortion is not a sin. They may engage in it and then find out later that, not only is it a sin, it is one of the most serious sins you can commit since it involves murdering the innocent. However, because the person didn’t know it was a sin, they are not culpable for that sin. It’s still good to confess it to get it off a person’s conscience but it’s not that person’s fault. They were lied to by a permissive, selfish, feel-good society. I should give the caveat, however, that this assumes the person couldn’t or shouldn’t have known. In the above scenario, I assumed the person was surrounded by people who misinformed her about the morality of abortion. If the person was taught it was sinful and didn’t pay attention or should have looked into it deeper but chose not to, there is culpability. That’s why I suggest confessing it just to be certain and, as I said above, to get it off our consciences and be able to walk free. 

Next week, I hope to talk about a few unusual things we may not have considered before as sinful.