Confession and examination of Conscience Tool
Ten Commandments:
- I am the LORD your God. You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.
- You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
- Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.
- Honor your father and your mother.
- You shall not kill.
- You shall not commit adultery.
- You shall not steal.
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.
The beatitudes
The seven deadly sins:
- Pride
- Greed
- Envy
- Wrath
- Lust
- Gluttony
- Sloth
PRIDE: One of the seven capital sins. Pride is undue self-esteem or self-love, which seeks attention and honor and sets oneself in competition with God (1866). It is essentially an act or disposition of the will desiring to be considered better than a person really is. Pride may be expressed in different ways: by taking personal credit for gifts or possessions, as if they had not been received from God; by glorying in achievements, as if they were not primarily the result of divine goodness and grace; by minimizing one’s defects or claiming qualities that are not actually possessed; by holding oneself superior to others or disdaining them because they lack what the proud person has; by magnifying the defects of others or dwelling on them. When pride is carried to the extent that a person is unwilling to acknowledge dependence on God and refuses to submit his or her will to God or lawful authority, it is a grave sin.
AVARICE:(from Latin avarus, “greedy”; “to crave”) is the inordinate love for riches. Its special malice, broadly speaking, lies in that it makes the getting and keeping of money, possessions, and the like, a purpose in itself to live for. It does not see that these things are valuable only as instruments for the conduct of a rational and harmonious life, due regard being paid of course to the special social condition in which one is placed. It is called a capital vice because through it many other sins are committed. It is more to be dreaded in that it often cloaks itself as a virtue, or insinuates itself under the pretext of making a decent provision for the future. In so far as avarice is an incentive to injustice in acquiring and retaining of wealth, it is frequently a grievous sin. In itself, however, and in so far as it implies simply an excessive desire of, or pleasure in, riches, it is commonly not a mortal sin.
Covetousness is a disordered and excessive desire to control persons, places, or things.
ENVY: Resentment or sadness at another's good fortune of the seven capital sins, envy is contrary to the tenth commandment (2539). Envy is not quite the same as jealousy. Jealously seeks another advantage for oneself while envy tries to destroy another advantage. Jealousy can be good depending on what one is actually desiring. St. Paul wrote that his apostolate was to make his fellow Jews jealous of Christians — not so that they would persecute and try to destroy them (as in envy) but so that they would seek the spiritual advantages of conversion to Christ (see Romans 11:15).
Envy is a sadness in the presence of the goodness of others. Rather than move us to emulate the goodness of others, envy leads us to find a way to justify the fact that we lack the goodness that others possess. A manifestation of envy today is ethical relativism, which denies that there are any objective moral norms. This denial is intended to subvert the objective status of the goodness of others.
WRATH: The desire of vengeance. How we judge it depends upon the quality of the vengeance and the quantity of the passion. When these are in conformity with the prescriptions of balanced reason, anger is not a sin. It is rather a praiseworthy thing and justifiable with a proper zeal. It becomes sinful when it is sought to wreak vengeance upon one who has not deserved it, or to a greater extent than it has been deserved, or in conflict with the dispositions of law, or from an improper motive. The sin is then in a general sense mortal as being opposed to justice and charity. It may, however, be venial because the punishment aimed at is but a trifling one or because of lack of full deliberation. Likewise, anger is sinful when there is an undue vehemence in the passion itself, whether inwardly or outwardly. Ordinarily it is then considered a venial sin unless the excess is so great as to go counter seriously to the love of God or of one's neighbor.
LUST: The inordinate craving for or indulgence in sexual pleasure. The evil of lust is reducible to this: that sexual satisfaction is sought for either outside marriage or, at any rate, in a manner which is contrary to the laws that govern marital intercourse. Indulging in lust is a mortal sin, provided of course, it is done in a way that is voluntary in itself and fully deliberate. This is the testimony of St. Paul in the letter to the Galatians, 5:19:
“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury… Of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God.” This teaching applies to external and internal sins alike: “Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28).
Lust is the vehement disorder of sexual desires, as in the case of the so-called "homosexual lifestyle" or the widespread phenomenon of "living together." Lust reduces human sexuality to genitality. As a result, lust tends to distort human sexual genital activity into a form of recreation. Ironically and tragically, lust leads to a fear of fertility and to an animosity for children, as expressed in practices such as rape, sterilization, contraception, abortion, pornography, child molestation, adultery, and divorce.
GLUTTONY: Overindulgence in food or drink. Gluttony is one of the seven capital sins (1866). The moral deformity discernible in this vice lies in its defiance of the order postulated by reason, which prescribes necessity as the measure of indulgence in eating and drinking. A glutton wants things according to the apt rendering of Father Joseph Rickably: too soon, too expensively, too much, too eagerly, too daintily. Clearly one who uses food or drink in such a way as to injure his health or impair the mental equipment needed for the discharge of his duties, is guilty of the sin of gluttony. It is incontrovertible that to eat or drink for the mere pleasure of the experience without desire of nourishment or table fellowship, is likewise to commit the sin of gluttony. Someone habitually gluttonous is so wedded to the pleasures of the table as to live merely to eat and drink, so minded as to be of the number of those, described by the Apostle St. Paul, “whose god is their belly” (Phil 3:19). Such a one would be guilty of mortal sin. Likewise a person who, by excesses in eating and drinking, would have greatly impaired his health, or unfitted himself for duties for the performance of which he has a grave obligation, might be guilty of mortal sin.
Gluttony is the excessive preoccupation with our bodies at the cost of becoming forgetful of our souls, not only in terms of excessive eating and drinking, but also in terms of excessive preoccupation with physical fitness and physical beauty.
SLOTH: A culpable lack of physical or spiritual effort; acedia or laziness. One of the capital sins (1866, 2094, 2733). One of the seven capital sins which represent the “I don't care” feeling. A man sees that the practice of virtue is hard and so resists the service of God. He becomes slothful and his soul grows sluggish and lazy at the thought of the painful life journey. The idea of right living inspires not joy but disgust, because of its laboriousness. This is the notion commonly obtaining, and in this sense sloth is not a specific vice according to the teaching of St. Thomas, but rather a circumstance of all vices. Ordinarily it will not have the malice of mortal sin unless, of course, we conceive it to be so total that because of it one is willing to reject some serious obligation. In this sense sloth is directly opposed to charity. The man who is slothful violates, therefore, expressly the first and the greatest of the commandments: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength.” (Mark 12:30).
Sloth is often equated with laziness; but the kind of laziness that sloth is is often misunderstood. Sloth is fundamentally a sadness in the presence of eternal or spiritual goods, and ultimately God Himself. Sloth is often disguised by "workaholism," or by a "busy-ness" about temporal things that is actually a means of avoiding eternal and spiritual things, and ultimately God. Sloth is often manifested by "boredom" about attending Mass or praying, for example. Saint Thomas Aquinas calls sloth the "sin against the Sabbath."
All sins are a distortion of the dimension of the soul called mind or logos, the home of intellect and will.
becoming faithful to doctrine.
- Do I seek the objective truth about all things?
- Do I recognize and appreciate objective truth, goodness, and beauty outside the Catholic Church as revelations or reflections of the one true God?
- Do I live to be in union with the one, true God Who is three Divine Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and to share in Their perfect love?
- Do I accept that the one, true God has most fully revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, Who is God the Son?
- Do I accept that Jesus Christ has most fully revealed Himself in His Death and Resurrection?
- Do I accept that Jesus Christ is best known or revealed in the Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church, which Christ Himself founded?
- Do I accept that only the Magisterium has the God-given authority to interpret Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition and thus to define the Catholic Faith in doctrines that are always and everywhere true?
- Do I accept the doctrine and discipline taught by the Magisterium while knowing that I do not have to agree with the Magisterium’s social analysis and prudential judgments?
- Do I respect the office of the Magisterium even when it is held by sinful men?
- Do I accept Catholic doctrine about salvation: Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and Judgment?
- Do I accept that the Catholic Faith alone has the fullness of the means of salvation—the most complete creed, worship, morality, and prayer?
- Do I try to act according to Catholic moral doctrine, which is based on the Two Great Commandments of the New Testament and the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament? Do I love God more than anything else? Do I love others by treating them as I should want to be treated? Do I obey the Ten Commandments?
- Do I worship according to Catholic liturgical teachings, especially by participating in Mass every week on the Lord’s Day and on Holy Days of Obligation (or their vigils) and also by going to Confession regularly?
- Do I pray daily and try to discover the many forms of prayer in the Catholic Faith?
- Am I developing a unique personal relationship with God that never contradicts Catholic doctrine?
- Do I support the Church, especially a parish, to the degree my time, talent, and treasure allow?
- Am I Catholic twenty-four hours a day? Is my Catholic identity what most defines me—more than race/ethnicity, economic class, gender, sexual orientation, culture, family, personality, physical appearance, job, or anything else?
- Do I try to convert/invite non-Catholics to the Catholic Church, while respecting the religious freedom of others, by proposing and not imposing what can only be known by Faith?
