That They May Have Life

Mental illness has a significant impact on how people experience Catholicism. However, since the Catholic Church has existed for thousands of years and the discussion of mental health is a relatively recent societal phenomenon, not much thought has been given to this crossover. This thesis, taking obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) in the experience of Catholicism as a case study, explains the impacts of OCD in general and scrupulosity as a specific manifestation of it, in religious practice. I show what the Catholic Church says about scrupulosity through her Jewish roots, texts in the New Testament, and modern tools meant to combat it. Finally, I examine the lives of Catholic saints who dealt with scrupulosity OCD and the fruits – both for them as they went through the struggle of scrupulosity and for people today that might be dealing with the same issues – that came from their experience.