2. Context and Approach

The key focus is on ideas of Thomas Aquinas and Jacques Lacan on the subjects of anxiety, depression, and melancholia. These will be explored in relation to sin and human responsibility. It will also be explored how these can inform a substantial catechetical approach to understanding the psychologically therapeutic benefits of regular engagement with the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. This will be supported and enhanced by an analysis of secondary literature on these topics. The article will draw together a substantiated evaluation of inherent connections between the works and insights of Aquinas and Lacan, and the prospects for overcoming the conditions of anxiety, depression, and melancholia through a recognition of the value of understanding the psychoanalytic benefits of the Sacrament as a means for overcoming and releasing guilt.

Initial premises include a recognised reduction in people engaging with the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation,^{Footnote 5} along with an increase in diagnosed cases of anxiety, depression, and melancholia.^{Footnote 6} I suggest an anticipated effect of the reduction in the use of confession as a means for relieving feelings of guilt will be repression and sublimation of these feelings directly contributing to the rise in these pathologies. I further suggest that through an examination of Freudian notions of human drives and desires, the conditions and conflicts that result in their repression and sublimation – and the proposed remedies and treatments for correcting these behaviours – parallels can be identified between the psychoanalytic approach and that of Christian sacramentology. These parallels are particularly to be found in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. I argue that the key insights of Lacan most succinctly illustrate and clarify the philosophical problematic of the repression and sublimation of feelings of guilt, while a return to the foundational sources of Christianity as elucidated by Aquinas provide clear ways of philosophically understanding the metaphysical nature of the problem (i.e., alienation from God, community, and self through sin), its phenomenological mistake, and the existential means of addressing the problem of psychological distress. Through Aquinas and Lacan, the ethics of being human – and the repression of being such – are fundamental to recognising what it means to be human and our inherent teleology. I contend that by bringing these two together a more comprehensive understanding of human psycho-social development will be established and lead to a better clinical and pastoral approach to addressing issues of anxiety, depression, and melancholia.

Although this work does examine the pathologies of anxiety, depression, and melancholia, and specifically in relation to ideas of sin and confession as a means for overcoming the pathologies, no direct examination will be made of individuals suffering from these conditions. However, some examples from specific client work will be referenced to illustrate how the benefits of the Sacrament can be used in therapy and as a teaching point for developing a catechesis on the Sacrament.

A significant aim of this article is to contribute to the understanding of one aspect of the development of the pathological conditions of anxiety, depression, and melancholia. In recognising the origin of these conditions as associated with feelings of guilt and perceptions of sin, I argue that approaches to addressing these conditions may be further developed, particularly in identifying the therapeutic contribution made by the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation in revealing and overcoming repressed and sublimated feelings of culpability.^{Footnote 7} Religiously, it could clarify the way in which the Sacrament works on the existential level and lead to a renewal of faith through greater participation in the Sacrament. Psychologically, it could inform and guide psychological treatment of particular instances of these pathologies. Theologically, far from being a nouvelle théologie,^{Footnote 8} it may illuminate the way in which grace contributes not only to healing the human soul but the human mind as well. Philosophically, it will reveal the continuing significance and contribution of Thomistic thought to understanding human psychology and the impact that the Lacanian notion of the imaginary and symbolic aspects of the human mind have on experiences of trying to make sense of the real.

3. Sin as a Rupture of the Psychological Moral Order

Søren Kierkegaard makes the point that although sin is a concept that falls outside of the categories treated by ethics and psychology it can nevertheless provide an understanding of human conduct that can contribute to the scientific orientation of these two disciplines. Kierkegaard argued that the origin of sin cannot be understood but must be accepted as a presupposition of the fallenness of humanity, yet this raises the question which is common to ‘original sin’ (or what Kierkegaard refers to as ‘heritable sin’^{Footnote 9}) as to human culpability for sin. If sin is a presupposition, as Kierkegaard insists, then to what degree can people be held responsible? Does such an inevitability not necessarily lead to anxiety? I argue that Aquinas did accept such an inevitability but not as an inevitability of humanity rather as an inevitability of ignorance. Thus, my contention is that where Kierkegaard saw religious understanding of sin as a basis upon which one must embark towards a psychological understanding of existential existence (and perhaps nothing more), a Thomistic understanding of the different causes of sin, i.e., ignorance, weakness, and malice, and the question of human culpability^{Footnote 10} can lead to a greater understanding for the treatment of anxiety. Additionally, this is what could be referred to as the passive and active character of sin, that is to say through vice (habitual behaviours^{Footnote 11}) or dismissal or rejection of grace (gifts of the Holy Spirit^{Footnote 12}).^{Footnote 13} By combining the epistemological concepts of ‘the good’, the ethical response to this knowledge, and the religious recognition of love and grace through reconciliation in the form of psychoanalysis combined with sacraments, a holistic approach to overcoming anxiety, depression and melancholia may be developed. Yet, to understand and confront these conditions, it is of critical importance to consider to what degree humans can be considered culpable given the nature of sin, especially in the face of such notions as original or heritable sin. In other words, to what extent are we morally responsible for our thoughts and actions - consciously, subconsciously, and unconsciously?

A close study of the works of Thomas Aquinas, with particular interest in his ideas on free-will and the concept of sin, I believe is fundamental in examining how anxiety, depression, and melancholia can be understood in terms of the Christian notion of sin and the importance of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. Through an exploration of the experience of guilt and duty as considered by Jacques Lacan and considering them alongside Aquinas’ ideas of agency and responsibility, the question arises as to what extent we are responsible for disciplining our minds to avoid transgressive thoughts, reflexive responses, and dreams. Are we responsible for developing a disciplined mind as some sort of Aristotelian style virtue? Must these subconscious thoughts and unconscious dreams be confessed?^{Footnote 14} What role might such a sense of absolute responsibility have in experiences of anxiety, depression and melancholia? The sense of absolute responsibility for things that we may feel are beyond our control can lead to a pervading sense of culpability. Yet, culpability is not singularly a state of being, rather it is the state of being.^{Footnote 15}

Psychoanalytically, however, a variety of existential conditions - psychological, social, cultural, and political - conspire to sublimate culpability of the individual, as well as the collective of humanity. Lacan raised a major philosophical issue concerning human agency and responsibility with regards to the Euthyphro Dilemma in his examination of Sophocles’ Antigone and showed how a psychoanalytic approach to the sublimation of culpability provides an existential realist approach to moral responsibility and the fulness of being human.^{Footnote 16} Hence, I would argue, the challenges for agency, free-will, and human responsibility to realising culpability are sublime and require a psychological and spiritual reading. Subsequently, I suggest, such an awareness of culpability can lead to a sense of anxiety. According to Lacan, anxiety is brought on by the feeling of the immanence of something.^{Footnote 17}

Anxiety is the feeling that one is culpable for the future, which can lead to attempts to avoid evil by controlling the present in efforts to determine the future. Such responses as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are ways some people attempt to assert control and ensure the good.^{Footnote 18} I suggest that from a Christian viewpoint, this is characteristic of a loss of faith in God and His benevolence, and an impending fear and sense of dread for the future. This is what Aquinas refers to as ‘sins against the Holy Spirit’.^{Footnote 19} My point is that the fear can lead to a depression that no matter what is done it will never be enough, and the dread can ultimately lead to melancholia. The question is what causes this loss of faith and fear for the future. Both Aquinas and Lacan ascribe it to the ambiguity in determining the good. For Aquinas, all people seek the good, but the problem arises in mistaking a temporal and subjective good for a universal and objective good. For Lacan, the problem occurs in the ambiguity of jouissance, where the difference between pleasure and pain becomes blurred and transgression is subtle yet profound.

Various forms of response to this anxiety are indicated for efficacy and attempts to heal the rift between what we feel and believe ought to be done and the desires and compulsions that drive us in other directions. I contend that this raises questions with regards to religious practices such as the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation and the sacramental of exorcism - where transgression in the form of a manifest evil is personified and actualised. What are the philosophical implications of attributing temptation, vexation and possession to an outside source as an explanation for transgression? This is an important question in terms of the basis of the anxiety of sin and looking to Aquinas’ notions on love in relation to works by Lacan as providing a vision for overcoming the anxiety of sin and fully accepting human culpability.

4. Sin as a Rupture of the Symbolic Moral Order

The story of Sophocles’ Antigone ^{Footnote 20} provides the open space in which Jacques Lacan examines the question of ethics, free-will, desire and human culpability. The space is delineated by questions of duty and transgression, between feeling compelled to act and prohibitions against doing so, between the divine and the profane. Various characters in the story illustrate human experiences of anxiety, depression, and melancholia, and provide a means for considering the root cause of these experiences in the conflict of transgression brought on by psychological drives and desire. Thomas Aquinas also examines these topics and seeks to show how they arise and how they ought to be understood. Both Lacan and Aquinas aim to alleviate individual anxiety, depression and melancholia by working though their causes, clarifying their meaning and thereby illustrating a means for overcoming them. Yet, in bringing these two together I have no intent to reclaim what some critics have referred to as a ‘New Theology’ (known specifically by the French term ‘nouvelle théologie’) in the pejorative modernist sense,^{Footnote 21} but rather examine how the insights of the modern age can illuminate new ways of understanding foundational insights by returning to the sources (referred to as ‘ressourcement’^{Footnote 22}) on these topics.

Tina Beattie argues that Lacan ‘offers a path of purgation and purification of theological desire … in order to seek a renewal of theological method and language’.^{Footnote 23} She goes on to say,

Beattie identifies the benefit of reading Lacan and Aquinas together in overcoming the nihilistic malaise that has come to characterise some aspects of contemporary thought. She says that ‘Lacan argues that the God of modernity is not dead but unconscious’.^{Footnote 25} And she goes on to confront the hubris of people like Richard Dawkins by saying that ‘The man of science no longer seeks an infinite God but an infinite knowledge that will overcome forever the darkness of the soul’.^{Footnote 26} Yet, my point is that the idea of achieving ‘infinite knowledge’ implies absolute culpability, since no one can be understood to act in ignorance.^{Footnote 27} As Charles Taylor says, ‘Naiveté is now unavailable to anyone, believer or unbeliever alike’.^{Footnote 28} Beattie goes on to illustrate how Lacan highlights the way that modernity's disregard of a creating God shapes the way Western thought understands the world. The supplanting of God as the origin of all things through creation ex nihilo into human creativity and imagination as form imposed on a simply existing material world reduces any notion of inherent teleology to mere relativistic desire.^{Footnote 29} Although Beattie examines this in terms of the gendering of thought in Western society, I argue that it reveals the underlying sublimation of an established moral order into a relativisation of the good - whereby the universal will of God is replaced by the particularised desire of the individual.^{Footnote 30} Thus, Beattie argues that ‘A Lacanian reading of Thomas invites us to discover in the relational Trinity and creation ex nihilo a non-dualistic vision of the goodness and desirability of creation, as a manifestation of the goodness and desirability of God and as a participation in the divine Trinitarian relationships’.^{Footnote 31} Further, the supplanting of God in modernity, according to Lacan, focuses on the quantity of God - in His Oneness - rather than the quality of God - in His completeness, which leads to a resentment based on lack, the recognition of human incompleteness.^{Footnote 32}

My position is that our biological drive towards the good is based on a lack driven by eros – a love based on desire and seeking fulfilment. Our spiritual drive towards the good is based on a plenitude driven by agape – a love based on an overflow of care and compassion seeking only to relate. In this way, I argue that sin is not acting towards bad desires but acting towards desires that can never fulfil the natural order or drive towards completion. This is the point of ‘Lacan's Thomas’, insists Beattie, ‘for it suggests that the primordial other that God brings into being in the act of creation is not matter and form but desire itself’.^{Footnote 33} Yet, Aquinas points out that God is completely present in all people and all things,^{Footnote 34} so I contend that it is not that the sinner is deficient in God, rather the sinful act is ordered towards a lack instead of completion or fulfilment. For this reason, Beattie argues,

Summarising thus far, by focusing on the original works of Thomas Aquinas and Jacques Lacan in an attempt to clarify and understand the complimentary insights of each with regards to the idea of sin, I believe it becomes apparent how the perception of sin leads to the psychological manifestation of anxiety, depression, and melancholia. A foundational premise to be proven is that the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation provides a means for confronting and addressing these pathologies, leading to a greater sense of individual wholeness and openness to otherness – both as an absolute and a particular.

5. Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation as a Philosophy of Healing of the Ruptures

There is a common perception that society has come to be more and more characterised by psychologically athologized anxiety, depression, and melancholia.^{Footnote 36} However, Jan Schürmann and Jürgen Margraf identify a difference between USA and European experiences of these conditions.^{Footnote 37} Although an actual increase is debated, what is certain is that it also comes at a time when the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation has been on a steady decline among the faithful of the Catholic Church. In 2012, Cardinal Timothy Dolan made the point ‘What an irony that despite the call of the Second Vatican Council for a renewal of the sacrament of penance, what we got instead was its near disappearance’.^{Footnote 38} Hence, the question arises as to what extent can these two perceived societal changes be connected. Harold Koenig notes,

As such, my aim now is to answer the question: To what extent is the fear of sin and evil responsible for anxiety, depression, and melancholia; and can a Thomistic philosophy of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation form the basis for an appropriate psychoanalytic response?

My initial premise is that anxiety serves as a self-defence mechanism by which the individual remains on a heightened state of alert to avoid a perceived yet unspecified threat. A certain level of anxiety is beneficial as a means of being prepared for challenging situations. Yet, excessive anxiety combined with feelings of absolute culpability can lead to pathological obsessions, psychological disorders, and physical maladies.^{Footnote 40} The Christian narratives of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth centre on a recognition of these ideas of anxiety and culpability. Repeatedly throughout the gospels, Jesus is reported to have engaged with individuals who are anxious about their wellbeing: physical, mental, and spiritual.^{Footnote 41} Some identify themselves as culpable for wrongdoing but there are also others who identify with having obeyed all laws and yet are still anxious.^{Footnote 42} For those who acknowledge culpability relief is immediate through that recognition and confession, and then being reassured by Jesus that their sins are forgiven. This is the common understanding of the pattern for the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. However, for those who cannot see a fault, identify as obedient to the law, and yet still remain anxious, relief is much more difficult to obtain. For Christians, this could be seen as a recognition of the conflict between two moral laws, one finite and secular and another infinite and divine. This is the problem faced by Antigone in the play of the same name by Sophocles. Antigone is torn between the temporal law of the land and the eternal law of moral rectitude, which at times seems to ask too much. Where these two laws conflict, the moral agent will be in a continual state of anxiety. I contend that it is here that the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation can provide a Christian with the means to overcome the chasm, but perhaps it can also provide a therapeutic means for non-Christians as well. My position is that the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation provides a way for the individual to analyse thoughts, feelings, and actions in relation with others and not solely within themself, which is where anxiety resides. Thus, anxiety is intimately connected to the idea of lack; for Aquinas it is a lack of completion that can only be fulfilled by God; for Lacan it is a lack that can never be overcome by the very nature of the symbolic character of language by which all imagination is formalised. Nevertheless, I argue, it is in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation that the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real are brought together in a therapeutic act of healing.

Pope Francis said that ‘the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation is a sacrament of healing. When I go to confession, it is in order to be healed … of some wrongdoing’.^{Footnote 43} He went on to say that ‘the forgiveness of our sins is not something we can give ourselves’,^{Footnote 44} nor is it enough to ask within our own mind, rather because the feelings of having committed a wrong is not solely against the self but also against an other – whether it be a single person, community, or God – it must be asked of another. He goes on to say that ‘In the celebration of this Sacrament, the priest represents not only God but also the whole community, who sees itself in the weakness of each of its members, who listens and is moved by his repentance, and who is reconciled with him’.^{Footnote 45} He says,

The idea of unburdening oneself by talking with another, I suggest, highlights the way in which the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation can be understood therapeutically for overcoming anxiety, escaping depression, and avoiding melancholia. Hence, I contend that my objective in this article accords with Aquinas's own intention in understanding how to approach the issue of sin and human responsibility. As Brian Davies points out, Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologiae as a preparatory manual ‘for preaching and pastoral care, especially the hearing of confessions’.^{Footnote 47} And, I suggest, it is this pastoral aspect that we must continue to explore.

The ultimate question to be addressed is: To what extent is the fear of sin and evil responsible for anxiety, depression and melancholia; and can the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation form the basis for an appropriate psychoanalytic response? In answering this question, several formative questions are important to take these ideas further. 1) To what extent are we morally responsible for our thoughts and actions - consciously, subconsciously, and unconsciously? 2) Are we responsible for developing a disciplined mind as some sort of Aristotelian style virtue? 3) Must subconscious and unconscious thoughts and dreams be confessed? 4) What role might such a sense of absolute responsibility have in experiences of anxiety, depression, and melancholia? 5) What are the philosophical implications of attributing temptation, vexation and possession to an outside source? 6) Can acknowledging the foundations of subconscious and unconscious thoughts and dreams through psychoanalysis alone relieve the anxiety of guilt or must it be accompanied by confession as a means for psychologically fully accepting responsibility? 7) Does the Christian command to love provide a vision for overcoming the anxiety of sin and fully accepting human culpability?

6. Catechesis and the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation as a Healing of Estrangement and Alienation that Leads to Guilt Resulting in Anxiety, Depression, and Melancholia

My position is that the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation is singularly about relationships: between God and humanity, amongst humanity as the body of the Church, and in addition to the relationship between God and the individual is the relationship between the individual and themself. I argue that it is a Sacrament of healing the estrangement and alienation resultant of the breakdown in relationship, which is characterised by a lack of faith in the other (including self-as-other), mistrust, and abandonment. I argue that this is the source of sin and within the human person this breakdown in relationship is experienced as emotional distress, recrimination, and guilt. As the Church states, ‘only in this relationship is the evil of sin unmasked in its true identity as humanity's rejection of God and opposition to him, even as it continues to weigh heavy on human life and history’.^{Footnote 48} Yet, the Church goes on to clarify that through divine revelation God has distinguished sin from ‘merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure’, rather, ‘sin is an abuse of the freedom that God gives to created persons so that they are capable of loving him and loving one another’.^{Footnote 49} Consequently, I suggest that a comprehensive catechesis of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation as a Sacrament of healing necessarily must begin by a) defining and distinguishing what is meant by ‘sin’ and the various types of sin. Then, b) specifically expanding the Sacrament from solely a spiritual grace of restoration and healing of the relationship between God and humanity to include a developed understanding of a grace of healing of the psychological wellbeing of the individual; thus, it is important to ensure the catechumen also recognises how anxiety – and, subsequently, depression, and melancholia – are inevitable consequences of unresolved and unbounded guilt. Finally, c) to set out the various ways of understanding the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation through the healing acts of conversion, penance, confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

7. Conclusion

In this article, I have sought to outline an approach for developing a catechesis on overcoming the anxiety of sin by closely examining a way of determining the good and human culpability through the lens of integrating the works of Jacques Lacan and Thomas Aquinas. This is intended as a response to Pope Benedict XVI's call for a more positive approach to catechesis. It has been focused on a response to the ongoing question of the relevance and importance of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation as a catechetical debate of the 20^th-21^st century and explored the implications of modernity for human culpability and moral responsibility. As previously noted, Pope Benedict XVI argued that ‘morality is a doctrine about the nature of happiness and the means to attain it’,^{Footnote 80} and it is with this in mind that this article has sought to make the connection between healing of the psychological distresses of anxiety, depression, and melancholia and the overcoming of feelings of boundless guilt for sin through the sacramental healing experienced in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. As such, it has been argued that a catechism on the Sacrament taking into account the various fundamental aspects of the Sacrament can provide not only an introduction and familiarity with the foundations of belief in the Catholic faith but also provide an insight into the potential therapeutic benefits of such a catechetical approach. To paraphrase Pope Benedict's statement used as an epigraph at the beginning of this journey: