I’ve heard this phrase more times than I can count, and although I have a pretty good idea as to what it is (being raised Catholic and all), I don’t actually know for sure.
Any Dopers care to enlighten me?
“Catholic guilt” would be defined by me as feeling guilt over just not committing a bad act, but even thinking about a bad act.
And wrapped up in all of this is that you will go to Hell because of your actions.
A Catholic kid would feel guilty about not eating all of his vegetables at dinner not because he doesn’t like his mother’s cooking, but rather because he knows that there are other people in the world who are hungry and they are going to die because you didn’t eat that last lima bean.
Everything has a global, apocalyptic view.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
(Emphasis added.)
I had been raised Catholic, trained in how to go to confession, and thought I knew all about guilt. Guilt over every little wrong deed, and of course guilt over thinking about wrong deeds.
Until I married my first wife, of Jewish extraction. She trumped me with Jewish guilt: feeling guilty for even existing.
There is an anecdote about the great early Sufi Rabi‘ah. Another Sufi approached her and asked, “How should we seek remission of sins?” She answered: “Thy very existence is a sin with which no other sin can be compared.”
A stupid question about Catholicism from a Protestant: Do Catholics believe that the Last Rites are necessary, or are they just a ritual? In other words, would the soul wind up in limbo if the rites were not administered?
From the Catechsim of the Catholic Church:
Okay, I think I’m starting to get the idea. Theoretical situation here (uh, “theoretical”):
I have enough money per week for gasoline, car insurance, and caffeine. Little else (literally, as in about $5 left over for each week, for anything I might want/need).
Our church has postboards up with sticky tags that have an item of food on them. Parishoners can take a tag and bring in that food on the specified date for a soup kitchen (some tags have “2lbs ground beef”, “2 dozen cookies”, “package sliced cheese”, etc).
Even though I don’t really have the money to do so, if I don’t take a tag, I feel extraordinarily guilty! I think that I’m being terribly selfish, and I can find the money if I really wanted to; maybe I could go without anything extra, maybe I could injest less coffee/pop. But I’m not taking a tag when these poor people need to go to soup kitchens just to eat! I must be a horrible person!
So, is that a good example of “Catholic guilt”?
Congratulations zweisamkeit, consider yourself officially a guilt-ridden Catholic!
[Homer Simpson] Woohoo! [/Homer Simpson]
Now, can Catholic guilt extend into things that aren’t even remotely related to religion? 
I think zweisamkeit guilt-ridden Catholic status should be provisional until s/he realises that Catholic guilt extends to all areas of life
In going through stuff from my parents, I found a small prayer book given to my mother for her First Communion in 1936. There is a section in there on the examination of conscience.
If you followed those guidelines, Hell is 100% guaranteed.
Limbo is no longer part of RCC teaching. When it was, it was for the righteous unbaptized; the popular image was of babies playing in a place that was almost paradise, except that God was not present as he would be in Heaven.
For Catholics, the sacrament of Annointing of the Sick (the last rites, Extreme Unction) is somewhere in between “necessary” and “just a ritual”. According to RCC teaching, a person who dies without them who has a mortal (serious) sin on his soul is doomed to Hell, while a person who has only venial (less serious) sins on his soul will spend time in Purgatory to be cleansed of the sins before going to Heaven. So it’s not like you’re doomed if you don’t get the sacrament. But, the only way to go straight to Heaven is to have no sins on your soul - not exactly easy unless you’ve been to Confession within the last few days - so the sacrament has more than ritual function.
Not incidentally, the sacrament is not only offered to those who are in serious danger of death. Even those in relatively small danger, such as those about to undergo surgery under general anesthesia, can receive the sacrament. For many Catholics there’s a comfort in this - they will of course still worry about their own or their loved one’s physical body, but his immortal soul is in good hands.
For the record: I grew up Catholic, I am no longer, but many of my family members still are. My father has received the sacrament of the Annointing of the Sick at least twice that I know of, and is still very much alive.
Guilt as seen from Catholic friends I had as a teenager:
sex is sin, contraception is sin
=> sex-without-contraception=less sin, so we’ll do it that way
(despite the risk of pregnancy, STD, etc etc).
There’s something about being raised Catholic that makes you feel guilty not only about bad things that you did yourself, but about all the bad things that all of humanity has ever done. Part of it is the concept of original sin: we are all born with the stain of Adam and Eve’s first sin, and only baptism removes it.
Another part of it comes from some of the traditional services. On Palm Sunday (Sunday before Easter), for instance, a long reading from the Gospel is given at Mass, in which the congregation takes the part of the mob that calls for Jesus’ death, and of Peter when he denies Christ, etc. I just remember feeling pretty awful about the whole thing when I was a little kid.
By the way, I am no longer Catholic (big surprise, eh?).
No, no, no, istara, the way it goes is…
premarital sex is sin;
but even thinking about it is just as much sin;
and we have already thought about it;
so we might as well do it. As long as we confess it later…
Yes, much um, creative theology has gone into developing the fundamentals of the Horny Teenager Heresy .
In my experience, “Catholic Guilt” does include, as has been stated before, a general sense of failure to live up to the ideal, not just the standard. In the Confiteor prayer the entire congregation describes having sinned in thoughts, words, deeds and omissions and then says several times over that it’s their own fault (“mea culpa”). Even if often it isn’t. And this guilt is independent of whether you disappoint your parents or your community – IOW it doesn’t matter if you mother finds out, it does not even matter if your mother approves, you’re still wrong – even if you’re not explicitly commanded to do or not do something. Thus for instance zwei~'s example. He’s under no commandment to sacrifice such little discretionary income; but the NT has the example of the widow’s mote (she drops into the almsbox her very last penny, Jesus says that is worthier than the rich guy who gave a small fortune) and there’s the guilt for not living up to the ideal.
Even for a lapsed Catholic like me, the guilt lingers on, like the smell of smoke from far off. It jumps out in sneak attacks even after I have set it aside. Being married to a great big agnostic, you’d think this would help, but every so often he’ll say something that sets the Catholic alarms off and if he see this in my face, he licks his index finger and stretches his hand far above his head and invites the lightening down to punish him.
I usually step back a little, just in case.
Sure it does. Despite being now an atheist, I think I’m still guilty of catholic guilt.
As others have pointed out, it is related to an unability to reach unreachable ideals, religiously-related or not.
A former girlfriend of mine used to tell me that I should stop thinking I’ve a duty to “bear the world on my shoulders”.
On the other hand, I don’t know why it would be a particulary catholic thing. It’s not like other christian denominations thought that the ideals are reachable.
Just a thought, the formality of Confession might add to it.
Yeah, I feel guilt, over sins of both commission and omission, but I confess to the person I sinned against and make atonement if possible/reasonable, I confess to God and repent, and then I put it behind me and go and try to sin less. But it might add more weight to the whole thing when there is a ritual around the process of acknowledging your sin. As to whether that’s good or bad, it could go either way. (I probably could do with more guilt, but it’s dead obvious that some people could do with very much less.)
my further advice is to not delve too far into ‘catholic guilt’ via websearch, lest you fall into a truly horrifying spiral of BDSM that makes me even a little oogy.
dangit, the underline on the link to this tread made me think it was about a catholic quilt