Dear Father Angelo,

I have been following your answers to the faithful for a while to look for help regarding my situation, but I finally ask you to help me solve an issue that has become a source of unending worry for me.

I am a 24 year old young man and only in recent years have I strongly moved towards to the Lord after a life of sin and blasphemy, about 2 years ago I made a vow to God that I would not blaspheme anymore and that if I happened to do it again I would “punish” myself physically by inflicting some sort of physical pain significant to me, and that if I had not punished myself then I would have chosen the punishment of freely going to hell. After some time I regretted this penance, and as I read that only those who refuse salvation and decide to go to hell actually end up there, my first question therefore is: even though I regretted having given myself this penance, if I did not fulfill my vow, would I still go to hell because I swore that I wanted to freely go there if I had not fulfilled my vow?

Another issue, however, is that from that moment on, I started making promises and vows to the lord with too much “ease”, as if I had got carried away by taking these vows of mine too “lightly”. For some time, I believed that, because of my choices, I had pushed the devil to harass my girlfriend and that I had doomed her to hell (stupidly, because only later did I realize that I do not have that “ability” and that only God has such power); at that point, however, in my panic I made another vow that if the Lord would have saved her from hell instead, I would no longer eat sweets and that I would deprive myself of many other things that gave me pleasure in life, getting myself stuck each time into increasingly “choking” deprivations; understanding now with a clear mind what I have done, I ask: are these vows valid that I made asking the Lord to save people from hell who I thought were doomed only because of my choices?

Finally, the last question: every time I committed sins, I panicked and looked for a “remedy” by making many small vows such as complete fasting or fasting on bread and water only several times in a month, or the giving up of some material goods; however, this kind of deprivations over time caused suffering to my parents, and only now do I realize what I did; I want to point out that I was clear minded when I made these promises to God, but that perhaps I should have discussed this matter with a parish priest to get a less biased opinion; I therefore ask if it is possible to be dispensed from those vows made in times of weakness.

Thank you for giving your time to me, you will be in my prayers,

I send you my hugs.

Answer from the priest

Dear Son,

1. I am glad that you heard the call of the Lord and came back to him.

The vow not to blaspheme is a further obligation that you have given yourself to correct yourself away from a sin that had become a vice.

2. However, in the passage where you say that if you happened to swear again you would have punished yourself physically, you should have been more cautious.

By this, I mean that you should have asked permission from your confessor, who would have assessed whether it was appropriate to do such a thing and in what ways.

If I had been your confessor, I would have told you to make amends by reciting Psalm 51: Miserere mei Deus, with the intention of partaking of confession in order to come back into God’s grace and to be able to receive Holy Communion.

3. Instead, in the passage where you say that if you had not done a bodily penance you would have chosen to go to hell, you made a mistake, because one cannot choose to go to hell as a vow.

Going to hell means eternally hating God.

Now, the vow consists in the promise made to God towards a possible and better good. But choosing to go to hell is not a good thing in any way.

In this respect, your vow is invalid.

4. Of course, you did it not to eternally hate God, but to be punished for your blasphemy.

Somehow, in the same vein in which St. Francis de Sales spoke when, despairing of his own salvation due to his Jansenist and Protestant influences, he asked the Lord that “if he really had to go to hell and was among those who would never see his face, he would at least be bestowed the grace of not being among those who curse his holy name.”

5. The advice I give you for this vow and for all the other countless ones you have made is to discuss this matter personally with your confessor or with a parish priest, so that he can give you a dispensation. And instead of all those vow, he may tell you to do something actually useful.

I direct you to your confessor or to a parish priest because, according to canon law, only they have the power to commute or dispense from the vows you made.

6. In particular, from now on and in the future, exactly since you have an inclination to make vows and make your life increasingly impossible, resolve not to make any vow unless you have the consent of your confessor. Otherwise, you will consider it void and therefore not binding.

Thank you very much for remembering me in your prayers. Keep up the good work.

With the wish for ever greater growth in the communion of grace with God, I assure you of my prayers and I bless you.

Father Angelo

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