Skip to content

We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.

Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you.

Help Now >

Distraction

Free World Class Education
FREE Catholic Classes

Distraction ( Latin distrahere , to draw away, hence to distract) is here considered in so far as it is wont to happen in time of prayer and in administering the sacraments. It hardly needs to be noted that the idea of mental prayer and mind-wandering are destructive of each other. So far as vocal prayer is concerned, the want of actual interior attention, if voluntary, will take from its perfection and be morally reprehensible. Distractions, however, according to the commonly accepted teaching, do not rob prayer of its essential character. To be sure one must have had the intention to pray and therefore in the beginning some formal advertence; otherwise a man would not know what he was doing, and his prayer could not be described even as a human act. So long, however, as nothing is done outwardly which would be incompatible with any degree whatever of attention to the function of prayer, the lack of explicit mental application does not, so to speak, invalidate prayer. In other words, it keeps its substantial value as prayer, although, of course, when the dissipation of thought is wilful our addresses to the throne of mercy lose a great deal of efficacy and acceptability. This doctrine has an application, for example, in the case of those who are bound to recite the canonical Office and who are esteemed to have fulfilled their obligation substantially even though their distractions have been abundant and absorbing. Voluntary distractions, that is the conscious deliberate surrender of the mind to thoughts foreign to prayers, are sinful because of the obvious irreverence for God with Whom at such times are presuming to hold intercourse. The guilt, however, is judged to be venial. In the administration of the sacraments their validity cannot be assailed merely because the one who confers them fails to, here and now, think of what he is doing. Provided he has the required intention and posits the essentials of the external rite proper to each sacrament, no matter how taken over he may be by outside reflections, his act is distinctly a human one and as such its value cannot be impugned. Such as state of mind, however, when it is wilful, is sinful, but the guilt is not mortal unless one has thereby laid himself open to the danger of making a mistake in what is regarded as essential for the validity of the sacrament in question.

We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.

Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you.

Help Now >

Join the Movement
When you sign up below, you don't just join an email list - you're joining an entire movement for Free world class Catholic education.

Prayer of the Day logo
Saint of the Day logo

We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.

Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you.

Help Now >

Catholic Online Logo

Copyright 2024 Catholic Online. All materials contained on this site, whether written, audible or visual are the exclusive property of Catholic Online and are protected under U.S. and International copyright laws, © Copyright 2024 Catholic Online. Any unauthorized use, without prior written consent of Catholic Online is strictly forbidden and prohibited.

Catholic Online is a Project of Your Catholic Voice Foundation, a Not-for-Profit Corporation. Your Catholic Voice Foundation has been granted a recognition of tax exemption under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Federal Tax Identification Number: 81-0596847. Your gift is tax-deductible as allowed by law.