St. Alphonsus Liguori

Who they were

Alphonsus was a Neapolitan prodigy, a doctorate in both laws at sixteen, a courtroom career undefeated for nearly a decade, until he lost a case on a document he had misread, took it as his answer, and left the law for the priesthood. He founded the Redemptorists to preach to the rural poor, wrote the most influential moral theology of his era, and composed devotions, *The Glories of Mary*, the Stations still used in half the world's parishes. Two afflictions shadowed the whole of it. Rheumatic disease bent his neck so severely that his chin bored a wound into his chest, and he governed his order from a wheelchair. And scrupulosity, the obsessive, looping fear of having sinned that today sits near OCD, tormented him to the end of his life, which is precisely why his moral theology bends so consistently toward mercy. Doctor of the Church, 1871.

Why people turn to St. Alphonsus Liguori

Arthritis sufferers, from the neck. But his most needed patronage now is the other one: people whose faith has turned into a checking loop ask for the prayers of a Doctor of the Church who had the same condition and wrote mercy anyway.

How to ask their intercession

For scrupulosity: ask his prayers for a steady confessor or counselor and the grace to obey them rather than the loop, his own rule for himself. Alongside treatment where treatment is called for. ---