Confession and Absolution Part 3

[50] Com. in Matt. c. xviii.

[51] In Exod. n. cviii.

[52] Serm. cccli, n. 9.

[53] Homily on Repentance, part ii.

[54] While this Second Edition is pa.s.sing through the press, the following statement is reported by the New York Herald, May 5th, to have been made the precious Sunday, by the new pastor of St. Ignatius'

Episcopal Church, New York: "And of the confessional, we believe that auricular confession is a part of the preaching of G.o.d's ministers. I should be unfaithful to my trust if I held back from proclaiming, by my words and by my practice, _that confession is necessary to salvation, and that G.o.d's ministers have the poorer to forgive sins_."

[55] Con. Trent, Sess. xiv, cap. 5.

III.

So far, the doctrine concerning G.o.d's conditions for reconciling the sinner has been limited to the interior supernatural repentance, together with absolution and confession. The other element--satisfaction--which is not of the essence of contrition, but perfects it, has not been treated, simply because in another conference it is intended to deal with this question in connection with the works of penance and the doctrine of indulgences.

Before closing the question now under consideration, it is right that certain objections, urged oftentimes in good faith, sometimes in ignorance, sometimes in malice, should be duly met.

1. It is, as was said elsewhere, by no inherent power that the Apostles and their successors are able to remit sin. G.o.d, and G.o.d alone, can do so, though He can delegate this to others. This He has done. But to secure so transcendent an authority from abuse, two elements are necessary before it can be exercised.

First, from G.o.d, and through the appointed sacrament, must man be const.i.tuted a priest--that is, an offerer of sacrifice. This comes direct from G.o.d, and is called the power of Order, and is obtained by ordination. This was given to the Apostles at the Last Supper, when our Lord said: "Do this in commemoration of me." After His resurrection, there was given the power or capability to forgive sin, by the words "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained."

The second element comes also from G.o.d, but indirectly, as it reaches the individual minister through the Church. It is the authority or commission of the Church to a priest or bishop to exercise the power of pardoning which he has received of G.o.d. This is called jurisdiction. It is included in the words said to Peter: "To thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever then shalt loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven."[56] Of the which, Tertullian, writing more than sixteen centuries ago, says: "For if then thinkest heaven is still closed, remember the Lord left here the keys thereof to Peter, and through him to the Church."[57] Many a man has all the innate and acquired talent to be an excellent judge, a proficient amba.s.sador, an efficient naval or military officer; but over and above capability, there is needed commission or appointment by competent authority. So, in like manner, bishops and priests possess the power to pardon, but jurisdiction is needed to say on whom and where this power is to be exercised. Merely because a man is ordained validly, this does not give him the power to absolve; without jurisdiction, his absolution has no more value than would that of a layman.

It will be evident that as jurisdiction comes from G.o.d but through the Church, she can control those who are to exercise the power of pardoning sin. Hence, she insists that her priests shall carefully study the moral law, just as a lawyer does civil law. She exacts that those who hear confessions shall, by examination, prove their competency in the way of knowledge. She trains from boyhood her Levites to the sacred work they have to do, and she permits only those to be admitted to the Ministry of Reconciliation whose piety, past conduct, and judgment commend them for confessions. To those so approved she gives jurisdiction--or, as it is technically called, "faculties"--specifying where and on whom such power may be exercised.

This jurisdiction is always granted for a limited period of time, during which it may be withdrawn if deemed advisable by the grantor.

Thus, then, is every care taken in the selection and in the preparation of priests for the work of hearing confessions and absolving from sin. Even after they are duly appointed, the restriction of the power to time, places, persons, and causes, together with the varied tests of competency afforded by the conferences on cases of conscience and other theological knowledge, held at frequent and regular intervals in each diocese, under the direction of the bishop, const.i.tute a solid control over those exercising the Ministry of Reconciliation. Then the priest's own belief and conscience, as well as the obligation to confess his sins and seek absolution for them, add to the faithful exercise of his duties as confessor.

Beyond these human precautions and considerations, the very fact that G.o.d inst.i.tuted the Tribunal of Penance as the usual channel for pardoning sin, obliges us to realize that He himself would protect the administration of the sacrament. For this sacred work, His priests, during many years, are trained to a life of piety, prayer, and mortification. The spiritual education of their own souls, by meditation and examination of conscience, fits them to know the workings of the souls of others. Before undertaking the study of painfully distressing treatises on certain parts of the moral law, the Levite strengthens his soul by prayer, enters thereon simply for the glory of G.o.d and the good of souls, and is aided by experienced discreet professors.

Medical men and lawyers are not trained and selected for their profession as are priests, nor are they aided in their duties by special divine protection. Yet, relying on them as gentlemen and on their professional honor, clients, without fear or suspicion, entrust to these, themselves and their affairs.

Why then not concede to priests at least this same measure of honorability? They, like doctors and lawyers, must for their work be theoretically cognizant of the crimes, iniquities, and weaknesses of mankind. But they, no more than doctors or lawyers, speak of these things, unless the penitent has been guilty of and confesses some such offence. On the contrary, those who enter the Ministry are taught to be most prudent and discreet in putting questions; never to ask more than what may be necessary. The rule is to err on the side of too little. Nay, rather than suggest or make known that which a penitent may be ignorant of, the minister must consult more what is for the good of the soul than for the integrity of the Confession.

2. Again, let it be remembered that it is not as in a court of justice, where the plea of "not guilty" is set up, and all has then to be wormed out by examination in the most detailed manner. For the penitent enters the confessional as self-accuser, states the offence, together with the number of times it has happened, and any circ.u.mstances which may alter or aggravate the deed. There are, therefore, in Confession, none of the nauseous details and descriptions of crime which may be heard in our courts and read in our newspapers.

The remarkable testimony of a Protestant gentleman--Doctor Forbes--may here be of much value. In his memorandums, made in Ireland in the autumn of 1852, he says: "At any rate, the result of my inquiries is that--whether right or wrong in a theological or rational point of view--this instrument of Confession is, among the Irish of the humbler cla.s.ses, a direct preservative against certain forms of immorality at least."[58] "Among other charges preferred against Confession in Ireland and elsewhere, is the facility it affords for corrupting the female mind, and of its actually leading to such corruption. * * * So far from such corruption resulting from the Confessional, it is the general belief in Ireland--a belief expressed to me by many trustworthy men in all parts of the country, and by Protestants as well as by Catholics--that the singular purity of female life among the lower cla.s.ses there is, in a considerable degree, dependent on this very circ.u.mstance."[59] "With a view of testing, as far as was practicable, the truth of the theory respecting the influence of Confession on this branch of morals, I have obtained, through the courtesy of the Poor Law Commissioners, a return of the number of legitimate and illegitimate children in the work-houses of each of the four provinces in Ireland, on a particular day, viz: the 27th of November, 1852. * * * It is curious to mark how strikingly the results there conveyed correspond with the confessional theory: the proportion of illegitimate children coinciding almost exactly with the relative proportions of the two religions in each province; being large where the Protestant element is large, and small where it is small."[60]

Good sense ought to make objectors remember that priests have mothers and sisters and relations whom they love; and priests would be the first to prevent these beloved ones from the demoralizing influences which enemies ignorantly attribute to the confessional.

3. Once more let it be remembered that the Tribunal of Penance is for the accusation and absolution of sin. Name, nor abode, nor fortune, nor domestic concerns, have any place there. The priest is the spiritual physician, and it is the disease which is submitted to him; all else is foreign to his office, nor has he the right to ask of other matters. Nay, more: a sacramental secret surrounds his work; this involves obligations greater than any natural or promised secrecy. Information obtained in Confession the priest can never use, be it in his own interest, or in that of a family, or of the State, or of the Pope, or of the Church. Therefore, to imagine the Tribunal of Penance to be an engine for obtaining and using information in domestic concerns and family secrets, is to be sorely ignorant of the nature of confession and of the obligations of a confessor.

4. Objectors of another kind urge that confession induces persons to sin more readily, or at least it transfers the keeping of conscience to the priest.

Seeing that all which is demanded by Protestants for repentance must be in the mind of the Catholic before he can be absolved, it is clear the objection comes ill from them, and can have no foundation. Of course, for those who believe that Catholics obtain pardon by payment of money, the objection would have weight. But it can hardly be imagined that in the nineteenth century, among an intelligent people like Americans, there are to be found persons who believe that Catholics are so bereft of reason as to imagine that sin can be forgiven by the giving of silver and gold.

Every Catholic knows that to speak falsely in Confession would be to lie to the Holy Ghost, as did Ananias and Saphira; that to confess as Judas did, without sorrow, would not only bring no pardon, but, on the contrary, would add the sin of sacrilege to his soul. The Catholic knows that without a firm efficacious determination of purpose to avoid sin and its occasions, and to satisfy for injuries done, there can be no forgiveness of sin.

Nowhere is the soul of man more p.r.o.ne to self-deception than in the matter of true repentance. Temptation may cease, and with it comes cessation of wrong-doing. This, under self-deception, may be easily construed into conversion. Self-interest and pa.s.sion may so blind a man that he may imagine himself truly repentant, notwithstanding that he has not pardoned injuries, or reconciled himself to enemies, or restored ill-gotten goods, or retracted calumny, or compensated for wrongs inflicted, or is not disposed to avoid occasions of sin, and the like.

The confessor has to intervene, remind the penitent of these duties, and secure that they shall be done, before he can absolve from sin.

Instead of becoming the keeper of the sinner's conscience, the confessor is but its instructor: duty and responsibility remain in all their extent to the penitent. And the penitent has to test the genuineness of his contrition by unmistakable obligations to be complied with, if forgiveness of sin is to be obtained.

All this, instead of encouraging the sinner, as opponents have it, to return and wallow in the mire of iniquity, does, on the contrary, make him gird up his loins, and walk with a firm but cautious step for the future. And this apart from the fact that one of the supernatural effects of this sacrament of penance is the bestowal of actual medicinal graces, whereby the soul is strengthened against relapsing, and for which reason regular and frequent confession is so earnestly encouraged.

5. To have a wise prudent spiritual adviser, to have an experienced physician of the soul, to have a merciful but strict judge of moral duty: is to have the greatest spiritual support on earth, even apart from the superadded sacramental character of such a minister. It is this blessed gift which the Catholic has in his legitimately-approved and authorized confessor.

Prejudice or ignorance can alone construe such an inestimable treasure, which brings peace of conscience and heavenly consolation, into "making the priest the keeper of a man's conscience, and the destroyer of man's spiritual liberty and of his responsibility to his Creator."

How different are the opinions of thoughtful men, concerning this Tribunal of Penance, will be seen from the following: One is a Frenchman, who, unhappily, apostatized from the Catholic Church; the second is a distinguished German philosopher, who lived and died a Protestant; the third is one of the profoundest thinkers of our day, who, born in the Episcopal Church in England, served her some forty years, and then left her to enter the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church.

The first of these--Voltaire--thus writes:

"The enemies of the Roman Church, who have a.s.sailed the salutary inst.i.tution of confession, appear to have removed the strongest restraint which can be put upon secret crimes. The sages of antiquity themselves felt the importance of it."[61]

The second--Leibnitz--in his "System of Theology" says:

"The inst.i.tution of sacramental confession is a.s.suredly worthy of the divine wisdom, and, of all the doctrines of religion, it is the most admirable and the most beautiful. It was admired by the Chinese and the inhabitants of j.a.pan. The necessity of confessing sin is sufficient to preserve from it those who still preserve their modesty; and yet, if any fail, confession consoles and restores them. I look on a grave and prudent confessor as a great instrument of G.o.d for the salvation of souls. His counsels regulate the sentiments, reprove vices, remove occasions of sin, cause the rest.i.tution of ill-acquired property, and the reparation of wrongs; clear up doubts, console under afflictions--in fine, cure or relieve all the evils of the soul; and as nothing in the world is more precious than a faithful friend, what is the value of that friend when he is bound by his functions and fitted by his knowledge to devote to you all his care, under the seal of the most inviolable secrecy?"

The third--Cardinal Newman--says, in "Anglican Difficulties":

"If there is a heavenly idea in the Catholic Church--looking at it simply as an idea--surely, next after the Blessed Sacrament, confession is such. And such is it ever found, in fact; the very act of kneeling, the low and contrite voice, the sign of the cross--hanging, so to say, over the head bowed low--and the words of peace and blessing. Oh, what a soothing charm is there which the world can neither give nor take away! Oh, what piercing heart-subduing tranquility, provoking tears of joy, is poured almost substantially and physically upon the soul--the oil of gladness, as Scripture calls it--when the penitent at length rises, his G.o.d reconciled to him, his sins rolled away for ever! This is confession as it is in fact, as those bear witness to it who know it by experience."[62]

FOOTNOTES:

[56] Matt. xvi, 19, and xviii, 18.

[57] Scorpiace, n. x.

[58] Vol. ii, p. 81.

[59] Vol. ii, p. 83.

[60] Vol. ii, p. 215.

[61] Annales de l'Empire, vol. i, p. 41.

[62] Card. Newman, Ang. Diff. p. 351.