A Note on Confessional Practice

Extract

In a recent article designed to cope with certain types of penitents, it is said that the penitent has the right to expect the confessor to be judicial, in the sense of objective. But that we cannot expect the priest to decide for us whether or not we have been sinning, or to what extent: he can tell us what is objectively moral or immoral, not what is our particular measure of guilt (Blackfriars, 1943;, p. 409). This statement, if it is not to be misleading to both confessors and penitents, calls for further clarification. There is no possibility of doubt that it is the duty of the confessor, as divinely appointed, to judge the objective and subjective morality of sins, and, as far as he is able on the evidence, to assess the objective and subjective measure of guilt. In this respect the penitent has every right to expect the confessor to be judicial, and to be able to advise him on his subjective state.

In a parallel and an anonymous article, translated from the French, entitled ‘A Spiritual ‘Cure for Scrupulosity,’ it is asserted but not proved that the juridical element, herein after to be called ‘precise legalism,’ introduced by moral theologians is responsible for the disease of scrupulosity. Experience, however, shows that scrupulosity may be found in the simplest of individuals, who have not had the remotest connection with the so-called legalism of theologians.