Fifth, it labors under many difficulties.
Fifth, it labors under many difficulties.
§ 108. (V) Papist confession labors under many difficulties. Christopher Hoffmann discusses this matter (Commentar. de poenitentia, bk. 2, part 2, ch. 7):
Who taught people that this law about the confession of secrets must be carried out so tyrannically? Not only can no one like it nor observe it with a pious mind, but also everyone equally hates it as a terribly bothersome burden to the conscience, etc. Therefore it makes sin where there is none; and yet it ensnares inexperienced consciences and entangles them in mortal sins. For whatever you think is sin and whatever you do or omit doing with a consciousness of sin is truly sin, even if it is not sin by its own nature. Therefore those who hate this difficult confession of secrets, to which they believe they are obligated as to a pious and necessary work before God, sin seriously, etc. Therefore it makes sheer hypocrites out of those who think they are satisfying the confession which they cannot love sincerely. They understand and clearly believe the difficulty and the impossibility of it, and yet they also believe that they are under obligation to do it. It bursts forth with indignant anger and blasphemies against God, to the despair of eternal death. It cannot be doubted that countless thousands of souls have been utterly exhausted and destroyed by the hypocrisy, pretense, tedium, shame, and desperation of this forced confession, as is the fortune of the traditions which are imposed upon the church while Christian liberty is being oppressed.
Those are his words. The fact that secrets are heard with scandal must be assigned to these difficulties. If the secrets were kept quiet and covered, they could not harm the consciences of those who hear the confession. Also, with even greater scandal, questions are set before chaste ears, questions which would be more rightly put to sleep with eternal silence. Read the questions which Angelus de Clavisio asks (Summa casuum conscientiae, fols. 148–56), where he yet adds that he omitted many interrogations. Among these [are the following]. Concerning the Sixth Commandment: Was he a fornicator? Did he defile himself in any way? Did he voluntarily think about sins of that kind? Concerning married people: Was the [conjugal] debt denied to the one who sought it? Did he have intercourse to satisfy lust? Did he have intercourse with intentions of having it with another? Did he have intercourse outside the bounds of matrimony? Or in an undue manner, whether during the menstrual period, the time of pregnancy, or on feast days, etc.
** Toletus (Summa casuum conscientiae, bk. 3, ch. 7, fol. 156): “Those who suffer the sin of softness [mollities] and defile themselves with their own hands are obligated to express the person of whom they were thinking, if they were thinking of someone. They are also bound to express the changing species [of the sin], and they are bound to express this successively in one act, if they were intending more. The confessor should demand this.” Chapter 8: “The same thing must be understood concerning a person who cannot declare all his sins, such as a mute person, who can express by gesture not all but only some of his sins.” **
For this reason the Jesuit Acosta (De procuranda Indorum salute, bk. 6, ch. 16) writes: “A certain theologian said that he went to take care of the Indians in the best way and wrote that, if they were removed from the obligation of confessions, they would not be forced to commit so many and such serious sacrileges.” But then he argues against this: “If the perverted abuse a remedy, this will be the way to cure the problem: ‘Do away with marriage, lest adultery occur’; and do the same with other situations, lest wickedness turn something good into poison. But with a person who weighs all things wisely and correctly it is of greater value that a chosen few be cured by the medicine than that many wicked people become worse through the abuse of it.” Those are the words of Acosta. We respond to him that the nature of divine ordinances is one thing, and the nature of human traditions is another. The former must be preserved without giving any consideration to misuses, but the latter can be removed due to general misuse.
Bellarmine (De verbo Dei, bk. 2, ch. 15) argues that [if this were so, then] laypeople should be kept away from the reading of Scripture “because David’s adultery, Tamar’s incest, and Judith’s lying are narrated in them, which are dangerous,” lest the laity imitate them. I will not debate the strength of the argument, but I argue on the basis of this hypothesis that, due to the danger of scandal, the prodigious interrogations in confession should be omitted by a far greater right.