Whether it is right for priests to enjoin satisfactory works.
Whether it is right for priests to enjoin satisfactory works.
§ 128. Bellarmine (ch. 5) resolves to prove that “it is right for priests to enjoin works of satisfaction.” (I) In Matt. 18:18, “priests are given the Keys to release and bind. Therefore just as they absolve penitents of fault, so also they can and should bind them to certain works of penance.”
** The Jesuit Pinellus (De poenit., bk. 2, ch. 2) writes: “The penitent, who is playing the part of a guilty person, ought to be prepared to finish whatever satisfaction the confessor, as judge, imposes upon him in this life.” **
Response. Just as the forgiving and releasing of sins deals only with the penitent, so also the binding and retaining of sins pertains only to the impenitent. Thus it is a terribly disgraceful confusion of the key of releasing and binding when the repentant still have their sins retained and bound either wholly or partly. Surely Christ has nowhere commanded the apostles to impose satisfactory punishments on the repentant. Rather, He commanded them to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins in His name (Luke 24:47). Nowhere do we read that Christ and the apostles imposed certain penalties upon the penitent. Rather, they announce the free forgiveness of sins, and they command the penitent to beware of sinning in the future. As long as he continued in his sins, the apostle surrendered the incestuous Corinthian “to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit might be saved” [1 Cor. 5:5]. But when he was sincerely converted and withdrew to a better fruit, the apostle took him back without the intervention of any satisfaction.
The Gloss. interlin. on Matt. 18[:18]: “ ‘Whatever you bind’: namely, with the chain of anathema.” The Gloss. ordin. has: “God confirms your sentence either to accept the penitent or to throw out the stubborn.” The context of the passage also shows this very thing. In the preceding verses, when Christ ordered that they consider the stubborn sinner as a sinner and a publican—that is, to separate him from the other believers by excommunication and the censure of the church—He added these words: “Amen I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound” [Matt. 18:18]. He was thus showing that such a censure would be ratified before God. Augustine (Sermon 16 de verb. Dom., toward the middle): “We have listened to the Lord warning of and commanding this with such great care that He also added this immediately: ‘Truly I say to you, whatever you bind,’ etc. You have begun to consider your brother as a publican. You are binding him on earth, but see to it that you bind him justly, for justice breaks unjust bonds.”
(II) “In the early church, satisfactions were imposed upon the penitent.”
We respond. The exercises of canonical satisfactions which the ancient church used differ in many ways from Papist satisfactions. The former were imposed only for flagrant sins, for they were a part of public repentance. But the latter are imposed for secret sins and for whatever sins are revealed in confession. The former would require works in harmony with divine Law: humiliation, asking for pardon, almsgiving, etc.; the latter, on the other hand, mostly contain self-chosen worship, such as pilgrimages to the statues of saints, flagellations, rosaries, participating in the works of supererogation performed by monks and nuns, etc. The former were demanded for these purposes: that true and earnest repentance might be evident, that satisfaction might be made to the church for the offense, that the example of that severity might warn the others to beware of sins and to govern behavior carefully. But the latter are referred to God’s seat of judgment to be satisfactions in His presence for confessed sins or at least for their temporal punishment, into which they claim their eternal punishment was commuted. The former preceded absolution, but the latter follow it. The former were not relaxed unless either a natural weakness or the imminent peril of death were to demand some relaxation, for at the point of death peace was ordered to be given through absolution and imparting the Eucharist, even if the canonical satisfactions had not yet been completed (according to Cyprian, bk. 3, Letter 17; and Eusebius, bk. 6, ch. 34). But the latter can be redeemed through trafficking in indulgences or can be fulfilled even by someone else, as Dr. Chemnitz correctly writes (Examen, part 2, ch. De satisf., p. 368): “The Papists who fight for satisfactions with the statements of the ancients do not have the ancient satisfactions.”9
(III) Rational arguments teach that it is fitting that penalties be imposed on penitents who have fallen after Baptism. [Bellarmine says:] “Those who sin before Baptism are worthy of greater mercy than those who sin after Baptism, since the former are still wandering in the darkness of ignorance while the latter walk in the light of faith and of the knowledge of God. It is entirely necessary that divine justice be satisfied. Penance is the means of the wounded soul; it demands searings, incisions, bitter doses. Satisfactions are useful to the penitents themselves and to others.”
We respond. The Holy Spirit draws those who have fallen both before and after Baptism to Christ’s unique satisfaction offered on the altar of the cross, but nowhere does He establish the sort of distinction between them such that the forgiveness of sins before Baptism is free but satisfaction is demanded for those sins committed after Baptism. “I am writing this to you that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1–2). “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to be affected with the sense of our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy” (Heb. 4:15–16). “God set forth Christ as the propitiation [ἱλαστήριον] through faith in His blood” (Rom. 3:[24–]25). Let just one statement of Scripture be shown which sets up such a difference between those who have fallen before Baptism and after Baptism.
Bellarmine says that those are the more serious sinners who have been established in the light of faith after Baptism and then sin. He is correct. But from this fact it does not yet follow that they can or must bring their own satisfactions. Greater and less do not change the species of a thing. Therefore if greater satisfactions are demanded of those who sin more gravely after Baptism, then some satisfactions, though lesser, will have to be demanded from those who have sinned less before Baptism.
Not only outside of but even contrary to Scripture he asserts that divine justice can be satisfied through our own works, for Scripture declares that Christ’s satisfaction is the only satisfaction and that it is complete and infinite. We concede that some works should be demanded of the penitent or imposed upon them if this is understood to refer to the canonical satisfaction used in the early church or exercises of repentance, piety, and new life such as prayers, almsgiving, fasting, endurance of sufferings, etc.—or even civil or ecclesiastical chastisements imposed to preserve discipline—but not if it is understood to mean things unowed and works of supererogation or self-chosen services required for the purpose of making satisfaction for sin.
** And also, imposing such satisfactions upon the penitent is removing their confidence in Christ’s unique satisfaction; denying the perfection of Christ’s satisfaction; foisting human inventions and works upon people instead of Christ; accusing God of injustice, as if He were not content with Christ’s one satisfaction for our sins and were demanding another one from us; and wickedly snatching away every consolation from consciences oppressed by the perception of divine wrath. **