I saw that this puzzled the worthy monk, for he attempted to elude rather than resolve the difficulty, by turning my attention to another of their rules, which only goes to establish a fresh abuse, instead of justifying in the least the decision of Father Bauny; a decision which, in my opinion, is one of the most pernicious of their maxims, and calculated to encourage profligate men to continue in their evil habits.
“I grant you,” replied the father, “that habit aggravates the malignity of a sin, but it does not alter its nature; and that is the reason why we do not insist on people confessing it, according to the rule laid down by our fathers, and quoted by Escobar, ‘that one is only obliged to confess the circumstances that alter the species of the sin, and not those that aggravate it.’ Proceeding on this rule, Father Granados says, ‘that if one has eaten flesh in Lent, all he needs to do is to confess that he has broken the fast, without specifying whether it was by eating flesh, or by taking two fish meals.’ And, according to Reginald, ‘a sorcerer who has employed the diabolical art is not obliged to reveal that circumstance; it is enough to say that he has dealt in magic, without expressing whether it was by palmistry or by a paction with the devil.’ Fagundez, again, has decided that ‘rape is not a circumstance which one is bound to reveal, if the woman give her consent.’ All this is quoted by Escobar,[[208]] with many other very curious decisions as to these circumstances, which you may consult at your leisure.”
“These ‘artifices of devotion’ are vastly convenient in their way,” I observed.
“And yet,” said the father, “notwithstanding all that, they would go for nothing, sir, unless we had proceeded to mollify penance, which, more than anything else, deters people from confession. Now, however, the most squeamish have nothing to dread from it, after what we have advanced in our theses of the College of Clermont, where we hold that ‘if the confessor imposes a suitable penance, and the penitent be unwilling to submit himself to it, the latter may go home, waiving both the penance and the absolution.’ Or, as Escobar says, in giving the Practice of our Society, ‘if the penitent declare his willingness to have his penance remitted to the next world, and to suffer in purgatory all the pains due to him, the confessor may, for the honor of the sacrament, impose a very light penance on him, particularly if he has reason to believe that his penitent would object to a heavier one.’”
“I really think,” said I, “that, if that is the case, we ought no longer to call confession the sacrament of penance.”
“You are wrong,” he replied; “for we always administer something in the way of penance, for the form’s sake.”
“But, father, do you suppose that a man is worthy of receiving absolution, when he will submit to nothing painful to expiate his offences? And, in these circumstances, ought you not to retain rather than remit their sins? Are you not aware of the extent of your ministry, and that you have the power of binding and loosing? Do you imagine that you are at liberty to give absolution indifferently to all who ask it, and without ascertaining beforehand if Jesus Christ looses in heaven those whom you loose on earth?”[[209]]
“What!” cried the father, “do you suppose that we do not know that ‘the confessor (as one remarks) ought to sit in judgment on the disposition of his penitent, both because he is bound not to dispense the sacraments to the unworthy, Jesus Christ having enjoined him to be a faithful steward, and not give that which is holy unto dogs; and because he is a judge, and it is the duty of a judge to give righteous judgment, by loosing the worthy and binding the unworthy, and he ought not to absolve those whom Jesus Christ condemns.’”
“Whose words are these, father?”
“They are the words of our father Filiutius,” he replied.