“But, father, this certainty of always getting absolution may induce sinners—”
“I know what you mean,” interrupted the Jesuit: “but listen to Father Bauny, q. 15: ‘Absolution may be given even to him who candidly avows that the hope of being absolved induced him to sin with more freedom than he would otherwise have done.’ And Father Caussin, defending this proposition, says, ‘that were this not true, confession would be interdicted to the greater part of mankind; and the only resource left for poor sinners would be a branch and a rope!’”[[213]]
“O father, how these maxims of yours will draw people to your confessionals!”
“Yes,” he replied, “you would hardly believe what numbers are in the habit of frequenting them; ‘we are absolutely oppressed and overwhelmed, so to speak, under the crowd of our penitents—penitentium numero obruimur’—as is said in ‘The Image of the First Century.’”
“I could suggest a very simple method,” said I, “to escape from this inconvenient pressure. You have only to oblige sinners to avoid the proximate occasions of sin; that single expedient would afford you relief at once.”
“We have no wish for such a relief,” rejoined the monk; “quite the reverse; for, as is observed in the same book, ‘the great end of our Society is to labor to establish the virtues, to wage war on the vices, and to save a great number of souls.’ Now, as there are very few souls inclined to quit the proximate occasions of sin, we have been obliged to define what a proximate occasion is. ‘That cannot be called a proximate occasion,’ says Escobar, ‘where one sins but rarely, or on a sudden transport—say three or four times a year;’[[214]] or, as Father Bauny has it, ‘once or twice in a month.’[[215]] Again, asks this author, ‘what is to be done in the case of masters and servants, or cousins, who, living under the same roof, are by this occasion tempted to sin?’”
“They ought to be separated,” said I.
“That is what he says, too, ‘if their relapses be very frequent: but if the parties offend rarely, and cannot be separated without trouble and loss, they may, according to Suarez and other authors, be absolved, provided they promise to sin no more, and are truly sorry for what is past.’”
This required no explanation, for he had already informed me with what sort of evidence of contrition the confessor was bound to rest satisfied.
“And Father Bauny,” continued the monk, “permits those who are involved in the proximate occasions of sin, ‘to remain as they are, when they cannot avoid them without becoming the common talk of the world, or subjecting themselves to inconvenience.’ ‘A priest,’ he remarks in another work, ‘may and ought to absolve a woman who is guilty of living with a paramour, if she cannot put him away honorably, or has some reason for keeping him—si non potest honeste ejicere, aut habeat aliquam causam retinendi—provided she promises to act more virtuously for the future.’”[[216]]