125. Causes Excusing from the Integrity of Confession

1. "Sigismund, a parish priest, bringing the sacred Viaticum to Barbara, who is dying, with a great crowd accompanying him, asks her according to custom, secretly, whether anything gnaws at her conscience. She confesses that for forty years she has confessed sacrilegiously; but the parish priest, fearing lest the assistants wonder if he prolongs conversation with the sick woman too long, after hearing one or another sin, absolves her and refreshes her with the sacred Eucharist.

2. Claudinus, a boy, when for the first time he was approaching the sacred table, with many companions crowding around, seized with fear of a sacrilegious Communion, resolved to declare a grave sin committed several years before and until now concealed in confession. The ordinary confessor being absent, he approaches the first priest who meets him and opens the matter to him in one word. This priest, because of the shortness of time and the danger of infamy, at once absolves the boy, ordering him to approach the sacred Synaxis, afterward to complete the confession by reason of integrity.

It is asked: What is to be said to the Case?

R. Sigismund proceeded rightly, nor could he prudently have acted in another way; for in such narrow circumstances the precept of the integrity of confession does not urge, because of the danger of reputation which the dying woman would have incurred. Therefore, in that Case, the principal sins having been heard, the woman had to be absolved. Then the confessor had to return to the sick woman as soon as possible, to obtain greater integrity of confession, insofar as, considering the circumstances, this could be done. Lig. 484; Gousset 433.

Claudinus could be absolved and receive the Eucharist with an imperfect confession. For the reason is the same as in the preceding case, namely because there urged a grave danger of infamy, excusing here and now from the divine precept of the integrity of confession. Therefore the confessor acted rightly toward Claudinus. Gousset 432." G. 436, 437; I. M. 718, 719.

3. Aegidius, observing that his sister was pregnant by Caius, her lover, driven into rage, struck her gravely, and thus procured her abortion. Repenting of the deed, he indeed confesses the grave striking of his sister, but keeps silent about the circumstance of her pregnancy and of the death of the fetus, lest he reveal her crime to the confessor by whom both he himself and the whole family are perfectly known.

It is asked: What is to be said to the Case?

R. "The matter is not without difficulty. On the one hand, it does not appear that he can declare his sin in species without manifesting the aforesaid circumstances. Yet according to several he would be able to confess each sin separately, namely the grave striking of his sister, and the procured abortion of a woman. Nor say that thus he would omit the specific circumstance of consanguinity as to the fetus killed; for, probably, the ill-treatment of relatives does not induce a new species of sin, unless there is question of blood relatives in the direct line in the first and second degree, as was said above n. 457. Moreover the infant killed is in the third degree of consanguinity of the collateral line, and therefore toward him the virtue of piety is not specifically wounded. Lugo d. 16, n. 258 seqq.; Salmant., etc. Therefore, if instead of his sister Aegidius had struck his widowed mother, made pregnant through crime, he could not extricate himself from the difficulty, and he would have to declare all the circumstances." Thus Fr. Gury 465.

Moreover, it must be noted here that, as the same Fr. Gury has at 462, 463, Aegidius indeed could accuse the sin, although it could not be declared without the infamy of his sister, who was the occasion and object of the sin. I. M. 720. Besides, what is said, that ill-treatment of relatives does not induce a new species of sin unless there is question of blood relatives of the direct line in the first and second degree, is not true. For even ill-treatment of relatives in a nearer degree of the collateral line induces a specific malice against piety, as the same Fr. Gury has in the place cited by himself, namely n. 457. For in this number 457 the doctrine of n. 456 is continued. There, speaking about imprecations, hatred, and the desire of revenge, he says: "Those grave injuries are to be declared in confession, at least when there is question of nearer kinship, because there is an altogether special defect of piety, since it is opposed to the reciprocal love which those proximately joined owe to one another. Hence the aforesaid injuries must be declared: 1.º as to parents and children, indeed as to grandparents and grandchildren, in the direct line; 2.º as to affines in the first degree of the quasi-direct line; 3.º likewise as to godparents and godchildren, or spiritual fathers and children, because there is present there quasi-paternity and quasi-filiation; 4.º as to spouses, because, since they are one flesh, they ought to be one heart and one soul; 5.º as to brothers or affines in the first degree of the collateral line, because they are united by an altogether special conjunction... Grave injuries also among other blood relatives and affines more probably do not contract a special malice, although they are found in degrees prohibited for marriage. The reason is that, since the conjunction is more remote, such great love is not owed to them beyond other outsiders, that injuries inflicted on them should constitute a different species of malice."

Besides, it is altogether an error that it is asserted that the infant killed, or the son of the sister, is in the third degree of consanguinity of the collateral line. The son of a sister, or nephew, in relation to his maternal uncle, is consanguineous with him in the second degree of the collateral line. And thus Fr. Gury himself in the Compendium n. 801 sets down this example: "Bertha will be consanguineous in the second degree with her paternal uncle, or the brother of her father, because she is distant by two degrees from the common stock, namely from her grandfather, although the paternal uncle himself is separated by one degree from the same stock, since he is the son of the stock, or the brother of Bertha's father." Moreover what is said of the paternal uncle holds of the maternal uncle; for the paternal uncle is a collateral on the father's side, and the maternal uncle is a collateral on the mother's side, the same degree remaining, because the paternal uncle is the brother of the father, and the maternal uncle is the brother of the mother.