Case LVII: Sacrilegious Confessions

Such confessions happen perhaps much more frequently than many confessors suppose. Missionaries can best tell about this, because they often have to validate unworthy confessions. “If Missions,” says St. Alphonsus, “were of no other benefit, than that they make good many sacrilegious confessions, wherein grievous sins have been concealed, especially by females, from motives of false shame, then this would be reason enough to let them be held. Unworthy confessions happen particularly in small communities, either because there are few confessors there, or because one sees them every day, as children see their parents, as friend sees friend, and therefore one is ashamed to reveal certain actions, the result being that the sinner is afraid to confess the faults committed and hence passes his whole life in a sacrilege, many indeed not even breaking this silence of shame upon their death-beds. Now the essential fruits of a Mission consist in making good the many invalid confessions; for sinners well know that the Missioners are strangers, and in a few days will take their departure without ever seeing them again. And thus, moved by their sermons, they hurry to the confessionals in order to purify themselves of all their concealed sins, by a sincere repentance.”

However, Missions cannot always be held, while sacrilegious confessions may be committed at any time. Therefore, the priest should not fail to preach often about this kind of confessions. “Father,” thus wrote Saint Theresa to a preacher, “preach very often against unworthy confessions; for the devil has no net in which he catches as many souls as in this.” A certain priest, upon reading this, resolved that in every parish in which he would be stationed he would at the first opportunity preach about unworthy confessions, and, after the example of St. Vincent of Paul, urge the people to make general confessions, since in his quite correct opinion it is just these unworthy confessions that are the greatest obstacle to successful pastoral work. ‘True to his resolution, he preached in every parish, where he worked after that, several sermons on the “dumb devil in the confessional,” and it became apparent everywhere, even where it had seemed superfluous, that the great St. Theresa was right. Simply to mention unworthy confessions in a sermon would not help much if it is not made the special theme of the sermon. Of course, the preacher should not be content to give to this important theme just one sermon, he must return to it again and again, so that the remorse of conscience, which with

_ God’s grace is awakened in the penitent at the first sermon, be not allowed to vanish, but is made persistent until the soul in this lamentable state discloses to the spiritual physician its burden in the Sacrament of Penance. Saint Leonard of Port Maurice, as experienced a confessor as he was a zealous Missioner, was accustomed to ask at the conclusion of a confession, if he considered it expedient, the simple question: “Did you ever conceal a sin because you were ashamed to tell it? In your childhood, or youth perhaps? Tell me, I beg of you, I will help you!” and he was wont to say that through this question he had saved more souls than he had hairs on his head.