Case XXXII: A Questionable Penance

In imposing a penance a confessor ought to be careful not to tell children to do anything which motives of shame or shyness would easily prevent their doing, such as to beg pardon of parents or others. The infidel poet Alfieri in his Memorie autobiografiche says that, when he was seven or eight years old, he made his first confession to a Carmelite, who told him to throw himself down at his mother’s feet just before dinner and publicly ask her to forgive him his faults. When the time came and all had assembled, he could not make up his mind to perform his penance or to utter a word, and so, as he says: “I conceived a violent hatred for that monk, and thenceforth had very little inclination to receive this Sacrament.” This was the beginning of his godless life. Father Ballerini remarks regarding the imposition of such a penance: “Not rarely will you find that the fruit of that imprudence has been this: that children, daring neither to ask the confessor for a change of penance nor to ask pardon from parents or others, and much less afterward daring to confess the sin of the omitted penance, began a series of sacrilegious confessions and prolonged it for many years with sacrilegious Communion added.”