Treatise On the Sacrament of Penance

411. How important this Treatise is, is evident to all, both because in necessity it surpasses the other parts of moral Theology, and because it contains, resumes, and explains their difficulties.

Without doubt, the Sacrament of regeneration is necessary, without which no one can enter into the kingdom of heaven; but of no less necessity for adults is the Sacrament by which we recover the spiritual life lost through sin. Indeed, Baptism is required only once in life, while Penance is necessary as often as a Christian man has fallen into mortal sin.

Hence Penance is rightly called by the Holy Fathers and Councils a second Baptism or the second plank after shipwreck. And indeed, what would the immense benefit of regeneration have profited most men if, after they had been stripped of the wedding garment by the most savage beast of sin, the compassionate and merciful Lord had not supplied a second or even a manifold redemption? They would surely have been delivered over to eternal death under diabolical tyranny. But the most clement God, with whom there is mercy and plenteous redemption, whose treasure of goodness is infinite and whose mercy is without number, continually extends His hand to the most wretched shipwrecked, and presents to us this second plank, by grasping which we may be saved from shipwreck again and again and without any numerical limit. It is therefore by the mercies of the Lord that we are not consumed, and we are always able to await the blessed hope. The penitential seat is therefore truly to be called a throne of grace and a tribunal of mercy.

In this Treatise especially, a certain diversity of opinions appears among Theologians. For some perhaps seem to have inclined more than is right toward rigor, but others toward benignity. We, however, faithfully following as usual the footsteps of our Leader and Teacher, St. Alphonsus de Liguori, shall endeavor, according to our measure, to walk the middle way, declining neither to the right of rigorism nor to the left of laxity ¹; mindful nevertheless of that principle of St. Antoninus, part 2, tit. 4, ch. 4: It is better to render an account to the Lord for excessive mercy than for excessive severity.

¹ You will indeed find no one who does not most firmly believe, and even wish others to be entirely persuaded, that he follows the safest and therefore the middle way between laxity and rigor. Indeed, there has not been lacking one who wished this very claim to be proclaimed on the title page of his work in capital letters, as, for example, Eusebius Amort, who prefixed this title to his moral work: D. Eusebius Amort's MORAL THEOLOGY, A MIDDLE WAY BETWEEN RIGOR AND LAXITY. And this declaration is indeed an indication of good will, which otherwise will doubtless receive its reward from divine bounty. But what else is it worth? For since the notion of rigor and laxity supposes certain boundaries from which there is a deviation either to the right or to the left, it will certainly be possible to define what is lax or rigid when, either by the authority of the Church or by some other indication, those boundaries, that is, the truth, are certainly established. But where that lamp which shows the certain way does not shine forth, where the path which alone is to be trodden as certainly the only right one is unknown, whence, I ask, do you know that these have turned aside to the right and those to the left? And while, thinking that you hold the middle, you lament that some have gone into laxity and others into rigor, could it not, on the contrary, have happened that you yourself have strayed from the right way, and consequently that one seems to you to have fallen into laxity because you have fallen into rigor, but another into rigor because you have fallen into some laxity? This one thing, therefore, seems to remain: that, each of us thinking modestly of his own judgment, we leave the office of affixing the marks of rigor or laxity to that judge whose office it is also to point out the right way by a certain judgment. But let that saying which is in the proverb be sacred to us: In doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity; so that with great charity we permit to others that liberty which we judge should also be permitted to us, namely, that we not be called laxists when we ourselves do not admit, and do not judge should be imposed upon others, the yoke of a law or obligation which is not established by certain reason; nor again be called rigorists when we demonstrate that the force either of authority or of reason exempting from the obligation is not so firm, and therefore judge that the law must be observed.

We must treat: 1. of the essence of the Sacrament of Penance; 2. of its subject, or of the acts of the penitent; 3. of its Minister, or of the Confessor.