Article III: On The Goodness Or Integrity Of Life Of The Confessor

1792. "Let suitable confessors be had" (said St. Pius V), "behold the complete reform of all Christians. For it is not to be doubted that, if all confessors were strong in that knowledge and goodness of morals which so great a ministry demands, neither would the world be so befouled with the filth of sins, nor would hell be filled with so many souls of the baptized. - And when I say goodness, here I do not understand only habitual goodness, that is, the simple state of grace, but positive goodness, which befits the minister of Penance. For he must handle the wounds of so many sinners without defiling himself: he must often deal with women and adolescents, receiving their confessions about those things of which they are greatly ashamed, without feeling that any harm has come to himself; with distinguished persons, all respect of human things having been cut away, he must be armed with great fortitude; and, that I may embrace all things in one word, he ought to be rich in charity, honey-sweet in meekness, grave in prudence. - Wherefore, that all these parts may be fulfilled as is fitting, there is need of no common goodness, which certainly he will never attain for whom prayer is not most familiar, nor meditation daily: for by no other way can anyone obtain the light and graces necessary for this so great office, formidable, as it is said, even to angelic shoulders."¹²

But first of all the confessor ought to abound in great and sincere charity, by which he is so led that he spends and is spent wholly for souls, and proposes to himself nothing other than their salvation and spiritual progress. But it is manifest that nothing is more opposed to this charity than the execrable and truly diabolical malice of a priest who impiously and sacrilegiously abuses this most holy ministry unto the ruin of penitents, namely by soliciting them to base things. - The Supreme Pontiffs, in order effectively to exclude so nefarious an abuse and so impious a prevarication from the sacred Tribunal, have sanctioned by various Decrees that those most wicked confessors who solicit to base things be DENOUNCED before competent ecclesiastical Judges.

Hence we must here treat: 1. of the zeal and charity of the confessor; 2. of denouncing the crime of solicitation.