Chapter IV: Concerning the Duties of the Power of the Confessor

I. As there is a twofold end in administering the sacrament of Penance, so also in the minister there is distinguished a twofold function, or office: namely, of judge and of physician.

1. The primary office is that of judge, because it is essential to the minister of this sacrament, which was instituted under the form of judgment. But since this judgment is not condemnatory but liberative and for the utility of the penitent, and was instituted not only for blotting out past sins but also for guarding against future ones, 2) consequently the confessor must also perform the parts of a physician, healing his wounds and suggesting opportune remedies. "The priest," says St. Thomas (in IV Sent., D. 19, at the end of the exposition of the text), "must search out the conscience of the sinner in confession, as a physician searches out a wound and a judge a case." Hence can. 888: "Let the priest remember that in hearing confessions he sustains equally the person of judge and physician, and has been constituted by God the minister at once of divine justice and of mercy, so that he may consult the divine honor and the salvation of souls."

But since a) one of the human infirmities and causes of sins is ignorance, and since the minister of the sacrament is bound to teach those approaching those things which are necessary for receiving the sacrament validly and licitly, the physician and judge must perform the office of teacher, teaching the ignorant and dispelling ignorances.

Likewise b) because the various functions tend to this, that they generate and nourish the spiritual life, the confessor is the spiritual father of penitents; which function he will not exercise fruitfully unless he love them with paternal affection (Gal. IV, 19; I Thess. II, 7).

Hence by some after St. Alphonsus four functions are distinguished: of father, teacher, physician, and judge; concerning which Haine, Th. M., III, de Poen., q. 97: as father he should put on the bowels of charity; as teacher he should excel in knowledge; as physician, in prudence; as judge, he must preserve equity by which he looses and binds, not indeed according to his own arbitrariness, but as has been commanded him by God. Yet these four are easily reduced to the last two.

II. Moreover, in exercising any function whatever, the confessor must have before his eyes:

1. The good of the sacrament, so that with great diligence he procure its validity and liceity, and the honor of God.

2. The good of the penitent, that in the best way in which it can be done he may receive the sacrament and its fruit for repairing past sins and guarding against future ones; for the sacraments are for men.

3. The public good, by taking care lest anything less right in the exercise of the function cause scandal or some other evil in the community.

Therefore, that we may speak of all these things in order, inquiry must be made, in three questions, concerning the duties before the act, in the act, and after the act of confession.