Question One: On the Essence and Object of Contrition

S. Th., Suppl., q. 1; q. 2, a. 1-5.

476. Definition of contrition. - In the more general sense, by the Council of Trent, sess. 14, c. 4, contrition is defined: "sorrow of soul and detestation concerning sin, with a purpose of not sinning for the future." This definition, however, is common to the contrition required in the Old and in the New Law for the remission of sins; but in the New Law there is also required, according to the Council, "the desire of performing the other things which are required for rightly receiving this sacrament." But contrition thus accepted can be defined with St. Thomas as: sorrow assumed for sin, with the purpose of confessing and satisfying (q. 1, a. 1). This definition is equivalent to the definition of the Council of Trent. It is said:

1. sorrow, and not detestation alone: for although sorrow cannot exist without hatred and detestation, nevertheless detestation can exist without sadness and sorrow, as in the blessed. Sorrow is detestation of an evil affecting us, namely sadness over an evil in some way joined to us and present in us;¹ it is, however, detestation, not mere displeasure, but efficacious displeasure which tends to the destruction of the evil;

¹ "Detestation," notes Van Noort, De Sacramentis, t. II, n. 42, "is the cause of sorrow; wherefore one who sorrows, by that very fact has detestation. And conversely, we necessarily sorrow if we perceive the evil which we detest as joined to us. Therefore sorrow and detestation are so connected that one who detests his sin sorrows over it, and one who sorrows over it necessarily detests it." Cf. St. Thomas, I-II, q. 35, a. 1.

2. assumed, namely voluntarily; whence it is sorrow of the will, but not sensible sorrow, which is not always in our power, although the latter sometimes follows and can pertain to the sensible sacramental sign;

3. for sins committed: the matter about which sorrow is concerned is sin, as such, not as punishment but as guilt, as an offense against God to be destroyed;

4. with purpose...: this is not the essence of contrition, but its effect. For sorrow can exist in one who does not think of the future; nevertheless in sorrow the purpose is contained virtually and implicitly, insofar as sorrow imports the will of subjecting oneself to the divine precept of confession and satisfaction for destroying sin, and of not sinning any more in the future.

Hence three things are necessary for contrition: hatred, sorrow, purpose. For contrition exists presuppositively in hatred, formally in sorrow, and consecutively in purpose.

477. Contrition is an act of virtue. - For the annihilation and grinding down of the will to sin is good of itself, "because this is to detest one's own will by which sin was committed." It is an act of penance, because it is the act of that virtue to which it belongs to detest and destroy past sin, which pertains to penance (a. 2).

478. Object of contrition. - Contrition is sorrow regarding and grinding down the hardness of the will in sins (by which it stands in its own terms and does not yield to the law of God), and retracting the offense against God. Whence its proper object is guilt, not considered in the abstract, but as committed, in which hardness of heart and affection for sin are found.

1. Hence it concerns all actual sins, because in all of them there is a certain hardness of the will which does not yield to the law of God, either by transgressing it, or by omitting it, or by acting beside it.

2. It does not concern future sins, because they are not an evil joined to the will, nor in them is the will already hardened; - yet it concerns them by a certain consequence, insofar as it takes precaution against them.

3. Nor does it concern punishments, since hardness of the will is not found in them and they are not injurious to God; although there can be mere displeasure concerning them.

4. Nor does it concern original sin, which does not proceed from the hardness of our will, because it was not introduced by our will but contracted from the origin of a vitiated nature; whence concerning it there cannot be retraction, although there can be sorrow and simple displeasure.

5. Nor does it concern the sins of others as others' sins, because contrition ought to be in him in whom hardness of will preceded. Yet we can sorrow for them and satisfy for them; besides this, we can have contrition for our cooperation in those sins.

479. Corollary. - It is not an act of contrition if someone sorrows that he does not sorrow for sins, because the object of that sorrow is not sin committed, or the offense against God, but the defect itself of sorrow; nevertheless in the timorous it is ordinarily a sign of contrition, namely that they truly sorrow, because they fear too much that they do not have sufficient sorrow, which they judge not great enough or do not feel.