§ 1. On the Power of Order

405. Principle. For the valid administration of the sacrament of penance, the power of priestly order is required by divine law.

It was defined as of faith in the Council of Trent:²⁷⁶ "If anyone says that priests who are in mortal sin do not have the power of binding and loosing; or that priests alone are not the ministers of absolution, but that to each and every one of the faithful of Christ it was said: 'Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven'; and: 'Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained'; by virtue of which words anyone may absolve sins, public sins indeed merely through correction, if the person corrected acquiesces, but secret sins through voluntary confession: let him be anathema."

Errors in this matter were committed by: a) the Montanists, who taught that only the spiritual, that is, those inspired by the Holy Ghost, could forgive sins; b) the Waldensians and Wycliffites, who attributed the faculty of absolving even to good laymen, but not to bad priests; c) the Protestants, who altogether denied a proper power of the keys; d) certain Catholics in the Middle Ages, who thought that in a case of necessity a deacon was an extraordinary minister of the sacrament of penance, just as he is also a minister of baptism or the Eucharist.²⁷⁷ Without any reasonable doubt, in ancient times there existed the custom, in extreme necessity when a priest was lacking, of sometimes confessing to a deacon, or even to a layman or a woman. But scarcely any theologian can be adduced who clearly taught that a confession of this kind was a true sacrament. Several, however, commended this confession as most useful, as a sign of great humility and contrition. Especially the commentators on the Decree of Gratian acted thus because of a text of the Decree which they falsely attributed to St. Augustine: "So great, therefore, is the force of confession that, if a priest is lacking, one should confess to one's neighbor.... Although he to whom one confesses does not have the power of loosing, nevertheless he who confesses his crime to his companion is made worthy of pardon by his desire for a priest."²⁷⁸ But since this manner of confessing to laymen at the point of death could have many disadvantages, it gradually passed out of use.

Corollaries. Since a priest alone can validly impart sacramental absolution, it follows: a) that a priest whose ordination is invalid also absolves invalidly; b) that the Church cannot grant a deacon the faculty of absolving from sins, because the Church cannot change the essence of any sacrament; c) that a man is never bound to confess his sins to anyone who is not a priest. Therefore the Church in our days has also gravely prohibited superiors of religious institutes from requiring a manifestation of conscience from their subjects.

²⁷⁶ Sess. 14, can. 10, On Penance (Denz., n. 920); cf. Code of Canon Law, c. 871.

²⁷⁷ Cf. Gromer, Die Laienbeicht im Mittelalter (Munich, 1909); Laurain, De l'intervention des laiques, des diacres et des abbesses dans l'administration de la penitence (Paris, 1897).

²⁷⁸ De vera et falsa poenitentia (Migne, Patr. lat. 40, 1122).