Case 13. A Pair of Penitents

Caius, a missionary priest, is called very early in the morning to a certain house where several families live, to administer the sacraments to the sick. He is led to a certain room, not large but the only one they have, where he finds two old people, husband and wife, in the same bed suffering from influenza and, as it seems, in danger of death. He decides first to hear their confessions, but does not know how this can be done while preserving the seal. After deliberating about the matter, he approaches the side where the husband lies, asks whether he wishes to confess, and, when he assents, whether he is sorry for all the sins of his life; when he likewise assents, Caius absolves him, imposing the obligation of confessing integrally if he afterwards recovers. Approaching the other side of the bed, he does almost the same thing in the same words for the wife; finally, after administering the other sacraments, he leaves the sick with a blessing. Hence it is asked:

1. Is an integral confession required in the sacrament of Penance, and by what law?

2. Can someone be excused from an integral confession, and when?

3. What is to be said of Caius’s manner of acting?

1. Is a full confession required in Penance and by what law?

A full confession of all mortal sins that have not been directly absolved before is required in the sacrament of Penance by divine law, as the Council of Trent defined.¹

1 Seas, xiv, can. 7; Manual of Moral Theology, vol. ii, 164.

2. Can one be excused from a full confession and when?

Yes, physical and moral impossibility excuse a penitent from making a full confession. By moral impossibility is meant that a full confession could not be made without grave inconvenience, extrinsic to confession, affecting the penitent, the confessor, or some third person.²

2 Manual of Moral Theology, vol. ii, 168.

3. The case. The danger of a violation of the seal of confession, or the danger lest some one other than the confessor should hear the confession of the penitent, is considered by divines to be a sufficient inconvenience to excuse a penitent from making a full confession. There was, as is clear, this danger in the case proposed, and so Caius was justified in absolving the old couple without requiring a full and specific confession from them. If Caius thought that the suggestion of some venial fault, such as impatience, which they would find no difficulty in acknowledging in the hearing of the other party, would serve to make their contrition more definite and certain, there would, we think, be no objection to his mentioning such a sin, and asking them if they had been guilty of it, and were now sorry for it, and for all the other sins which they had committed.