Section I. The Nature of Contrition

A heartfelt sorrow is not quite the same thing as a hatred or detestation of sin. Sorrow is a pain which we feel on account of the presence of some evil or the absence of some good; hatred is an aversion for some evil which is past. Hatred of sin, consequent aversion for it, and a turning away from it is the chief element in contrition; for if we have this hatred we shall have sorrow for sin regarded as a present evil, we shall turn away from it as a past evil, and we shall propose to flee from it in the future. If, then, we have this hatred of sin, we shall have sorrow and a purpose of amendment; we shall have true contrition.

That sorrow for sin which arises from the perfect love of God is called contrition in the full and strict sense; sorrow for sin arising from less perfect motives, as from the fear of hell or the moral turpitude of vice, is called attrition, Ordinarily the word contrition is used indifferently of both kinds of sorrow.

Contrition or penitence or repentance is, as we have already seen, according to the teaching of the Council of Trent, a necessary condition for the forgiveness of sin by God. God will not forgive sin unless the sinner turn from his sin and approach him by sorrow of heart. Contrition, then, is a necessary means of salvation for all who have fallen into grievous sin. It is also matter of divine precept which must be fulfilled at least when the sinner is in danger of death, for then it becomes of supreme necessity, and also sometimes during life. The Church has determined this divine precept by commanding all who have come to the use of reason and have fallen into sin to go to confession at least once a year. Moreover, repentance for sin becomes necessary when any action has to be performed which for its due performance requires the agent to be in the state of grace. Furthermore, inasmuch as one who is deprived by sin of the grace of God cannot long resist temptation and will fall again and again before long, the sinner is obliged to rise from his sin in order to avoid repeated falls.

Of course it is better, and the sinner is to be urged, by all means, to rise at once when he has had the misfortune to fall into sin. He should never sleep while he is conscious of being out of the friendship of God. Still he is not bound under pain of committing a new sin to repent immediately after committing sin. It will be sufficient if he repent at least when repentance becomes necessary according to the doctrine which has just been laid down.

Not every sort of sorrow is sufficient to justify the sinner, even with the help of the sacrament of Penance. Although perfect love of God suffices to reconcile the sinner with God, though it leaves the obligation of confessing the sin it remits, still this love will not serve by itself as a preparation and disposition for the reception of Penance. A material part of the sacrament of Penance is contrition, and contrition is not love. The sinner, then, who wishes to receive the sacrament of Penance must have true and sincere sorrow for his sin; he must detest it and turn away from it in order to be reconciled with God, whom it offends. Mere natural sorrow for sin because of the temporal evils which it causes is not sufficient. I may well be sorry because sin has ruined my good name, or my health, or my fortunes, but such motives are merely natural, and have no relation to God. The sinner in the sacrament of Penance seeks reconciliation with God, and so the motives of his sorrow must have reference to God; they must be supernatural, founded on revelation and on faith. Without faith no act can be of avail for salvation, as ‘‘ without faith it is impossible to please God.”¹ ‘The sinner must regard sin as the greatest of all evils, as in reality it is. He must be prepared to do and to suffer anything rather than commit sin again. Otherwise he cannot be said to fulfil that greatest of all the commandments, which bids us love God with our whole heart, with our whole soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind. Inasmuch as any one mortal sin deprives us of the friendship of God, the sorrow of the sinner must also be universal and embrace all the sins by which he has grievously offended Almighty God. For this it is not necessary that there should be a separate and distinct act of sorrow for every sin committed; it will be sufficient if the motive be universal, so as to embrace all sins. Thus, inasmuch as all mortal sins are directly opposed to charity, and any such sin deserves the punishment of hell, if our sorrow is motived by love toward God, or by fear of hell, it will be universal in the sense required.

Provided that there be sorrow for all mortal sins confessed, a want of sorrow for venial sins will not invalidate the sacrament. For venial sins are compatible with the state of grace and the friendship of God. Still there must be some sorrow for sin confessed; otherwise an essential part of the sacrament of Penance will be wanting. And so if the penitent have only venial sins to confess, for none of which he is sorry, the sacrament would be invalid and sacrilegious. He must at least be sorry for one sin confessed, and he should not confess venial sins for which he is not sorry unless he has some good reason, as if he wishes to ask the advice of his confessor about them, or to make the state of his soul more fully known to him.

¹ Heb. xi 6.

As contrition, according to the common view, forms a part of the sacramental sign in Penance, it should in some manner be expressed outwardly, not indeed that any form of words is necessary, but the sorrow of the penitent should appear from his confession, from his demeanour, or from his words or other signs. It must exist, if not before, at least when absolution is given, for sin cannot be forgiven if there be no sorrow for it. Moreover, as the different parts of the sacrament go to make one moral whole, the penitent’s act of sorrow should in some way be referred to the sacrament. For this, however, it will be sufficient if together with the act of sorrow there be the intention to confess the sin. In case, then, a penitent has inadvertently omitted a serious sin from his confession, but remembers it immediately after he has received absolution and mentions it to the confessor, the latter may absolve him at once, nor is it necessary for the penitent to make a fresh act of sorrow for that particular sin.

On account of the necessity of a moral union between the several parts of the sacrament, there must not be too long an interval between the act of sorrow for sin and the reception of absolution for it. Ordinarily, of course, the sorrow is virtually renewed and expressed when the sin is confessed, but if this were not the case, and the act of sorrow preceded the confession by more than one or two days, it would be doubtful whether there was the necessary union between the parts of the sacrament so as to constitute one sacramental sign.

There have been heated controversies in the past as to the sufficiency of attrition to remit sin with the sacrament of - Penance. Although they are not quite settled even yet, nevertheless, since the Council of Trent the common doctrine is fairly clear and certain. The Council, then, seems to teach¹ that sorrow for sin because of the fear of hell, or its moral turpitude, or on account of the punishment with which God afflicts the sinner even in this life, will be sufficient for the remission of sin in the sacrament of Penance, provided that it destroys all affection for sin in the heart of the penitent and converts him from sin to God. The slavish fear of hell, by which a man refrains from sinful acts while preserving his affection for them, is, of course, insufficient even with the help of the sacrament to forgive sin and reconcile the sinner with God. The fear which is salutary and efficacious must be the filial fear by which the sinner turns to God because he neither wants sin nor its evil consequences any more. Such sorrow has all the elements which, as we saw above, are required in contrition.

¹ Sess. xiv, c 4

There is a controversy among theologians as to whether the sacrament of Penance can ever be valid without producing its effects in the soul at the time of its reception on account of some obstacle which is there. We saw above that this may be the case with Baptism and other sacraments. There is a special difficulty with regard to Penance, because the dispositions, whose absence is only an obstacle to grace given by other sacraments, enter into the substance of Penance, and so their absence would seem to destroy the sacrament itself. In spite of this, however, it is a probable opinion that at any rate in two cases the sacrament of Penance may be valid but unformed, as theologians say. The first case is when a penitent has forgotten some mortal sin for which he has never elicited an act of sorrow, but confesses other sins for which he is sorry for motives which are special to them and not universal. The second is when, through inculpable ignorance, the penitent thinks that it is not necessary to be sorry for all mortal sins confessed, provided there be the requisite sorrow for some. In these cases there will be all the elements necessary for the validity of the sacrament, which, however, cannot infuse grace into the soul on account of the presence there of grievous sin - still unrepented of.

When Penance is received in danger of death with attrition and not contrition, some theologians insist on the necessity of the dying person making an act of perfect love of God, either to make sure before death of the validity of the sacrament of Penance or to satisfy the divine precept, which, according to them, requires all who are in danger of death to make an act of charity. However, when the dying person has made a good confession and been absolved even with attrition, he is certainly in the state of grace, nor is there any valid argument which proves that such a person is obliged to make an act of charity. Neither the dying nor those who assist them are as a rule conscious of any such obligation.

Because the Council of ‘Trent, while describing the process of the sinner’s justification, mentions acts of faith, hope, and the beginnings of love toward God, some theologians concluded that explicit acts of those virtues are required for Penance in addition to contrition. Those acts, however, are implicitly contained in the other acts of the penitent, and the fact that the Council explicitly mentions them does not prove that it teaches that they must be explicitly elicited by the penitent sinner in order to receive absolution for his sins.