To n. 504. - Appendix XII. Historical Matters Concerning the Sacramental Seal

I. Name. In sermon 58, which in P. L. is placed under the name of St. Peter Damian, but which rather seems to be ascribed to Nicholas of Clairvaux (1176), we read: "Let him (the priest) see, moreover, that he never makes any mention, or consents to anyone speaking, concerning those things which he has received under the seal of confession" (P. L., 144, 833). Thus he hands down to us at the same time the universal obligation of the seal and the name which it received in the Middle Ages.

II. The antiquity of the obligation. Secret confession, permitted even in the first centuries, carried with it so manifestly the obligation of not divulging those things which had been committed to the good faith of the priest or bishop, that there can be no doubt concerning the consciousness of this obligation had even then. Therefore, according to Sozomen, the penitentiary ought to be a prudent man, a lover of silence (Hist. eccl., 7, 16, P. G., 67, 1459); and in St. Ambrose they praised the fidelity by which he covered faults known to him from confession (Vita, XXXIX, P. L., 14, 40); and around the year 400, Asterius of Amasea promised security concerning the preservation of reputation and esteem to penitents (P. G., 40, 369). Cf. Galtier, Dict. d'Apologet., v. Pénitence, n. 127. But no one who knows that we, even in the explicit knowledge of matters of faith, are subject to the law of progress, will wonder that by degrees a more distinct and complete account of this sacerdotal office was acquired, and that the doctrine concerning the sacramental seal was fashioned by successive increments. And so:

Past opinions. 1. Concerning the origin and peculiar nature of sacramental secrecy, for a rather long time nothing was said explicitly. At the end of the ninth century, Hincmar of Reims (880) warns that by the oracle of the Holy Spirit it is known to have been provided that the secret must be kept. He himself forbids Communion to be denied to one who openly denies the crime which he has confessed: "For what is it to be unwilling to communicate with one who has confessed a crime, except to publish the confession of the crime?" Supposing a priest who, after having taken an oath about telling the truth, is questioned concerning a sin known to him from confession: "placed between two dangers, he chose to neglect the lesser concerning the oath, so that he might avoid the greater, lest he become a betrayer of confession" (P. L., 126, 625, 634, 675. De divortio Lotharii et Tetbergae). Lanfranc (1089), after he had extolled how intimate the communication between confessor and penitent is in these most beautiful words: "Two consciences pass into one, namely that of the one confessing into that of him to whom he confesses, and that of the one judging into that same one who is judged," not obscurely calls upon the peculiar reasons of divine law in this reprobation of the violator of the secret: "He violates the sacraments of confession, because he does not believe the penitent baptized by confession; and, as far as is in him, he destroys the second Baptism, that is, confession; nor does he guard the unity of conscience, nor does he fear that God has come together in his judgments. He sins against the unity of the Father and of the Son, since, by whatever publication, he has divided the unity which is between God the Father and the Son, represented to himself in the one confessing... He blasphemes against the Holy Spirit when he reveals what was entrusted to him in the faith and advocacy of him who is the remission of sins, showing that with him the Holy Spirit is not an advocate" (P. L., 150, 626, 628). Observe how he insists upon the taking away of sins through the use of the sacrament, so that one absolved can no longer truly be called a sinner; and he wishes to have as unsaid what, on account of the unity of the two, remained as it were in the sinner's own conscience.

2. Is the force of this secret so absolute that it suffers no exception? Certainly St. Raymond, in the Summa, labors in the case of a heretic who confesses heresy from which he does not wish to withdraw, and refuses to denounce heretics. Some, as he says, think that it can be said to the bishop: "watch over your sheep, because there is a wolf in your flock." But he himself seems to permit revelation "both because that man does not do penance (since he does not wish to be converted), and because he does not keep faith, since he is a heretic and an infidel: therefore faith is not to be kept with that man." And many other things, he adds, can be said.

There were also not lacking those who excepted the case in which revelation was necessary for protecting the king or the republic. And, while James I was reigning, on May 3, 1606, Garnet, S.J., when he had refused to reveal a conspiracy known to him from confession, died as a martyr of the absolute obligation of the seal.

3. With regard to the extension of the obligation, is it enough to avoid the danger of revelation, or are certain uses of sacramental knowledge forbidden even without such danger?

In the first centuries it was permitted to the prudent judgment of the confessor that he impose public penance even for secret sins: which today would be said to be forbidden by the seal. Yet it can be explained by the consent of the penitent, who, if he was using the sacrament, was judged to accommodate himself to the received usages concerning penance (cf. Galtier, l. c., n. 125, 126).

But, with the danger of revelation removed, down to the seventeenth century most permitted that the confessor use sacramental knowledge either for the good of the penitent, for example, for taking away from him an occasion of sin, or for the good of the community, for example, for keeping away a harmful subject. Yet already Claudius Acquaviva, in the year 1590, prohibited superiors of the Society of Jesus from every use of sacramental knowledge for government; this Clement VIII forbade to all superiors in the year 1593. Finally, on November 18, 1682, the Holy Office judged that the proposition was altogether to be prohibited which permitted the use of knowledge acquired from confession with a burden for the penitent, if a greater burden of the same penitent would follow from non-use (Denzinger, n. 1220).

By an excess also in the opposite direction, Scotus, in IV Sent., d. 21, q. 2, ad 1, denied to the penitent himself the faculty of efficaciously dispensing from the obligation of sacramental secrecy; and Richard of Middleton, in IV Sent., d. 21, art. 4, q. 1, marked as a lie a revelation made with the consent of the penitent, since human knowledge concerning the matter was lacking.

III. Canonical sanctions. 1. St. Leo the Great (450, Ep. to the bishops throughout Campania, c. 2 etc., P. L., 54, c. 1210) determined that in every way the presumption, which he says is contrary to the apostolic rule, of demanding a public recitation of sins, should be removed, since secret confession suffices: "For that confession suffices which is first offered to God, then also to the priest who approaches as intercessor for the offenses of penitents."

2. At the end of the ninth century the Paenitentiale Summorum Pontificum punishes the violator with perpetual exile. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215), in the celebrated chapter Omnis utriusque sexus concerning annual confession, punishes the violator of the seal with perpetual confinement in a monastery (Denzinger, n. 438, or c. 12 De poenitentiis et remissionibus (V, 38)). Afterward, however, St. Raymond has these things concerning this: "If he has done this, let him be deposed and go wandering in ignominy all the days of his life" (Summa, De poenis, L. III). Finally the Code, c. 2369, §1, strikes the confessor guilty of direct violation of the seal with excommunication reserved to the Holy See in a most special manner; it makes the one guilty of indirect violation liable to various penalties, as also the interpreter and the persons to whom knowledge has come, if they have rashly violated the secret. (Cf. on this argument R. P. Kurscheid, O.M., to be cited with other writers in the Bibliography, t. IV).