Angelus News | May 17, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 18

Protecting
confession
The California Catholic Conference is urging believers to tell legislators
to oppose SB 360, which would remove the “seal of confession.”
To send a message to your lawmaker, go to www.cacatholic.org, click
“Take Action” and then click “Action Alerts” and you will see the
option to “Oppose Bill Targeting Seal of Confession.”
GREGORY A. SHEMITZ/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
A hushed history
BY MIKE AQUILINA / ANGELUS
The sacrament of reconciliation in a stained-glass window at St. Aloysius
Church in Great Neck, New York.
The Church has observed the “seal of the confessional”
— the privacy and secrecy between confessor and
penitent — since the time of the Fathers.
The earliest Christian documents suggest that confession
was a public event, at least for public sins. When sinners
caused scandal, the damage was social, and so the Church
prescribed a social remedy. A Christian who publicly
renounced the Faith, for instance, giving in to pressure or
torture during persecution, bore responsibility for the bad
example he had set.
Before he was restored to communion, he would demonstrate
his repentance by admitting his fault and professing
the Faith before the congregation.
There are problems with public confession, of course. It
was embarrassing, and many people would avoid it for that
reason. In the early years of the third century, the African
writer Tertullian acknowledged that some Christians “flee
from this work as being an exposure of themselves, or they
put it off from day to day.”
Public confession could also shine an unwelcome spotlight
on a sinner’s victims. Think of the sin of adultery.
Those who told this sin to the assembly might find themselves
shaming not only themselves, but also, inadvertently,
the people they had seduced, as well as the spouses they
had betrayed.
And so private, secret confession seems to have been an
option from the beginning. Origen, a third-century Scripture
scholar in Egypt, mentions confession “to a priest,” and
the practice is further discussed in the fourth- and fifth-century
rules for monks.
Saint Aphrahat, the “Persian Sage,” insisted that confessors
must honor every penitent’s trust and confidentiality.
Addressing priests, he wrote: “And when [a sinner] has
revealed [a sin] to you, do not make it public.”
Confessional secrecy appears also in the Irish penitential
books of the seventh and eighth centuries.
The practice is listed, in the 12th century, among customs
that have the force of law in the Church: “Let the priest
who dares to make known the sins of his penitent be deposed.”
This passage is the earliest known to carry a severe
punishment for the priest who violates the confessional seal.
Whoever breaks this trust should be exiled, the author goes
on to say, and made to wander the earth in shame.
In the following century, the Fourth Lateran Council
(1215) imposed the obligation of annual confession upon
all the faithful. In doing so, the council also confirmed the
priest’s obligation to secrecy:
“Let the priest absolutely beware that he does not by word
or sign or by any manner whatever in any way betray the
sinner. … For whoever shall dare to reveal a sin disclosed
to him in the tribunal of penance we decree that he shall
be not only deposed from the priestly office but that he
shall also be sent into the confinement of a monastery to do
perpetual penance.”
Those are not light penalties for priests who violate the
seal. Why was it treated with such gravity?
Confessional secrecy is the hope and protection of sinners
who want to reform. For that reason it has always been
essential to the practice of the Catholic faith.
May 17, 2019 • ANGELUS • 13