K
KindredSoul
Guest
Correct. It’s seen, rightly, as a back door way to violate the seal. The only thing the priest can licitly withhold absolution for is if it is abundantly clear to him the penitent has no sincere contrition whatsoever, not even imperfect contrition out of fear of Hell, or doesn’t have any intent to stop even at the moment of confession; i.e. the penitent already fully and consciously knows and embraces, even at the very moment while they’re confessing, they will definitely do the sin again, and has no intention of making any sincere effort to resist.
While this totally unrepentant attitude can be one possible reason a criminal wouldn’t turn himself in, there are other reasons that are probably much more likely, especially in our current era when anyone who doesn’t take confession seriously probably wouldn’t even care enough to go in the first place, especially not if it meant what I must assume is the very difficult task of telling the priest about a heinous, abusive crime. It is increasingly true that people with no sincere contrition at all don’t tend to go to confession even when it’s easy and convenient, let alone when it’s not, and I can’t possibly imagine that admitting that crime would be easy enough that a reprobate perpetrator with no contrition would even bother. So in most cases, a criminal’s failure to turn himself in to the authorities does not automatically give the priest licit grounds to withhold absolution, and absolution can never be licitly tied to that condition as an ultimatum. It can be urged and encouraged, but not imposed on pain of withheld absolution.
Given that a priest can only withhold absolution if the priest is certain the penitent has no contrition or intent to refrain, I think it’s worth pointing out that I do realize it’s easy for us to think that someone repeatedly guilty of heinous, abusive crimes couldn’t possibly be sincere when he confesses, but the fact that our own sins are not criminal or abusive doesn’t relieve us of the implications if that is the case: If repeatedly committing a mortal sin, and being too ashamed or afraid to force yourself to basically open a door that lets the whole community know about your sin, means a person doesn’t have contrition and thus fits the (only) criteria where a priest has licit grounds to withhold absolution (and which, I should point out, would invalidate the confession even if the priest didn’t catch it), then that wouldn’t only apply to criminal/abusive sins, since the matter at hand has nothing to do with severity or danger of the sin, but the general question of what does and doesn’t mean someone is sufficiently sincere, regardless of what the sin is. So it would apply to all sins. We would all be in that boat. So if an ongoing struggle and a refusal to (essentially) publicize one’s sins means one lacks sufficient contrition for absolution, I suspect most of the Faithful are in big trouble, spiritually, and that very few have ever made valid confessions.