Receiving "Conditional Absolution"

[LilyM]

… in which case, (the last part after the word “however”) the penitent lacks the conditions necessary to receive absolution, beause the penitent is insufficiently contrite. Contrition implies humility and awareness of the need for forgiveness, the need for penance, the superior authority of the priest, and the willingness to do everything (including penance) required by the Church and her ordained ministers.

Not quite ‘willingness to do EVERYTHING’. Priests may, after all, attempt to impose impossible penances upon you, or require you to disclose your sins to third parties such as the police.

You do NOT have to be prepared to do the impossible, nor to give yourself up to police. These are things that your confessor cannot legitimately ask you to do.

 

[Elizabeth502]

I’m not changing your words but it’s very late at night here and I’m too tired to organise my thoughts into a post so I’ll look at it again tomorrow. Goodnight.

OK.

Please keep focused, when you awaken tomorrow , on the aspect of contrition, which goes to intent. Someone who meets all the necessary conditions for absolution (the ones I stated in my most recent post), will in fact receive absolution, assuming he intends to complete his penance, and that absolution is effective before he completes his penance, including if he honestly forgets to.

The absolution is contingent upon honest intent and honest, remembered effort, before, during, after what occurs in the confessional. Not on the physical completion of the penance, if there was no intention not to complete it. It’s not the external act of penance (whatever was assigned) that is material to the absolution.

Many people forget to do/say their penances. They are still absolved; they were still absolved.

Many people are not given any penance by the priest. They are still absolved.

Many people end up accidentally performing a different penance, because they misunderstood what the priest said, couldn’t hear him & are too nervous to ask him to repeat it, etc.

None of those 3 statements ^ could be true if absolution was conditional upon completion of a/the penance assigned.

Jesus is not an accountant. He reads our hearts, including the hearts of those who perform the confession meticulously (externally, including the penance), but have unsoftened hearts.

 

[Elizabeth502]

Not quite ‘willingness to do EVERYTHING’. Priests may, after all, attempt to impose impossible penances upon you, or require you to disclose your sins to third parties such as the police.

You do NOT have to be prepared to do the impossible, nor to give yourself up to police. These are things that your confessor cannot legitimately ask you to do.

All of that was already covered previously, Lily. Please read what the poster Gorgias said. The confessor may not impose a penance too difficult for a normal person to complete, nor may be jeopardize the confidentiality of the confessional by requiring disclosure. This was already discussed and agreed to earlier in the thread.

I think you know what I meant. Please do not exaggerate or distort. I think it’s not helpful to the debate.

 

[Gorgias]

The situation in which a contrite person decides to be prideful and not do the penance is a contradiction in terms. If that’s his attitude, the problem is not whether he does or does not carry out the penance, it’s his attitude of non-contrition, and that in itself could invalidate his confession.

This!

The absolution isn’t retroactively made void; rather, if there’s a true lack of contrition, then the problem exists before the ‘penitent’ walks into the confessional and not two weeks afterward…

 

[Bookcat]

You are not forgiven until you complete the 'CONDITIONS"

Such is not the case.

However if the person later changes his mind and refuses to do the penance --there is new sin.

 

[LilyM]

All of that was already covered previously, Lily. Please read what the poster Gorgias said. The confessor may not impose a penance too difficult for a normal person to complete, nor may be jeopardize the confidentiality of the confessional by requiring disclosure. This was already discussed and agreed to earlier in the thread.

I think you know what I meant. Please do not exaggerate or distort. I think it’s not helpful to the debate.

I did not read the whole thread. Nor did I know that you meant other than what you said but intended your post to be read in conjunction with Gorgias’s. You did not indicate that such was your intent. Nor did I intentionally exaggerate or distort anything.

Besides all which, absolute clarity needs to be maintained for everyone reading the thread, not just for those of us who may be able to correctly infer additional meaning what others say based on the posts of third parties.

 

[Gorgias]

I did not read the whole thread. Nor did I know that you meant other than what you said but intended your post to be read in conjunction with Gorgias’s. You did not indicate that such was your intent. Nor did I intentionally exaggerate or distort anything.

:slapfight:

Whoa, whoa, WHOA! Umm… ladies?

No need to go all ballistic, right?

There would be a general presumption, don’t you think, that folks read the thread before making their posts? And in any case, the issue here isn’t that you didn’t read the thread – it’s that you said something that is absolutely inaccurate with respect to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Now, in general, we all make mistakes, right? But, it seems that Elizabeth is reacting not to the fact that there was an inaccuracy that was asserted… but that the accurate statement about the sacrament was already discussed, earlier in the thread. (By me, as it turns out. And, to tell the truth, before I read Elizabeth’s response, I was getting all ready to go nuclear, too. )

So, to recap: a confessor can never require a penitent to reveal his sin outside the confessional. Moreover, if a confessor asks a penitent to do so, the penitent should be all, “umm… no?!? seriously???”. And finally, if a confessor asks a penitent to do a penance that the penitent feels unable to complete, the penitent should speak up and say something, and not just buckle under and say “yes, Father”.

OK… can we continue now?

 

[Elizabeth502]

:
No need to go all ballistic, right?

You’re overreacting, friend. I don’t think either Lily or I was overreacting, by the way. I agree with her that clarity is necessary, but she should read the previous comments, because those points were in fact covered, and no need to rehash again. Hopefully she has read them by now.

it seems that Elizabeth is reacting not to the fact that there was an inaccuracy that was asserted… but that the accurate statement about the sacrament was already discussed, earlier in the thread.

I would only describe it as a reminder, please.

As to this, it is SO true (your addition following my comment):

The absolution isn’t retroactively made void; rather, if there’s a true lack of contrition, then the problem exists before the ‘penitent’ walks into the confessional and not two weeks afterward…

Definitely. I was going to add that earlier. The problem is not the “after” in the hypothetical case I brought up. It was a problem going into the confession, and that non-repentant attitude compromised the confession (and its fruits). This is part of the matter of confession.

The matter of this sacrament is the penitent’s contrition, confession, and willingness to make satisfaction.

 

[Mariem2]

OK.

Please keep focused, when you awaken tomorrow , on the aspect of contrition, which goes to intent. Someone who meets all the necessary conditions for absolution (the ones I stated in my most recent post), will in fact receive absolution, assuming he intends to complete his penance, and that absolution is effective before he completes his penance, including if he honestly forgets to.

The absolution is contingent upon honest intent and honest, remembered effort, before, during, after what occurs in the confessional. Not on the physical completion of the penance, if there was no intention not to complete it. It’s not the external act of penance (whatever was assigned) that is material to the absolution.

Many people forget to do/say their penances. They are still absolved; they were still absolved.

Many people are not given any penance by the priest. They are still absolved.

Many people end up accidentally performing a different penance, because they misunderstood what the priest said, couldn’t hear him & are too nervous to ask him to repeat it, etc.

None of those 3 statements ^ could be true if absolution was conditional upon completion of a/the penance assigned.

Jesus is not an accountant. He reads our hearts, including the hearts of those who perform the confession meticulously (externally, including the penance), but have unsoftened hearts.

I’ll try to stay focused if you try to not patronise me.

What I’m reading from this thread (Gorgias aside because his particular case seems far-fetched to me) is that a person can confess his sin, receive absolution and penance and later decide to not do the penance, yet the sin is absolved despite his not having completed the penance because at the time absolution was given his intentions were good. Further, it appears that, rather than the sin he had confessed being unforgiven, he has merely committed a different sin by not doing the penance, which begs the question is the second sin a mortal sin equivalent to any mortal sin originally confessed or is it merely a venial sin?

Am I keeping up?

 

[dans0622]

Does anyone here know about the concept of receiving “conditional absolution” in which someone is absolved, but it’s on the condition they do X (ie: make restitution) by x date, and if they fail to meet that condition, the absolution is no longer any good and has no effect?

…

Hello,

I have never heard of a contemporary use of any sort of conditional absolution–it seems the advice given to confessors is to always err on the side of offering absolution (without condition) and leave the rest to the Lord and the penitent. If, of course, there is obvious cause to think the “penitent” is not actually penitent, then absolution would be denied/deferred.

That being said, there is historical evidence that conditional absolution was utilized but never subject to future events. For past/present circumstances, the confessor could easily say “If (you were baptized…you are contrite…etc.), I absolve you…” For example, see

www3.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/emt27.htm (under “Absolution”)

and

newadvent.org/cathen/01061a.htm (under “Conditional Absolution”)

To make absolution subject to a future condition is to not offer absolution at all since such an absolution is necessarily null. Either the absolution is granted or not–in the case of the above, the confessor might be unsure whether or not the absolution was granted but that doesn’t mean the absolution is in a state of suspense. For a future condition, it is suspended. But, that’s impossible because a confessor can’t grant it and then take it back. Likewise, a confessor can’t not grant it but then somehow grant it remotely when the penitent does a certain thing.

It is also noteworthy that when a confessor absolves and remits an excommunication with the requirement that the penitent have recourse to a superior authority, and the penitent does not carry out that requirement, the penalty is re-incurred. However, the penitent does not re-incur the sins which were absolved (cf. canon 1357). The idea that absolved sins can somehow rise from the grave and reattach to a person’s soul is totally foreign to me.

Dan