Article III

THE MEANS TO BE EMPLOYED IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT CONFESSION

28. The Examination of Conscience.

Since the penitent is obliged to make a complete confession of his mortal sins, as far as lies in his power, there naturally devolves upon him the duty of examining his conscience. Regarding the examination of conscience the following points are to be noted:—

I. The penitent is bound under pain of mortal sin to prepare for confession by a serious and careful examination of conscience, and he must devote to this examination such diligence as a prudent man would ordinarily devote to any important business; hence in order that the omission of mortal sins in the accusation may not be attributed to sinful neglect, diligentia mediocris, as it is called, or diligentia moralis is required, not such as would make the practice of confession hateful or unduly burdensome.

The proof for this is supplied by the Council of Trent,¹ and it is clear that if mortal sins are to be confessed they must be recalled to the mind. Theologians observe, however, that when a man has examined his conscience with moral diligence, but still believes that further examination would reveal more sins, he is not obliged to spend more time in examining his conscience; otherwise a penitent who had neglected confession for many years would have to examine his conscience for days and still fail to do his duty; such a conclusion is obviously wrong.²

Sporer³ even goes so far as to teach that a man who has used moral diligence in examining his conscience and has made his confession, and afterwards cannot recall whether he mentioned or not some particular sin, is not bound to confess it, because the presumption is that he has confessed it along with the other sins. If, however, he have strong misgivings on other grounds and cannot settle his doubt as to whether he has confessed the sin or not, he is always obliged to mention that sin, if there is no doubt of its having been committed, in the next confession.

II. The care which ought to be employed in this examination is not the same for all classes of penitents; it varies according to the circumstances of the penitents: more especially according to—(1) the state of conscience and the habitual purity of life; (2) the time elapsed since the last valid confession; (3) the education, the knowledge (in religious matters especially), the intelligence of the penitent; (4) the state of health.⁴

1. One who seldom falls into mortal sin may satisfy himself with a less strict examination of conscience, especially if he be in the habit of making a daily examination of conscience; for if a penitent of this kind falls into mortal sin, he will immediately recall it; and one who is morally certain that he has not sinned mortally is, strictly speaking, not bound to any examination of conscience, but he must be careful to offer sufficient matter for confession. Though this is quite correct in theory, in practice the penitent is strongly advised to make a careful examination of conscience in order to rid himself of his smaller faults and to reap greater fruit from the Sacrament.

2. The longer the period over which the examination is to extend the more time and care must be expended in this preparation, but it is not to be laid down as a principle that a man who has not confessed for a year is bound to be twelve times as long in his preparation as the man whose last confession was a month before.

3. Less instructed or quite uneducated people are not obliged to so careful and searching an examination as the better instructed; they are quite incapable of examining their conscience, ad impossibilia nemo tenetur. If an educated penitent comes to the Sacrament unprepared, the confessor should with all proper consideration send him away again to prepare himself by a careful examination of conscience, unless there should be solid grounds for supposing such a step inopportune; but only grave reasons justify such toleration, for, though the sins committed might be ascertained by questions, there is no moral certainty that such a confession is a perfect one. A penitent who has not been to confession for a long time and is leading a worldly life cannot without preparation answer at once and correctly whether he has committed such or such sins. If the penitent is uneducated, or, although educated, yet ignorant in religion, and has taken absolutely no pains to acquire a knowledge of his sins, he must be treated in the same way; if, however, he has taken some pains in the matter, the confessor may supply the defect by questions; for an uneducated man left to himself will, even after a long examination of conscience, never succeed so well as when guided by the prudent questioning of an experienced and skillful confessor who will do the work in a much shorter time. If, then, the confessor sees that he can procure by questioning a perfect confession such as the penitent left to his own resources could hardly make after long examination, he should help him, all the more if there is reason to fear that the penitent would be frightened by the postponement of his confession, and might be deterred from confession, at least for a time, by the difficulties attending a careful examination of conscience. This method, the result of great experience, is confirmed by the Catechismus Romanus:⁵ “If a priest remarks that such penitents are quite unprepared, he should dismiss them with very gentle words and advise them to come again after spending some time in thinking over their sins. If they maintain that they have already exercised all diligence in examining their conscience, he should hear them, since there is reason to fear that if sent away they might not return, and he may with more reason hear their confessions if they show any signs of wishing to reform their life; then they may be urged to accuse themselves of their carelessness and promise for the future to make up for their faults by a careful examination.”

Reuter⁶ observes on this subject: “Besides, experience teaches, as is well remarked by Vasquez and Lugo, that a prudent confessor can accomplish more with most penitents and uneducated people by a few questions than they can themselves after a long examination. Hence such penitents when they give any signs of fervor ought not to be easily dismissed in order to examine themselves again, even when defects are noticed.” Sporer⁷ writes: “Uneducated and inexperienced penitents are unable to make such an exact examination as the more educated; hence they should be helped by the confessor.” Segneri,⁸ too, warns the priest not to send away ignorant penitents to make a fresh examination of conscience, unless for the most urgent reasons, since, on the one hand, they may be frightened away and never come to confession again, and, on the other hand, the confessor himself can easily supply for their deficiency by his zeal.

Although a penitent knows that he will be questioned by his confessor, he is none the less bound to examine his conscience, since otherwise he would be exposed to the danger of giving wrong and insufficient answers or of omitting a great deal; he may, however, permit himself a little less care, especially with regard to the sins common to people in his state of life.⁹

No one is bound to write his sins even if he should be afraid of forgetting them; nor, if sin has been committed with another, is there any obligation to consult with the accomplice in sin to determine the number of sins; so, too, one who has missed Mass the whole year is not bound to count up the feasts in the calendar, for this would be diligentia extraordinaria such as the Council of Trent does not demand.¹⁰

4. Those who are prostrated by illness and through weakness or pain cannot review their past life are not obliged to make an exact examination of conscience; indeed the confessor should only put to them a few questions according to their condition. If, however, they regain their health, they must supply what was wanting in their accusation; if, after receiving absolution, other mortal sins occur to their mind, they should confess them and get absolution. In general the sick are not required to make so careful an examination as others; hence the priest should not yield when they wish to put off confession from one day to another on the plea of examining their conscience better; usually this is only a pretext for putting off the confession, and does not arise from anxiety or eagerness to prepare well, but from fear; such persons must be prepared by the priest himself for absolution and the other Sacraments.¹¹

III. A penitent who is guilty of gross neglect in the examination of conscience makes per se an invalid and sacrilegious confession; he must, of course, be sufficiently conscious of such neglect in order to incur this sin. The malice of the offense consists in the risk of omitting some mortal sin, and so, though none may have been actually left out, the penitent has sinned gravely by consciously exposing himself to the danger.

IV. In order to make a good examination of conscience the penitent should adopt some system; the simplest and easiest method is to go through the commandments of God and of the Church, the various kinds of sins (especially the Seven Capital Sins), and the nine ways of participating in sin; it is also recommended to call to mind particular hours and days. Theologians give many other methods besides for this examination. Reuter recommends the penitent to recall where he was each day, what was done, and what sins were committed by thoughts, wishes, and desires, words, and works; how he has conducted himself at home, in church, with his neighbors; the author considers that by this means repetition will be avoided. To examine the conscience according to this method would be to exercise not only diligentia sufficiens but magna omnino diligentia.¹² Sporer, approving the method recommended by Gobat, offers a compendious system for penitents who lead a fairly uniform existence and for whom the examination of conscience extends over a longer time, some months or half a year. The penitent should consider three periods: (1) an ordinary working-day; (2) a Sunday; (3) an exceptional day in which he has traveled, done some particular business, been present at a wedding or a dinner, etc.¹³ One who has only to examine a short interval may call to mind how he has sinned against God, his neighbor, and himself, by thoughts, words, and deeds.

V. The following directions are given by approved moralists to determine whether any carelessness in the examination of conscience is a mortal or venial sin and whether in consequence the confession has been valid or not.

1. Those may rest in perfect security who, being neither too strict nor too lax, experience no misgiving or anxiety on the care which they have devoted to the examination of their conscience.

2. If a man doubts whether he has been guilty of more or less carelessness and discovers after confession that he has omitted more sins than he has confessed, he must acknowledge himself guilty of gravely sinful neglect; if, however, he has confessed more sins than he has omitted, it may be assumed that he has not been guilty of great carelessness.

3. If a penitent’s last confession was made one or two weeks before and he accuses himself of mortal sins, giving the number of times in quite a vague and doubtful fashion, e.g., I have committed sins against holy purity three or four times, there is a strong suspicion that he has been gravely careless in the examination of his conscience.¹⁴

It should be noticed that if a penitent, from experience of his own weakness, is afraid that by a prolonged examination of his sins he will again consent to them, he may confine himself to a rapid glance at them, though he knows that for want of further examination many will be omitted, since in any case the risk of committing sin must be avoided. A confessor must observe the same guardedness in putting questions on sins against the angelic virtue, as we shall see later.

If the penitent is troubled with scruples, it is better for him not to go so thoroughly into his examination of conscience, otherwise confession would become too burdensome, and experience shows that such penitents become only more confused, the more they examine themselves; indeed they should be forbidden any long and anxious attention to themselves.

Let the confessor impress upon worrying souls that the great thing for them is to have the wish to confess all, that God recognizes the good will, and that this is shown by praying for grace to make a good examination of conscience, and that even if a sin be forgotten without any fault it is remitted, and that the time between confession and communion should not be occupied with the recalling of one’s past sins, but that the mind should be fixed on the future.¹⁵

Footnotes

1. Sess. XIV. cp. 5 et can. 7 (examen diligens). ↩

2. Lugo, l. c. Disp. 16, nn. 590-594; cf. Laym. Lib. V. Tr. 6, 8. ↩

3. L. c. n. 366. ↩

4. Mazzotta, l. c. Disput. I. Q. II. cp. I. ↩

5. Part II. cp. 5, n. 60. ↩

6. L. c. n. 311. ↩

7. Theol. Sacram. Tom. III. De Poenit. n. 365. ↩

8. Instructio Poenit. cp. II. ↩

9. Mazzotta, l. c.; cf. Suarez, Disp. 22. ↩

10. Mazzotta, l. c.; Aertnys, l. c. De Poenit. cp. III. § 2, n. 186. ↩

11. Aertnys, l. c. De Poenit. cp. III. art. III. § 2, n. 186. ↩

12. Lehmkuhl, l. c. n. 344. ↩

13. Cf. Stotz, Tribunal Pœnitentiæ, Lib. I. P. I. Q. I. art. 9, Praxis examinis pro Confessione, and Lib. I. P. III. Q. III. art. 1 ss. Syllabus peccatorum. ↩

14. Mazzotta, l. c. Disp. I. Q. II. cp. I (Lacroix); Reuter, Theol. Mor. P. IV. n. 311; Sporer, l. c. n. 367. ↩

15. Compare Renninger-Göpfert, Pastoraltheologie, I Bd. I Tl. § 66. ↩