' Or, as Escobar
says, in giving the Practice of our Society, 'if the penitent
declare his willingness to have his penance remitted to the next
world, and to suffer in purgatory all the pains due to him, the
confessor may, for the honour of the sacrament, impose a very light
penance on him, particularly if he has reason to believe that this
penitent would object to a heavier one.'"
"I really think," said I, "that, if that is the case, we ought
no longer to call confession the sacrament of penance."
"You are wrong," he replied; "for we always administer something
in the way of penance, for the form's sake."
"But, father, do you suppose that a man is worthy of receiving
absolution when he will submit to nothing painful to expiate his
offences? And, in these circumstances, ought you not to retain
rather than remit their sins? Are you not aware of the extent of
your ministry, and that you have the power of binding and loosing?
Do you imagine that you are at liberty to give absolution
indifferently to all who ask it, and without ascertaining beforehand
if Jesus Christ looses in heaven those whom you loose on earth?"
"What!" cried the father, "do you suppose that we do not know that
'the confessor (as one remarks) ought to sit in judgement on the
disposition of his penitent, both because he is bound not to
dispense the sacraments to the unworthy, Jesus Christ having
enjoined him to be a faithful steward and not give that which is
holy unto dogs; and because he is a judge, and it is the duty of a
judge to give righteous judgement, by loosing the worthy and binding
the unworthy, and he ought not to absolve those whom Jesus Christ
condemns.
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