B. What the Precept about Confession Includes

58. About the second article [n.17] I say that the precept includes ‘who’ should confess [cf. supra d.15 n.163], that an adult should, that is, someone possessing the use of reason and knowing the sin he has committed. By him who is an ‘adult’ I do not mean that he is of this many or that many years but that he have age enough to know the just and the unjust against the Law of God. For in many people, before the accustomed age, “malice supplies for age” [Code of Justinian II ch.32 n.3], and not in the bad only, as the common words say (because, perhaps, he more quickly has a prudence for evil, hence is he also called ‘guile-capable’), but also in the good, according to the remark in the legend of Blessed Agnes, “Faith is not counted in years etc.” [Ps.-Ambrose, Epistle to Holy Virgins n.6: “infancy indeed was counted in her years, but maturity of mind in her morals”].

59. And of this the rule, in brief, is that he should be judged adult who, having been instructed and questioned in orderled manner, distinctly perceives what is just and what unjust in the Divine Law. And this can be seen if he respond in ordered manner to ordered questions the way someone else perfectly adult from the like premises would respond.

60. The precept [n.58] also includes ‘what’ should be confessed, that mortal sin should be. And it does not include anything else, for by venial sin is no one in peril outside the ship of the Church, because venial sin stands along with perfect charity, which is the saving ship. And so, from the first institution of penitence as the second plank, no one needs to have recourse to it for remedy against venial sin but only against mortal sin.

61. But which mortal sin?

I say every mortal sin that there is memory of, and this after prefacing diligent inquisition according to the capacity of human weakness. And I mean: as much inquisition as one might impose, or perhaps could impose, concerning something very hard that would be much on one’s heart - that much should one impose as to all mortal sins that need to be brought back to memory; and those that are brought back to memory should be confessed to the same priest without dividing the confession up. For, as [Ps.-]Augustine says On True and False Penitence, and it is in the text [Lombard, Sent. IV d.16 ch.2 n.5], “Some hide from one what they keep to make manifest to another, which is to praise oneself and to tend toward hypocrisy and always to lack the pardon which they hope to reach piece by piece.”

62. But an objection against this is that it then seems that every sinner is bound to state all his sins to anyone who questions him; otherwise, by keeping quiet about them or some of them, he would be a hypocrite, because showing himself to be more innocent than he is.

63. I say that by keeping silent before him to whom I should not speak I do not show myself innocent in the things I am silent about. But I do to him to whom I should speak and when I should speak, just as, by keeping quiet about something in confession while confessing something else, I show myself innocent in what I am silent about, and in this there is hypocrisy; not in the other case.

64. And not only does the aforesaid precept include sins but all the circumstances of sins, notably the aggravating ones, according to the remark of Ps.-Augustine in the place above [n.61, ch.14 n.29], “Let him consider the quality of the crime in place, in time, in perseverance, in variety of person     etc .” At any rate, it includes, I say, those aggravating circumstances and those necessarily in need of being confessed that are prohibited by a special prohibition, as that to take what is another’s is illicit and prohibited. But by a special prohibition is it prohibited to take from a holy place, and therefore      the special sin of sacrilege is constituted by this circumstance. Likewise it is illicit and prohibited to know a woman not one’s own but, if she be a close relative, it is prohibited by a special prohibition, and therefore is a special sin, namely incest, constituted by this circumstance. Frequency too is a circumstance, there is no doubt, that simply posits another sin, because a new sin is committed on each occasion; and about like things there is a like judgment. There are also many circumstances by which a sin is in some way more serious (as that if the temptation is a minor one), and this too either on the part of the object or on the part of the person sinning, about which it is not so certain that they need to be confessed, but it is safe and useful to do so. But as to other circumstances that are nothing to the purpose, as those without which there would be as much gravity as there would be with some other impertinent circumstance, it is fatuous to confess them, as if someone has sinned with some woman called Alicia or Agnes or the like.

65. This precept also includes ‘to whom’ confession should be made, that it should be to a priest; for he alone has the authority of binding and loosing, as will be said in d.19 [dd.18-19, n.52], and to a priest who has jurisdiction, because a sentence not passed by its judge is null.

66. The precept contains also ‘when’, that it should be whenever one is in danger of death. For everyone, when judgment of damnation or mercy is imminent, should prepare himself for mercy as much as he can. But this is not only to be done in a terminal illness but also when arduous actions are being undertaken wherein it is likely that death threatens, as in mortal combat and shipwreck and the like. And when he wants to undertake other acts to which a special reverence is due, as when he wants to receive communion, because as was said above in d.9 [Ord. IV d.9 nn.15-18], when one has the opportunity of a confessor, no one should receive communion without confession; and about similar cases the judgment is similar.

67. It also contains ‘how’, because confession should be with displeasure at the sin committed, and with the purpose of abstaining from sin and obligating oneself to the Church to make satisfaction for such sin, meaning not that one must want to accept the penitence from the priest, because if one wanted to accept no penitence offered to one by a priest and yet one had the two conditions proposed here [sc. abstaining from sin and obligating himself to the Church for satisfaction], and the purpose of receiving the penitence to be inflicted on oneself by God here or in purgatory, such a person, I say, is rather to be absolved than repulsed, as was said above in d.15 q.1 [nn.50-51].

68. But if one accept some satisfaction imposed on one by the Church, one is bound to keep to it. And one ought to have the purpose to confess in due manner, namely that one should wish to obey the confessor in keeping the satisfaction imposed by him that one has voluntarily received.

69. If against this be argued what was said in this article, namely which sins are to be confessed, that all mortal ones are [nn.60-61], because it was said above, d.15 q.1 [n.53], that someone can pay the penalty due for one sin without paying the penalty for another, indeed by remaining in the other sin; therefore, by similarity, he can pay the confession due to one sin without paying the confession due to another - I reply: it was said there that he who has truly been once absolved from all his sins can pay the exterior penalty imposed on him whether he is in charity or in mortal sin. And let it be that he pay it in mortal sin; he is not bound to pay it again either here or in purgatory or in hell [ibid. nn.55-58].

70. If someone is never truly absolved from the sin, say because when he ought to be absolved he puts an obstacle in the way, of which sort this hypocrite is who is putting obstacles in the way, then he is bound to pay whatever sort of exterior penalty he pay or satisfy.

71. And the reason is that an eternal penalty must first be commuted to a temporal one before any temporal penalty be any sort of payment for the fault. But when the hypocrite here confesses, the penalty is not commuted, because neither is he absolved from his fault; but it is commuted when he does truly repent once, although afterward he back-slide in some way or other. For he was at some time just and was not a debtor to an eternal penalty for sins previously committed. But this hypocrite remains always debtor to eternal penalty for sins previously committed; and he also becomes debtor again to a new penalty for a new sin he has committed here.