From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
Father, a question – if a penitent is in a state of mortal sin, and they go to confess their sins to a priest, and the penitent does everything necessary on their part for the sacrament to be valid, but then priest uses an invalid form of absolution – and the penitent may well have insufficient theological and liturgical knowledge to know that invalid form is invalid – is the penitent still in a state of mortal sin? If they have a sudden heart attack and die on their way out of the confessional, did they die in a state of mortal sin?
Frankly, we can’t know for sure about the state of the person in that scenario. However, I think our God is a loving and merciful God, who knows us better than we know ourselves.
Just as “baptism of desire” is a thing, whereby the person isn’t baptized but God treats him as if he were, especially because he would have been if he could have been, I suppose that God will be merciful to the penitent sinner who has done his very best to confess all mortal sins in kind and number, with a firm purpose of amendment, and then longs for valid absolution. Through no fault of his own he was denied valid absolution. If he didn’t know enough to raise a question, he is not to blame.
How well this question underscores the importance of knowing by heart and really meaning a good, traditional Act of Contrition. We should know it, understand all its components, and truly mean it when we say it both in and out of the confessional. And we should say it often, as part of our regular prayers along with Acts of Faith, Hope, and Love. After all… we never know.
AND GO TO CONFESSION!
This raises a question, however, of ignorance which is either culpable or inculpable, ignorance of something important that we, as Catholics ought to know and, through our own fault haven’t made the effort to learn, or something important which is outside the normal stream of things Catholics could be expected to know.
If a priest doesn’t know what the true form of absolution is, and he blithely blathers in the confessional, I hold that he is culpably ignorant. He is guilty of sin in regard to his lack of knowledge of something so fundamental to his work as a priest that he cannot be excused for not knowing it. We hold doctors and dentists, etc., to know the basics of their trade and we hold them guilty if they don’t or if they don’t make some effort to stay abreast of new developments and to refresh their knowledge. So too with priests.
Priests need refreshers and continuing education. Priests need to know the basics. A soldier or other warfighter who doesn’t know how to operate properly the system of weapon he has been given, such that in the fight he chokes and fumbles, endangers the mission and the lives of his squad. He and his team and his officers are guilty for his incompetence.
Likewise, in the Church if a priest doesn’t know the form of absolution, or he is using the wrong form of absolution such that people get out of the confessional either scratching their heads or else not absolved, there will be actual hell to pay in the judgment of his formators and his superiors.
Is a woman employed by the French Department of a university a good professor if she can’t read French well enough to get through a novel by Victor Hugo? And who hired her? Who gave her her degree in the first place?
Is a priest of the Latin Church, of the Roman Rite, fully trained and equipped if he doesn’t know the language of his Church and Rite, Latin, and doesn’t know to celebrate both the Novus and Vetus Ordo? NO.
And who is to blame for his not being properly trained?
BISHOPS. They control the seminaries. They control the curricula.
So, if a man does his best in the confessional and the dopey priest, for whatever reason, doesn’t give him a valid absolution, and if the penitent drops dead of a heart attack two steps away from the confessional door, is he doomed?
I can’t bring myself to think that he is. I trust in God’s mercy.
On the other hand, I tremble for that priest in his particular judgment.
From a reader….
