Confession and Absolution | Page 5

habitual or justifying grace, accompanied by faith,
hope, charity, as well as the gifts of the Holy Ghost; and he is made the
adopted child of God. The efficient cause of such spiritual regeneration
is Jesus Christ; and yet it is by a Minister of Reconciliation, pouring
water and saying the words "I baptize thee in the name of the Father,"
etc., etc., that the cleansing is effected. It is passing strange that those
who believe in baptism as the appointed means, whereby a minister
reconciles a soul in original sin should hesitate to admit the ministerial
power of forgiving actual sin. The principle is the same. Nearly fifteen

hundred years ago, St. Ambrose, writing against the Novatians, said: "If
it be not lawful for sins to be forgiven by man, why do you baptize?
For, assuredly, in baptism there is remission of all sins. What matters it
whether priests claim this right as having been given them by means of
baptism or penitence? One is the mystery in both. But thou sayest: 'It is
the grace of the mysteries that operates in baptism.' And what operates
in penitence! Is it not the name of God? Where you choose, you claim
for yourselves the grace of God: where you choose, you repudiate."[29]
For, in like manner, in the Sacrament of Penance, does the Minister of
Reconciliation say: "I absolve thee from thy sins, in the name of the
Father," etc., etc. Thereupon the words produce what they signify, if
the penitent is genuinely contrite. But the Reconciler is Jesus Christ,
who uses priests as His delegated agents for effecting forgiveness. On
the day of the resurrection, Jesus Christ appeared to the eleven, whom
He had made priests at the Last Supper, and said: "Peace be to you. As
the Father hath sent one, I also send you. When He had said this, He
breathed on them, and He said to them: receive ye the Holy Ghost;
whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins
you shall retain, they are retained."[30]
The passage is exceptionally clear, and for fifteen centuries was
accepted in its plain grammatical signification. Our Lord, who is
possessed of all power in heaven and on earth, makes His Apostles
"workers together with Him" in the forgiving of sin. They derive the
power from Him, and receive it by the inbreathing of the Holy Spirit. It
is no product of their learning, or experience, or piety, nor is it any
right inborn in them; but it is a divine gift, given by the redeemer to His
priests for the sanctification of souls. By it are His legitimate ministers
made co-operators in the work of reconciliation. Already had the
Scribes thought that Jesus blasphemed when He said to the man sick of
the palsy: "Son, be of good heart: thy sin is forgiven thee." They
realized not that the Almighty could impart the power of pardoning to
His creatures. To convince them that the Son of Man hath power to
forgive sin, Jesus performed this special miracle, and healed the man of
the palsy. The multitude, seeing this, feared and glorified God, who had
given such power to men.[31] The power is of God, who alone can

forgive sin, though He exercises it through men as channels of His
grace. The power of working miracles in like manner belongs to God's
omnipotence; yet did He condescend to allow His Apostles and others
to share in it. In this they were but His delegates.
The passage, in the next place, expresses judicial power: for the
commission draws the distinction between remitting sin and retaining
sin. This exercise of discretionary power does not depend on the
arbitrary will of the Apostles, but has to be decided according to the
Gospel law of true repentance described previously. The Apostles are
appointed ministerial judges of the dispositions of penitents, and of the
sins on which they are to pronounce sentence of remission or of
retention, and their sentence is as efficacious as if it were pronounced
by Christ himself.
Now, it is a primary condition of just judgment that the judge should
not only be cognizant of the law which is to be administered, but also
of the cause submitted for judgment. Applying this to the exercise of
the judicial power with which the Apostles are invested, two things are
needed: the first, that they should know the law and the conditions on
which sin is to be retained or remitted. This they can only learn of God.
The second, that they should know the sin committed, its nature and its
circumstances. This can only be learned from the sinner; for sin is a
deliberate and voluntary transgression of God's law. And, therefore, as
St. Thomas of Aquinas has it, "the