The Catholic Church in western countries is in the throes of an acute crisis in faith. A sure indicator is the growing nominalism of religious practice of many of her flock. In the United States some 30% regularly attend Sunday Mass; in Australia the figure struggles to reach 20%. However, no aspect of this crisis is more on the public record in the writer’s homeland, Australia, than the state of practice of the Sacrament of Penance. It has truly been a “sorry mess.” Since early in 1999 the secular media had featured reports, op-ed articles and letters in newspapers across the country on the subject of sin, and how Australian Catholics were dealing with it by means of the popular but illicit use of the Third Rite of General Absolution. It was even featured in a national ABC-TV, “4 Corners” program.

Unpublished alterations
Ignored Catholic teaching on the Sacrment of Penance would fill a whole library. A fascinating investigation should be made into why and how the important alterations, officially mandated in Notitiae Vol. XIX, 1983 (in Latin), to bring the Introduction of the Ritual of the Sacrament of Penance into line with the 1983 Code of Canon Law, have somehow shunned the light of day, not only in Australia, but in currently available English and Spanish editions of the Ritual in the USA. There are contained major clarifications that impact on the licit and valid use of the Third Rite of Penance.

Then there is the “Note” (Prot. N. 697/ 99/L), issued under seal on the Feast of St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, on March 19, 1999 by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and sent to each Australian diocesan bishop. This “Note” unequivocally upholds the Church’s doctrine on the Sacrament of Penance; above all that it is divine and irreformable. It upholds this in the face of the recent Australian experience and exposes it as not only a cheating on the Church’s discipline and law but more importantly still, a departure from the Church’s doctrine to which her Canon Law is necessarily attuned and conformed. One year later to the very day a congregational “Circular Letter” (Prot. N. 700/ 00/L) reinforced this “Note” in those areas of abuse of the Sacrament of Penance specific to the Australian situation.

The puzzle
Consequent on the 1999 “Note,” a press release from the Canberra office of the Bishops’ Conference that March proved more than puzzling. It blandly stated: “The Vatican had not issued a decree or a statement addressed to the Bishops of Australia.” This quaint phrasing reeked, to say the very least, of a washing of hands. The “Note” was clearly communicated to each and every Australian bishop ordinary; what is more, it clearly concerns a matter affecting all Christ’s faithful in the unity of the Catholic Church to the extent that no Catholic layman or bishop, Australian or otherwise, can claim exemption from its doctrinal content. It was, therefore, straining credibility to assert that this “Note” specifically sent to each bishop ordinary was not “a decree or a statement addressed to the Bishops of Australia.”

A basic principle will help guide us from here on. All Catholics are obliged to inform their consciences in line with the Church’s doctrine. Canon law is not purely disciplinary: it embodies the Church’s doctrine. So choosing to ignore Canon Law produces an unformed conscience that has nowhere to go to be authentically informed except to turn its prime interest to circumventing the law. The end result is a pernicious form of neo-Protestantism wearing a Catholic mask. Put simply, if we don’t believe we don’t behave.

The crisis point
The crisis point in the misuse of the Third Rite of Penance therefore pivots on the upholding of irreformable divine doctrine long before it is concerned with the disciplinary determination of licit liturgical practice. It is this discernment that drives and underpins the following observations — observations prompted by the battle lines that had been drawn up within the Church in Australia over 20 years or more.

The Australian reality
It had become commonplace in many Australian dioceses to advertise and arrange large gatherings of the faithful for the purpose of communal general absolution, particularly at Easter and Christmas. However, at the conclusion of the Australian bishops’ ad limina visit, late in 1998, the Holy Father directed they eradicate precisely this practice. As we proceed we shall see more clearly that this abuse was not only against the letter of Canon Law it was against its spirit and hence contrary to Church doctrine.

Nonetheless, the late 1998 Synod of Oceania saw many Australian Bishops vociferously appealing to the allegedly great “pastoral” advantages of general absolution as practiced illicitly for over 20 years or more in many dioceses. A number of the bishops shared with their priests the strong impression that lax Catholics derived great benefit from the availability of the Third Rite of Penance, especially at Christmas and Easter. Unfortunately, the alleged “pastoral” quality of this spiritual benefit is more than suspect. Catholic doctrine underpinning the Church’s Canon Law had been ignored to the extent that both the letter and the spirit of the law were being violated.

The doctrine
The scriptural foundation for the Church’s doctrine on the Sacrament of Penance is to be found, in the first place, in John 20:23. There we find the Lord’s injunction to the disciples soon after his resurrection: “Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.” The Sacrament of Penance as practiced by the Church is the carrying out of this mandate from the Lord from apostolic times. Of its very nature this entails a judgment of matter confessed in a tribunal of God’s mercy where the penitent is both the accuser and the accused.

The essential acts of the penitent
Besides the personal confession of sins submitted as matter for judgment, two other acts are required of the penitent — contrition (at very least, attrition), together with a preparedness to make satisfaction, i.e., a readiness on our part to do penance for our sins. True contrition must include a firm purpose of amendment of life. For valid absolution these last two acts of the penitent, contrition and satisfaction, must exist at least at the level of intention.

For valid absolution in the Sacrament of Penance all three acts, confession, contrition and satisfaction, must be present. Nor should we forget — and this point is important — that although fallen human nature is weak and inclined to evil, it would be a serious abuse of the Sacrament to gloss over attachment to grave sin.

The exceptions
Nonetheless, in a truly exceptional case (i.e., where neither time nor opportunity permit individual confession) the Church may allow (general) absolution without individual confession. However, Canon 963 of the Code enjoins that individual confession be made subsequently “as soon as possible, when the opportunity occurs.” What is more, the Church explicitly defines the limits of the truly exceptional: she places out of bounds such cases as the gathering of a large number of the faithful on the occasion of a pilgrimage or major feast. The “Note” makes it clear that the Church in Australia cannot claim exemption, because would-be penitents would not be deprived of the Sacrament for a long time.
Considering Cardinal Ratzinger’s comment that many in the Church are presently engaged in “one great act of forgetting,” at this stage real benefit can be derived from a short digression to recall, if not relearn, a lesson from Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet
The Elizabethan bard, William Shakespeare flourished when the people of England were still in possession of a traditional Catholic doctrinal heritage and moral ethos. This was a legacy of the “old religion,” as Roman Catholicism came to be called soon after Henry VIII’s break with Rome through the Act of Supremacy. (It is instructive to note that, while Bishop John Fisher of Rochester stood alone and sacrificed his life loyal to the Pope’s spiritual authority and in “dissent” from Henry’s Act of Supremacy, it would appear that one other English bishop was in such fear of his life that he subscribed to the Act twice over!)

Shakespeare places a magnificent soliloquy in the mouth of King Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle. It can be found in Act III of Hamlet, Scene 3. King Claudius had murdered his brother from ambition to obtain the crown and the queen. From the depths of a tortured remorse he contemplates the utter futility of his moral state.

[King Claudius]

O! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t;
A brother’s murder! Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man on double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what’s in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled, ere we come to fall,
Or pardoned being down? Then, I’ll look up;
My fault is past. But, O! what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ‘tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law; but ‘tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d
Even in the teeth and forehead of our faults
To give in evidence. What then? what rests
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it, when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that struggling to be free
Art more engaged! Help, angels! make assay;
Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.
All may be well.

[Retires and kneels.]

Shakespeare’s poignant blank verse presents an object lesson for our consideration. King Claudius is hovering on the brink of despair. He is craving divine forgiveness — in other words, valid absolution. He knows full well (as did Shakespeare and all those patronizing his play) that to avoid damnation all three elements for true repentance (and thus for absolution) are indispensable: confession, contrition — with all its implications for amendment of life — and satisfaction.

Remorse vs. sorrow
Surely, in our own day we must admit that many grave sins are no longer confessed. Some are simply overlooked; others are too easily excused (e.g., sexual sins such as contraception, as well as many sins against justice). To be equally honest, we should also concede that the major appeal of the Third Rite of General Absolution, to the unformed and the uninformed as well as to compliant bishops and priests involves, on one hand, bypassing the personal struggle to crown movements of remorse with genuine repentance and, on the other, sidetracking any residual sense of sin. Movements of remorse can still all too frequently be vitiated by the lack of a genuine purpose of amendment. King Claudius certainly got it right, “May one be pardoned and retain the offence?”
Shakespeare’s further insights are again profoundly true. Though we may manage to cheat on man-made law, we cannot cheat on God’s justice:
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ‘tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law; but ‘tis not so above; . . .

Illicit instances of the Third Rite pretend to offer absolution without requiring individual confession of grave sin. This fact is abundantly borne out by the loud silences in the “soft option” communal examinations of conscience that all to often accompanied these illicit Third Rites. Shakespeare’s King Claudius was honest enough to admit the worthlessness of any absolution while ever his personal dispositions were lacking, even were he to confess his gravely sinful state. Still, he prayed that “All may be well.”

Purpose of amendment
The Australian experiment with general absolution comes up against this very same obstacle. For many of us there has been an unadmitted reluctance to amend our lives despite the fact that a purpose of amendment is integral to true sorrow. Our “pastoral” problem is therefore not simply in the non-confession of sins. The real problem — and it is a challenge we in Australia have yet to acknowledge — is to ask with King Claudius the burning question and to have the humility to acknowledge the answer he offers in rhetorical form, namely: “May one be pardoned and retain the offence?”

The Australian situation
Let us now examine further details of the Australian situation. As we have seen, late in 1998 at the conclusion of their ad limina visit the Australian bishops were directed by the Holy Father to obey the Church’s Canon Law restrictions (esp. CIC can. 960 - 963) on general absolution. Furthermore, they were urged to take on board a raft of criticisms on many other crucially important doctrinal items including fundamental errors in Christology and ecclesiology that loomed large and which yet remain virtually unchallenged.

The Bishops’ “Letter”
The Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference subsequently released a “Letter from the Australian Bishops to the Catholic People of Australia.” It was dated April 14, 1999, and was signed by Edward Bede Cardinal Clancy of Sydney, then President of the Conference, on behalf of all the Australian bishops.

Initially, many loyal Australian Catholics were relieved that their bishops had made a public and corporate act of obedience to and unity with the Holy Father. Sadly, the bishops’ “Letter” took opportunity to digress and to accuse “some groups” of “un-Australian” tactics and of “intrusive surveillance of clergy and liturgical celebrations.” These unfortunate references reflected the degree to which proactive lay involvement had succeeded not only in bringing matters to a head in Australia but in conveying them to the notice of the Holy See. Illicit Third Rite General Absolutions had topped the orthodox laity’s hit list.

The laity’s role
While the bishops in their “Letter” protested their love for Peter (i.e., Pope John Paul II), they also vented their spleen against Paul (namely, Paul Brazier, criminal lawyer and founder of the Australian Catholics Advocacy Centre) and his co-workers. This was despite the fact that the Vatican had accepted the strong case that Brazier had presented on behalf of orthodox Catholics before the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. But just how did advocate Brazier ensure success in presenting his cases?
In civil society, hearsay evidence is insufficient to obtain justice; likewise in the Church. Brazier’s case studies comprised contemporaneous observations and eyewitness evidence, sworn on oath in statutory declarations before Justices of the Peace. This was watertight, quality evidence in any court of justice, testimony the Holy See could not and did not ignore.

The outcry
The bishops were greatly embarrassed by the inherent credibility of these sworn eyewitness accounts. However, in the heat of media reports the fundamental illicitness of the misuse of the Third Rite was all but ignored. Journalists chose to focus on the scandal, the pain and the humiliation that disobedient clergy had to endure from public exposure. There was no mention of the Church’s doctrine, and only passing mention of her law undergirding it. The only argument offending bishops and priests could lamely muster in response was that they did the wrong thing for the best of motives.

It is not easy for any of us to see where we were wrong on any issue. The unfortunate fact is that on this issue more than a handful of bishops and priests had been far more wrong than wronged. Some bishops had been repeatedly approached in strict confidence and given indisputable evidence that illicit Third Rite absolutions were taking place in their dioceses. They were asked to act, as was their duty in accord with Canon Law. They not only failed to do so; some actually declined to act at all. Others chose to ignore repeated requests, while some others, who did not themselves endorse general absolution, turned a blind eye.  Others again who did act did not disguise their resentment of the fact that they were being pressured by the laity. Some of these went so far as to question the accuracy and hence the veracity of the laity’s sworn testimony!

Justice indicates some form of apology to the laity was in order as well as the required act of obedience to the Holy Father. Simon Peter did just that with the Lord. In fact, he did it three times over. Only then was he confirmed worthy to be the Vicar of Christ, to feed both the lambs and the sheep of Christ’s flock. In Australia the laity was instead widely accused of playing unfair!

T’wixt the Rock and a hard place
It is hard to believe that practicing Catholics were in some instances declared off limits in the churches of their dioceses simply because, in all justice, they had endeavored to take accurate note of the relevant details of illicit Third Rite ceremonies. Surely, no loyal Catholic layperson could take pleasure in doing what had to be done? And surely, the bishops could not have intended to protect the offenders by countenancing their offense?

This whole “sorry mess” should have begun and ended with the bishops heeding the respectful and just interventions on behalf of the laity by the Australian Catholics Advocacy Centre, an arm of the Australian St. Joseph Foundation. A humble reaffirmation of the Church’s traditional teaching on the necessity of all three conditions for absolution of sins — namely, confession, contrition and satisfaction — could then have been issued on behalf of all the Australian bishops. This fundamental Catholic teaching, common ground for Shakespeare and those frequenting performances of Hamlet, has not been superseded.

The “Note”
At the heart of the doctrinal teaching reiterated in the “Note” issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and pointedly dated the Feast of St. Joseph, patron of the Universal Church, there is implied an important distinction which must always be kept in mind: though God loves us unconditionally, it is sheer presumption to believe that he forgives us unconditionally.

For sacramental absolution from grave sin we need to be individually confessed of our sins, individually contrite and individually prepared to make satisfaction for our sins. It is a sine qua non requirement that our contrition includes a genuine purpose of amendment of our life.

Nor should we forget that Catholic teaching on the Sacrament of Penance insists that sins may be either forgiven or retained. The confessor must make a moral judgment on the evidence presented. It is on the quality of our confession, of our contrition and of our readiness to make satisfaction that we, who are both the accuser and the accused in the tribunal of God’s mercy, submit our penitential dispositions to be weighed by the Church.
“Un-Australian”

Catholics believe that God does not have favorites; by Baptism we are all God’s children. Australians may be justly proud of their national heritage, but when it comes to matters of Catholic doctrine there cannot be one law for Australians, and a different law for others. Some may style such an imposed rule of faith “un-Australian” but it is precisely that rule of faith that ensures the unity of the Church and makes us all Catholics. What is more, the Pope was obliged to step in and give directions to his brother bishops in Australia. It is of the essence of Peter’s office to turn and steady the sheep and the lambs of his shaken flock when they head off in the wrong direction. The Church’s irreformable divine doctrine applies to all in the Church not some.

The future
As mentioned earlier, on the first anniversary of the 1999 “Note,” a second, this time a “Circular Letter,” issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to the Australian Bishops made it clear that any further request of the Holy See to permit the continuation of advertising and prior arranging of Third Rite absolutions will be fruitless. Likewise, attempts to justify such general absolutions against the Church’s clear teaching amount doctrinally to a defense of the indefensible.

My final prayer is, I am sure, the prayer of all fair-minded Catholics: that the Australian bishops and their co-workers in Christ, their priests, will combine an authentic and faithful acceptance of the Church’s divine and irreformable doctrine on the Sacrament of Penance with the exemplary repentance of Simon Peter. Only then will the clergy, both bishops and priests, stand some chance of regaining the laity’s respect and their whole-hearted co-operation in the great pastoral endeavor re-evangelization poses not only for Australia but for the rest of the secularized world as we advance in faith, hope and love into the third millennium of Christianity.  

Rev. John Walter is a priest of the Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia. For the last twenty years he has been pastor of St. Joseph’s Parish, Riverwood. In 1985 he was the convenor and founding member of the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. For eleven years he was founding editor of its journal, The Priest. This is his second article for HPR.

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