When Bad Advice in Confession Becomes a Crime

When Bad Advice in Confession Becomes a Crime | Dr. Edward N. Peters | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

The canonical crime of solicitation is likely more widespread than many may suppose.

All would agree that if a given piece of advice is bad in the confessional, then a priest’s giving it to a penitent would be, at a minimum, a failure in pastoral care. Depending on circumstances, a priest’s proffering of bad advice in confession might even, as a violation of charity or justice, be sinful. But, that the giving of bad advice in confession could be a crime under Church law would be startling. And yet, exactly this reading of Canon 1387 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law is required, I suggest, in light of sound canonical tradition and recent Roman curial norms.

Canon 1387 states: “A priest who in the act, on the occasion, or under the pretext of confession solicits a penitent to sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue is to be punished, according to the gravity of the delict, by suspension, prohibitions, and privations; in graver cases he is to be dismissed from the clerical state.” The image of solicitation that springs to mind here is, of course, that of a priest using the confessional to propose carnal liaisons to a female penitent.1 To be sure, such reprehensible behavior is criminalized by Canon 1387. But neither the text of Canon 1387 (specifically the phrase, “solicits a penitent to sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue”) nor the tradition behind the modern canon construes the crime of solicitation that narrowly.

First, the canonical crime of solicitation is not limited to cases wherein a confessor’s bad advice given is only toward a penitent’s sexual misconduct with the priest himself. John Martin, commenting on Canon 1387 in the British-Irish canonical commentary Letter & Spirit (1985) at 799, observes: “The offence is committed whether the priest encourages the penitent to sin either with the priest himself or with any third party.” Thomas Green, writing in the 2000 CLSA New Commentary (at 1591), agrees: “The delict might also be verified if the solicited sexual activity involves the penitent and a third party, not necessarily the priest and the penitent.” And Leon del Amo in the 2004 Code of Canon Law Annotated (at 1077), notes: “The offense consists in soliciting the penitent to sin against the sixth commandment, either with the person soliciting or with a third party.” No commentator on the 1983 Code disputes the understanding of solicitation in Canon 1387 as embracing not only a confessor’s advice toward sexual sin between the penitent and the confessor himself, but also between the penitent and a third party. But to see clearly how a confessor’s giving a penitent objectively immoral advice, even if such advice is directed toward the solitary acts of the penitent alone, can also constitute a form of solicitation, a review of  canonical commentary on the crime of solicitation under the earlier, 1917 Code, is helpful.

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Comments

[LJ]

Thanks for the article, Dr. Peters.

The idea of the Canon Penitentiary is excellent. The force to effect such a move in any diocese is of course the Bishop. As a part of his teaching office I would also think that it might be time for a widespread emphasis on moral teaching so that everyone can at least be on the same page, priests and laity alike.

Certainly, confessors must have clarity regarding their counseling in the course of the sacrament, yet when the laity still have a confused or inadequate understanding of basic moral precepts practically applied, their expectations in the sacrament may well be far out of sync with the priest. It seems to me that while education or refinement of that education may well be a natural part of the sacrament of penance, the bulk of that education should be done from the pulpit, emanating where necessary from the throne of the bishop.

In fact, it would be no surprise if the laity were not confessing at all through ignorance of its necessity for specific sins, not solely from bad advice in the confessional but lack of advice from without. We have all heard the lament about woefully inadequate catechesis over the years. Perhaps it is time also to do something about that at the diocesan level, as a companion to the Canon Penitentiary, not only to repair CCD, which has been done in many places already, but to begin to repair the damage of the past.

That is, of course, not the job of Canon Law per se, but Canon Law does specify whose job it is to educate in the faith.