Solicitation: Sin of the Confessional
Solicitation is the act of asking someone for something such as money or support or in the case of confession, for sexual favors.
There is a section titled 'Sins of the Confessional' in the highly readable book Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of Papacy by Peter De Rosa. Here is a summary of what he says.
The two rules of compulsory yearly confession and confessional secrecy led to a sin known as 'solicitation' in canon law: that is a priest using the confessional to ask for sexual favors. The privacy of the confessional provided the clergy with ready access to women at their weakest, that is when they were obliged to confess every sexual thought and desire. To make matters worse, during confession, the penitents would kneel next to the chair of the confessor where it was possible for unscrupulous priests to indulge in physical abuse. It was to prevent such abuse that the confessional box was introduced around the middle of the sixteenth century. However, solicitation in the confessional continued unabated.
Another reason for the widespread solicitation by priests can be traced to their seminary life and formation. Priests are trained from around the age of 17 (in some religious congregations, from the age of 14 as aspirants or minor seminarians) in a prison-like environment away from contact with girls and women. They are forbidden to engage in sexual thoughts and imaginations, let alone acts, as such thoughts and acts are regarded as mortal sins. Every sexual impulse must be suppressed as a danger to their celibacy. As soon as they are ordained, these mostly innocent men are forced to listen, in the secrecy of the confessional, to the most lurid and pornographic description of sexual activities. It is no wonder why many of them stray and uses the confessional for sexual advances.
John Cornwell, in his book, The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession, highlights a major cause for the priestly pedophile cases of the recent years. In 1910, Pope Pius X issued the decree Quam Singulari which instructed that the first confession and communion should be made not at puberty, as it used to be before, but at age 7. It also encouraged weekly confession and communion. This implied that instructions in sin and categories of sin including sexual ones started at the age of 5 or 6. It is much easier for a pedophile priest to manipulate a 6-year-old than someone who has reached the age of puberty.
Some interesting canon laws that most people are unaware of:
Canon 977 prohibits a priest from giving absolution to someone with whom he has had unlawful sexual relations. This means that if a priest commits sexual sin with someone, he cannot then absolve the same person from the sin.
If a penitent has been solicited to sin, he or she cannot be absolved by any confessor until the penitent actually reports the delinquent priest to the proper ecclesiastical authority (usually the bishop) or promises to make such denunciation as soon as possible!
After the scandal of the four Orthodox priests mentioned earlier, the faithful, particularly the women among them, are demanding changes to the current practice of one-to-one auricular confession. The options are (a) abolish private confession to priests altogether; let the faithful confess directly to God or (b) conduct a public-for-all confession whereby everyone in the congregation quietly recalls his or her sins, asks God for forgiveness, and the priest absolves the whole congregation at one go or (c) allow senior nuns to hear women's confessions in private.
In a future blog, I hope to dwell on the psychology underlying the mental make-up of pedophile priests and their moral and theological justifications for their acts, as discussed by John Cornwell in his book.
Solicitation is the act of asking someone for something such as money or support or in the case of confession, for sexual favors.
There is a section titled 'Sins of the Confessional' in the highly readable book Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of Papacy by Peter De Rosa. Here is a summary of what he says.
The two rules of compulsory yearly confession and confessional secrecy led to a sin known as 'solicitation' in canon law: that is a priest using the confessional to ask for sexual favors. The privacy of the confessional provided the clergy with ready access to women at their weakest, that is when they were obliged to confess every sexual thought and desire. To make matters worse, during confession, the penitents would kneel next to the chair of the confessor where it was possible for unscrupulous priests to indulge in physical abuse. It was to prevent such abuse that the confessional box was introduced around the middle of the sixteenth century. However, solicitation in the confessional continued unabated.
Another reason for the widespread solicitation by priests can be traced to their seminary life and formation. Priests are trained from around the age of 17 (in some religious congregations, from the age of 14 as aspirants or minor seminarians) in a prison-like environment away from contact with girls and women. They are forbidden to engage in sexual thoughts and imaginations, let alone acts, as such thoughts and acts are regarded as mortal sins. Every sexual impulse must be suppressed as a danger to their celibacy. As soon as they are ordained, these mostly innocent men are forced to listen, in the secrecy of the confessional, to the most lurid and pornographic description of sexual activities. It is no wonder why many of them stray and uses the confessional for sexual advances.
John Cornwell, in his book, The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession, highlights a major cause for the priestly pedophile cases of the recent years. In 1910, Pope Pius X issued the decree Quam Singulari which instructed that the first confession and communion should be made not at puberty, as it used to be before, but at age 7. It also encouraged weekly confession and communion. This implied that instructions in sin and categories of sin including sexual ones started at the age of 5 or 6. It is much easier for a pedophile priest to manipulate a 6-year-old than someone who has reached the age of puberty.
Some interesting canon laws that most people are unaware of:
Canon 977 prohibits a priest from giving absolution to someone with whom he has had unlawful sexual relations. This means that if a priest commits sexual sin with someone, he cannot then absolve the same person from the sin.
If a penitent has been solicited to sin, he or she cannot be absolved by any confessor until the penitent actually reports the delinquent priest to the proper ecclesiastical authority (usually the bishop) or promises to make such denunciation as soon as possible!
After the scandal of the four Orthodox priests mentioned earlier, the faithful, particularly the women among them, are demanding changes to the current practice of one-to-one auricular confession. The options are (a) abolish private confession to priests altogether; let the faithful confess directly to God or (b) conduct a public-for-all confession whereby everyone in the congregation quietly recalls his or her sins, asks God for forgiveness, and the priest absolves the whole congregation at one go or (c) allow senior nuns to hear women's confessions in private.
In a future blog, I hope to dwell on the psychology underlying the mental make-up of pedophile priests and their moral and theological justifications for their acts, as discussed by John Cornwell in his book.
No comments:
Post a Comment