Canons of the VII Ecumenical Councils

Interpretation.

After this Council had decreed concerning many different penances, lastly in the present Canon it leaves everything to the judgment of the bishops and spirituals (i.e., confessors), the authority to bind and to loose, saying that they ought to conjecture, or surmise, both the quality of the sinfulness, whether it be pardonable or deadly, and the disposition of the sinner with respect to repentance, and thus to offer the right treatment for his illness; lest by giving persons who are magnanimous and willing to repent lenient penances, and persons who are more unconcerned and pusillanimous on the contrary extreme penances, they fail to correct either the former or the latter, but rather wind up by losing both. Because sin is so complex and various, and grows so fast, that it resists, that is, overcomes, the power and art of the spiritual physician (or, it may be, so complex and various is sin, and so fast does it grow, before it can be checked and overcome by the art of the spiritual physician). So, for this reason, the physician of souls must first and foremost conjecture the disposition and inclination of the sinner, and discern whether he loves the health of his soul with fervid repentance, or, on the contrary, whether he actually is coaxing sin to attack him, and how he behaves in regard to sin, whether he is not opposed to the salutary remedies which he is giving him (as is done by the demented who are opposed to the salutary remedies of physicians of bodies), and whether he is not actually aggravating, or increasing, the lesion of sin with such measures. The confessor, I say, must first of all make conjectures respecting all these things, and thus with due proportion mete out mercy, mitigating, or lightening, the penances in dealing with the man who is unconcerned and pusillanimous, but intensifying, or making them heavier, in the case of a man who is magnanimous; and doing both for mercy’s sake, in order, on the one hand, to cleanse the magnanimous man from sin, and, on the other hand, to avoid making the pusillanimous man’s case worse. And, generally speaking, the whole aim both to God and to the confessor is simply this, to bring about the return of the straying sheep, to cure the one who has been wounded or hurt by the figurative serpent commonly called the Devil, and neither to drive him to despair by heavy penalties, nor again to let him take the bit in his teeth, like a horse, by light penalties, and hence encourage him to contemptuousness and unconcern, but in every possible way, whether with austere or with mild remedies, to endeavor to restore the sinner to health and free him from the wounds of sin, so that he may taste the fruits of repentance, and with wisdom managing to help him to ascend to the splendor of the Holy Trinity above (which is the kingdom of heaven, according to St. Gregory the Theologian). So, then, the confessor must have knowledge of both requirements (just as is said verbatim in c. III of Basil), to wit, accuracy and custom.[255] In case sinners do not care to observe this accuracy, on account of which they are compromisingly allowed a reduction of years and of penances for their sin, let him at least command them to observe the custom, the entire number of years, that is to say, and the penances prescribed by the Canons.

Notes

[253] In other manuscripts it says “stayed.”

[254] In other manuscripts it says “give him more.”

[255] By the word “custom” is meant the term of years and the various penances, or penalties, with which the Canons customarily and for the most part take sinners to task and bring them to their senses, or sober them up, whether they be laymen or clergymen. By “accuracy,” on the other hand, is meant the eventuality whereby sinners add to these years and penances a hatred of sin, and a painful feeling in the heart, and tears, and bodily hardships, and other benefactions. For little correction can be expected to result from the years and penances alone. Both these requirements, accuracy and custom, are recommended by the same Canons of the Fathers, and especially by c. XII of the 1st, q.v. The fact that every confessor must be actively invested with holy orders, and must not have been deposed for open crimes, nor have resigned for secret ones, is attested also by Symeon of Thessalonica, who says (Reply 11): “The man who receives thoughts must also pronounce blessings, and utter a prayer for pardon, and officiate as a minister, and administer communion to those confessing their misdeeds, and intercede in behalf of the repentant.” And John of Cirtus expressly says in some reply (extant in manuscript) that: “whoever voluntarily or involuntarily has resigned from holy orders cannot receive thoughts. Any priests who without permission of their bishop receive thoughts and confess, they, according to the above-mentioned Symeon (in the same Reply), so far as sinfulness is concerned, are close to the man who, though unsacred, performs the functions of holy orders. According to Balsamon (interpretation of c. VII of Carthage) Michael the Patriarch said that these men ought to be deposed from office just as those are deposed from office who perform any act outside their own parish, and like transgressors of the Canons. Men unsacred and monks ought not to confess, nor nuns. For this is contrary to the Canons. That is why Balsamon (Reply 32) says that if an unsacred abbot of a monastery cannot receive thoughts, even though he be given permission by his bishop, how much more this holds in the case of an abbess and nun, even though her virtuousness outshine the sun! Nicephorus the charto-phylax, too, says that monks who are not priests, and who receive thoughts, should be apprised that they are doing this uncanonically, or, without undergoing the penances prescribed by the Canons” (page 342, Corpus Juris Graecoromani). See also the Footnote to Ap. c. XXXIX. The above-mentioned Symeon adds (in Reply 11) that if there should happen to arise any great necessity and there should be present neither a bishop nor a confessor, a plain monk may receive thoughts, but thereafter he must reveal them either to the bishop or to the one having permission and the ministry of spiritual paternity.