faith formation: Manifestation of Conscience

 Fr. Goring is on fire with pearls of wisdom for the spiritual life. Here  talks about how one should pray to know your soul as God sees it. To know your faults and sins, especially the ones you are not conscious of.

 

 

There was a practice of revealing your innermost thoughts to your spiritual father in religious orders, but it was not the sacrament of confession. The practice has fallen out favor because of abuses and other complications. There is a problem of the inner and external forum.

For example a married priest shouldn't hear his wife's confession, unless it is a dire emergency. It makes interpersonal relationships very complicated.

It creates complications because similar to the seal of confession, "manifestations of conscience" has a kind of seal of secrecy, and confidentiality, which makes it hard to navigate when one, as a superior, can act or can't.

To curb such abuses  Pope Leo XIII, 17 December 1890, "Quemadmodum" forbade both mandatory manifestation of conscience and the practice of superiors inducing their subjects to make such manifestations.

The Catholic Encyclopedia quotes it as a decree but I can't find it on the Vatican Website nor any place else so I will quote the Catholic Encyclopedia: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09597a.htm

"His Holiness annuls, abrogates, and declares of no force whatever hereafter, all regulations whatsoever in the Constitutions of pious societies and institutes of women who make either simple or solemn vows, as well as in those of men of the purely lay order (even though the said constitutions should have received from the Holy See approbation in whatsoever form, even that which is termed most special), in this one point, in which those constitutions regard the secret manifestation of conscience in whatsoever manner or under whatsoever name.

"He therefore seriously enjoins on all superiors, male and female, of such institutes, congregations, and societies absolutely to cancel and expunge altogether from their respective Constitutions, Directories, and Manuals all the aforesaid regulations." The pope, having thus abolished compulsory manifestation of conscience, goes on to forbid superiors, either directly or indirectly, to induce their subjects to such manifestation, and commands that such superiors be denounced to higher superiors if they violate this decree, or in case of the superior-general to the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars (now the Congregation of the Religious Orders).

"The decree states, however, that any voluntary manifestation on the part of subjects, for the purpose of obtaining help in doubts and difficulties, and to further their spiritual progress, is not prohibited. Neither does this decree forbid the ordinary domestic or paternal interrogation which is part of all religious government, nor the solicitude of a superior in inquiring into the manifest troubles or affliction of a subject. The pope commands that the decree "Quemadmodum" be translated into the vernacular and inserted into the Constitutions of those religious institutes which it affects, and that it be read publicly once a year."

This problem of internal and external forum has become a problem in recent times, with the abuse of the seal of confession. Some of the new religious communities having internal spiritual direction and confession only among members.

This could create huge problems, like with the Legionaries of Christ (LC's). What happens if the head of the community says he is raping members and has three children with a women, thus breaking his vow of celibacy, and guilty of unspeakable crimes, in confession, to a priest member of the community?

Well now the priest member of the community, who heard the confession, cannot act if he sees these corruptions, because of the seal of confession-- he cannot act on anything he heard in confession. It creates great dilemmas. Religious communities should have external confessors from a trusted priest not a member of the community, for just such cases.