The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 1917. THE CABLES AND THE CONFESSIONAL

New Zealand Tablet, 25 January 1917, Page 33

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 1917. THE CABLES AND THE CONFESSIONAL

♦ wlllfflu f’l' eas t, of the week’s. war cables are of II a hind that Catholic readers will take the jfyjjlx liberty of frankly and wholly disbelieving. They refer to alleged misuse of the confessional by Germans, either actual priests(rjSktT 01 militai T disguised as priests. The first ' mSt message on the subject, sent via Amsterdam, was in the following form: ‘ The Germans insist that Belgians condemned to death shall confess to German and not Belgian priests, and consequently learn secrets resulting in arrests.’ This directly implies, or plainly insinuates, abuse of the confessional on the part of German priests— an allegation which, as we shall presently make clear, the whole history of the sacred institution shows to be incredible. A later message, also hailing from Amsterdam, gives a very much modified version of the charge. According to the later story, a Belgian condemned for espionage at Louvain agreed to make his confession to a German priest, and ‘ under the seal of the confessional gave the so-called priest a message to eight friends whom he desired to warn to be careful, as the German police were on their track. The priest solemnly promised to deliver the message and keep the secret inviolate, and gave the condemned man . his blessing. Within twenty-four hours the eight men were arrested, tried, and shot. The priest was a German sergeantmajor disguised.’ There is no element of plausibility, much less of probability, even in this amended version. For, in the first place, it is not in the least likely, in the present state of feeling in Belgium, that a condemned Belgian would meekly accept a German priest as confessor while Belgian priests were available; he would not, for the same reason, think of sending a confidential compromising message through such a channel; and if he did, it was not, and could not have been, covered by ‘ the seal of the confessional.’ The added statement that the pseudo priest’s name ‘is known to the Belgians ’ and that ‘ he demands removal to the eastern front, fearing assassination,’ is merely the cablerigger’s tag, intended to give the necessary dramatic finale to the story. * An old Spanish proverb has it that ‘A secret known to two persons is God’s secret; a secret among three is all men’s property,’ The saying is singularly appropriate in so far as it applies to the secret of the confessional. It is in very truth ‘God’s secret.’ The priest in the sacred tribunal acts not as mere man, but as minister of the Most High Who ‘ casts behind

His back ’ the .sins of the truly penitent (Is. xxxviii. 17), and throws them into the deep and silent places of the sea (Mich, vii. 19), whence they shall never again ’ be cast up either upon the shores of time or of eternity. The sigilium, or secret of confession, differs from all others in the sacredness, of its sanctions; in its farreaching character; in the more than natural fidelity with which it has been observed down the course of ages. The Catholic priest——and the German Catholic priest not less than othersstands on a pedestal which is all his own. The pedestal is in many lands a pillory. He has been freely pelted with accusations affecting his relations to God and to his fellow-man. . It is a singular and suggestive thing that his enemies have never hitherto flung at him even a suspicion touching his fidelity to the seal of confession. From time to time in the days of the chosen Twelve —the merely human element in individual priests has, unhappily,. trampled underfoot that . which was of grace. ‘ But .in all the human weeds which the Popes have thrown over their garden wallsfrom Luther to Chiniquy and Slattery—every form of human frailty has respected the ‘ stillborn silence ' which guards for ever the portals of God’s tribunal of mercy, the Sacrament of Penance. - . * The seal of confession is a divine-natural obligation confirmed by ecclesiastical law. It has a wide scope. It covers the whole matter of confession ; mortal and venial sins, both singly, and as a whole ; the circumstances of sins; secret defects that are brought to light in the confession of sins; the sins of accomplices ; the penace imposed ; and generally, everything and anything that goes to make confession burdensome to the penitent. And the . sig ilium we refer to differs in many particulars from every other, form of human secret. No revelations may ever be made, in any circumstances whatsoever, without the full and free consent of the penitent— not even to save the reputation or the life of the confessor. The seal of confession binds him even towards the penitent, so that he may not by word, act, look, sign, altered demeanour, or in any other way, reveal to him outside of the sacred tribunal his sense of remembrance of anything that he had heard within it. Moreover, a priest is bound not to disclose even the smallest tittle of what comes under the sacred sigillum. No door—not a chink— left open for the gradual entry of laxity in this sacred relation of priest to penitent. The silence is absolute and eternal. It is just the principle which even Richter approved : * He who gives up the smallest part of a secret has the rest no longer in his power.’ * History furnishes us with no instance, all down the ages, in which a confessor proved unfaithful to this sacred trust. It has furnished many instances in which priests have faced imprisonment, and even death, when the occasion demanded it rather than violate the obligation of perpetual secrecy. St. John Nepomucene was a martyr of the seal of confession. He endured chains and dungeons rather than reveal the secret of confession to Wencelaus of Bohemia. His lips were still sealed when the waters of the Moldau closed them in endless silence. Later centuries have likewise had their sufferers for the seal. Some of our Irish readers will recall how Father Gahan spent many a weary month in a Dublin prison. He had been summoned as a witness and refused to disclose matters which could have come to his knowledge only through the confessional. He was imprisoned for contempt of court. A precisely similar incident occurred to Father McLaughlin of Ayr (Scotland), whose death took place on April 25, 1895. He was condemned to thirty days’ imprisonment, but was releasedstill defiant—after sixteen days’ experience of a common ■ gaol. Another such experience fell to the lot of Father Gilles, of Notre Dame, Montreal (Canada), in 1896. In every case the legal penalties had no other effect than that of strengthening the confessors’ resolution to guard, even with their lives, the secrets committed to them, not as mere men, but as ministers of the Most High God. Happily, the secrets of the confessional are now gener-

ally regarded by civil law as privileged communications which lie outside the range of ordinary evidence. ■ .;; . * ■ ■ - • Several events of tragic interest have occurred'near our own time which show that the spirit of St, John Nepomucene is still alive and active in the Church. The story of Father Koblowicz was told in 1873 by the lieichzeitung of Bonn. He was parish priest of Oranon, in Kiev (Russian Poland), and bore a high reputation for piety and zeal. A murder was committed in his parish, and his gun, recently discharged, was found concealed under the altar. He was tried, found guilty, and condemned to: penal servitude for life in the mines of Siberia. Twenty years later 1873—the organist of the church at Oranon lay dying. He summoned the authorities, and confessed that he was the murderer. He had used the priest’s gun, hastily concealed it beneath the altar, and in the search which ensued had contrived to cast suspicion on Father Koblowicz. In a remorseful mood he soon afterwards confessed to the priest, but had not the courage to surrender himself to the hands of justice. After his dying confession, orders were sent to Siberia for the immediate release of Father Koblowicz. He had died a short time previously. He had endured the slow martyrdom of Siberian mines for twenty years. He had borne that far keener agony—the fearful ceremony of public degradation at Zhitomeer. He bore his heavy cross in silence with him to the grave. * Father Lutz, an American priest, shared the spirit, and to some extent the fate, of his noble Polish confrere. He was, in 1894, convicted of having robbed a banker whom he had attended in his last illness. He was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. - One , happy day, a document was found among the dead man’s papers, explaining that the money supposed to have been stolen had been entrusted to the priest to be restored to a third person. And Father Lutz was at once released. The case of the French priest, the Abbe Dumoulin (1895-8), aroused the attention of even the secular press. The facts of the case were thus recorded at the time by the . Syd net/ Morning Herald :—‘The Abbe Dumoulin, a priest of the archdiocese of Aix, in France, was three years ago convicted of the robbery and murder of a wealthy lady. She had come to him for a sum equivalent to £4OO of trust funds belonging to a religious society with which she was connected, and four days after her dead body was found in a cell in a deserted monastery, attached to the presbytery buildings, through which she had to pass. The money was gone, and a large table knife and handkerchief, stained with blood, were found near, both having belonged to a relative of the Abbe. On circumstantial evidence the Abbe was convicted and sentenced to transportation for life, and for three years he has been serving his sentence in New Caledonia. But the truth has come to light, and it is as thrilling as fiction, for, some months ago, the sexton of the church confessed that it was he that had committed the murder, and that on the day on which the body was discovered he had gone to the Abbe himself and confessed the crime. He had not the courage to give himself up to the law, and the Abbe, with the secret of the confessional hidden in his breast, allowed himself to be tried, and convicted and sentenced for murder.’ Father Dumoulin wore the prison garb, and toiled for three years under a tropical sun, herding day and night, as the Sydney Morning Herald said, with ‘ the basest outcasts of society.’ Even that secular journal declared that his ‘ heroic devotion to a sense of duty constituted an act of heroism to which it would be hard to find a parallel.’ With such records before us—and they could easily be multiplied did space permit,—it is impossible for sane or sensible people to give credence to stories which are in direct conflict with the whole history and traditions of the Catholic priesthood. .