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Choose a topic from Part 3 Suppl:

• Penance (Continued)
  • 1. Contrition
  • 2. The Object of Contrition
  • 3. Degrees of Contrition
  • 4. The Time or Season of Contrition
  • 5. The Effect of Contrition
  • 6. Confession
  • 7. The Nature of Confession
  • 8. The Minister of Confession
  • 9. The Quality of Confession
  • 10. The Effect of Confession
  • 11. The Seal of Confession
  • 12. Satisfaction
  • 13. Possibility of Satisfaction
  • 14. The Quality of Satisfaction
  • 15. Means of Making Satisfaction
  • 16. Those Who Have the Virtue of Penance
  • 17. The Power of the Keys
  • 18. The Effect of the Keys
  • 19. The Minister of the Keys
  • 20. Use of the Power of the Keys
  • 21. Excommunication
  • 22. Persons Concerned in Excommunication
  • 23. Dealing With Excommunicated Persons
  • 24. Absolution From Excommunication
  • 25. Indulgences
  • 26. The Granting of Indulgences
  • 27. The Gaining of Indulgences
  • 28. Public Penance
• Extreme Unction
• Order (Holy Orders)
• Matrimony
• The General Resurrection
• The Last Things
• Appendix I (The Innocents in Limbo)
• Appendix II (Two Notes on Purgatory)

11. The Seal of Confession

1. The priest who hears confessions is most strictly boundto hold in perfect secrecy all sins confessed to him. Thisobligation incumbent on the confessor is called the "seal ofconfession."

2. The seal extends to everything connected withthe sins confessed. That is, it obliges the confessor to completesilence about any circumstance that might reveal, or cause to besuspected, the identity of the sinner who has confessed to him.

3. The priest hearing a confession, and he alone, is boundby the seal of confession. One who overhears a penitent accusinghimself, is seriously bound to secrecy, but is not, strictlyspeaking, under the seal of confession.

4. If the penitent, for good and serious reason,voluntarily asks the priest to reveal to another what he confesses,the priest is freed from the seal in the precise matter indicatedby the request. Yet the priest will not, except under most pressingneed, accede to such a request on the part of the penitent. Thepriest will rather require the penitent to tell him again, apartfrom the sacrament of penance, what he wishes to be revealed. Andthus there will be no danger of scandal, no suspicion that thepriest has broken the sacred seal.

5. What a priest knows from a source other than confessiondoes not come under the seal. Thus, if a priest saw a man commit arobbery, he could testify to the fact, even though the robber had,in the meantime, confessed the sin to him. For while the sin asconfessed is under the seal, the sin as observed apart fromconfession is not under the seal.

"Whom do you seek, friend, if you seek not God? Seek him, find him, cleave to him; bind your will to his with bands of steel and you will live always at peace in this life and in the next."
St Alphonsus de Liguori

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"God looks neither at long nor beautiful prayers, but at those that come from the heart."
The Cure D'Ars

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"God gives us some things, as the beginning of faith, even when we do not pray. Other things, such as perseverance, he has only provided for those who pray."
St Augustine

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