Contrition — Attritionism vs. Contritionism

Article 3: Attritionism vs. Contritionism

1. Attritionism. Attritionism is the theory which holds that a sorrow for sins that is based on no other motive than the fear of hell is good and salutary, and sufficient for the valid reception of the Sacrament of Penance.

a) Attritionism excludes from the concept of imperfect contrition not only perfect charity, but also the so-called caritas initialis, i.e., that inchoate love of God which forms the initial stage of perfect charity and, in a measure, partakes of its essence. In other words, the Attritionists teach that pure attrition, without any admixture of charity, nay even without that imperfect love of God known as amor concupiscentiae, suffices for the validity of absolution. The chief representatives of the Attritionist school, however, do not share the extreme view of Melchior Cano, who may be regarded as their leader, that the validity of the Sacrament requires no more than an attritio existimata. This kind of attrition evidently does not exclude the will to sin, and therefore cannot enter as quasi-matter into the Sacrament of Penance. Of course, this is not tantamount to saying that a sinner who approaches the tribunal of Penance in good faith with a merely presumptive attrition necessarily commits a sacrilege.

b) The Attritionists hold that one may receive absolution without making a formal act of (either perfect or imperfect) charity; but they are far from asserting that virtual charity is not necessary for the validity of the Sacrament.

Tournely, Antoine, Oswald, De Augustinis, and a few other theologians who otherwise belong to the Attritionist school, postulate an express act of imperfect charity (amor concupiscentiae s. amor spei) for the validity of Penance. But, as Tepe shows,¹ the spes veniae demanded by the Tridentine Council may be present without a formal act of charity. All Attritionists agree that genuine attrition is psychologically impossible without the amor initialis. Liberius a Jesu² enumerates no less than seventeen reasons why attrition inspired by a mere fear of hell must virtually include the “beginning of charity.” The three principal of these reasons are: (1) attrition must inspire hatred of sin as an offense committed against God, and hence forms the natural preamble to formal love, as Holy Scripture teaches: “The fear of God is the beginning of his love.”³ (2) Genuine attrition must be accompanied by a firm purpose of amendment, i.e., a resolution to avoid sin and keep the commandments. Not the least among these commandments is the love of God,⁴ and consequently the penitent who has attrition virtually has the votum caritatis, and together with it, the amor initialis. (3) According to the Tridentine teaching,⁵ attrition must be accompanied by “hope of forgiveness” (spes veniae), which in turn virtually includes the desire of being reconciled to God. St. Thomas says: “By the very fact that we hope that good will accrue to us through some one, we are moved towards him as to our own good, and thus begin to love him.”⁶

2. Contritionism. There is an exaggerated form of Contritionism, condemned by the Church, which demands perfect contrition as an indispensable requisite for the validity of absolution.⁷ The so-called moderate or orthodox form of Contritionism, on the other hand, holds that attrition, while good and wholesome,⁸ is insufficient for the valid reception of the Sacrament unless accompanied by an act of “initial charity” (caritas initialis).

The former being no longer a free opinion since the Tridentine Council, we mean the latter when we speak of “Contritionism” within the Church.

The “amor initialis” of the orthodox Contritionists is a rather mysterious thing, and the writers of this school are by no means a unit in defining it. They agree on only one point, viz.: that the amor initialis, unlike perfect charity, does not by itself effect justification. As to its true nature, there are three principal theories.

a) Cardinal Pallavicini⁹ distinguishes a twofold caritas: the amor Dei propter se et super omnia, i.e., perfect charity which justifies by itself and outside of the Sacrament,¹⁰ and the amor Dei propter se, but not super omnia, by which the penitent loves God in Himself and for His sake, without, however, preferring Him absolutely to all else. The latter, Pallavicini assures us, is the caritas initialis which must impregnate attrition in order to make it sufficient for the valid reception of sacramental absolution.

b) A second group of theologians, headed by Christian Lupus,¹¹ divides contrition into justifying and non-justifying, according to the degree of intensity of the charity by which it is inspired. Both kinds of charity are a genuine amor Dei propter se et super omnia, but they differ in this, that justifying charity, because of its intensity (caritas intensa), justifies immediately and before the reception of the Sacrament, whereas non-justifying charity, because of its weakness (caritas remissa, debilis, initialis), does not of itself effect forgiveness of mortal sin.¹² This non-justifying charity Lupus and his followers compare to a fertilizing germ, which attrition communicates to the soul of the penitent, thereby enabling him to receive the Sacrament validly.

c) A third group of authors (Billuart, von Schäzler, Glossner, etc.)¹³ draw an essential distinction between what they call one-sided charity and mutual charity. Each is a true love of God for His own sake and above all else; both are dictated by a pure amor benevolentiae, not by a mere selfish amor concupiscentiae; but while the former remains a mere amor benevolentiae on the part of man, the latter elicits a corresponding sentiment on the part of God, and thus develops into a mutual love of friendship (amor amicitiae). As long as the one-sided love of benevolence is mixed with fear, it lacks the power of justifying outside of the Sacrament; but when fear is overcome, the love of friendship enters and justifies the soul. The attrition necessary for valid absolution is that which is inspired not merely by the fear of hell but likewise by the one-sided love of God defined above. Hence, in order to be sufficient for valid absolution, attrition must be based on something more than fear, namely, on love of God.

3. The Official Teaching of the Church. By his famous decree of May 5, 1667, Pope Alexander VII commanded all parties to this controversy to avoid mutual recrimination and reserved the final decision to the Holy See. As no decision has ever been rendered, the controversy between Attritionists and Contritionists remains unsettled. The papal decree referred to is of great importance in forming a just opinion of the opposing theories, and hence we will reproduce its principal passages.

The Pontiff says he has learned with distress that “some Scholastics were disputing among themselves with excessive harshness and scandal to the faithful” on the question “whether that sort of attrition which is inspired by the fear of hell, excluding the will to sin with the hope of forgiveness, in order to obtain grace in the Sacrament of Penance, requires [in addition to such fear] some act of the love of God; some assert that it does, while others deny this proposition, and each party censures the opinion of the other.”¹⁴ The Pope, “by virtue of sacred obedience and under pain of the severest ecclesiastical penalties,” warns all who “in future will write or teach or preach on the subject of attrition, not to presume to brand with any mark of theological censure or otherwise to condemn either of the two opinions — that which denies the necessity of some sort of love of God in the attrition conceived through fear of hell, which to-day [1667] seems the one more generally held by Scholastic theologians, or that asserting the necessity of the said love, until something shall have been defined in this matter by the Holy See.”¹⁵

There are two points of special interest to be noted in this decree. The first is the pontifical statement that Attritionism at that time had more defenders than Contritionism. The same is true to-day. The second is the vagueness of the term aliqualis dilectio Dei. We have no means of ascertaining whether Alexander VII employed this term to denote an actus caritatis or an actus amoris concupiscentiae. It is safe to assume, however, that the Pope had in mind an act of genuine charity in its initial stage — the amor initialis of the Schoolmen.

Is it permissible, in view of this papal decree, to hold that attrition, even if entirely devoid of charity, is sufficient for absolution? Yes, because the Pope expressly says that it may be denied that “some kind of act of charity” is necessary for absolution. But anyone who would defend this proposition would lay himself open to the charge of playing with a bauble. It is impossible to be sorry for one’s sins without having at the same time love as well as fear, though, of course, this love may lie latent in the soul. In other words, charity is always virtually contained in the fear which inspires attrition.¹⁶

4. Contritionism Refuted. The Contritionists explain the teaching of the Tridentine Council in their own way.

a) Pallavicini relates¹⁷ that the Council’s definition on the subject was originally couched in these terms: “But that contrition which the theologians call attrition, … suffices for the reception of this Sacrament, and is a gift of God and an impulse of the Holy Ghost, by the aid of which the penitent, since he can hardly be without some movement of love towards God, prepares for himself the way to justice… .”¹⁸ One of the bishops present objected to this wording on the ground that it was false to say that the attrition which is inspired by fear can hardly be conceived without some impulse of love, and that theologians differed widely as to the sufficiency of such an attrition for the validity of Penance. This led to the elimination of the phrases which we have italicized and the substitution of the wording finally adopted¹⁹ for that first proposed. According to the Contritionists this incident shows that the Fathers of Trent, with one solitary exception, were at heart Contritionists and that Sess. XIV, cap. 4, must be interpreted accordingly.

In reality the argument proves nothing. Supposing the Fathers of the Council, by employing the phrase “dilectionis in Deum motu,” had intended to signify something more than the (perfect or imperfect) charity virtually included in the spes veniae (which is not denied by the Attritionists) — what would be gained for the Contritionist cause? Nothing, because the true meaning of an ecclesiastical decision must be gathered from its text and context and not from conciliary proceedings buried for centuries in the Vatican archives. Now the definition of the Council, as contained in the official Acta et Decreta, is utterly silent as to the alleged necessity of the actus caritatis initialis, and consequently this necessity is not dogmatically defined. On the contrary, the text and context have been so remodeled that the validity of attrition can be deduced from the change as a conclusion from the premises of a syllogism.²⁰

b) The main argument of the Contritionists is based on Sess. VI, caput 6, of the Tridentine decrees, where, it is alleged, the caritas initialis is demanded as a condition for the validity for Baptism. The passage runs as follows: ”… they begin to love Him [God] as the fountain of all justice, and are therefore moved against sins by a certain hatred and detestation, to wit: by that penitence which must be performed before Baptism.”²¹ From this text the Contritionists argue: Penance requires for its validity at least as much preparation as Baptism; consequently the caritas initialis must be a necessary condition of Penance also.

This argument can be controverted by intrinsic as well as extrinsic evidence. The extrinsic reasons against it may be briefly stated as follows:

(1) If the Contritionists were right, those Fathers and theologians who, at a later session of the Council of Trent (the XIVth), asked to have the phrase “dilectionis in Deum motu” re-inserted, could readily have gained their point by referring to Session VI, caput 6, where, according to the Contritionist contention, the controversy was already decided in their favor. That they failed to do this shows that the Contritionist claim is groundless. Nor can it be assumed that the Council itself altered the original wording of this important decree so radically as to favor a theory which its authors had rejected. These two facts prove that Sessio VI, caput 6, cannot be interpreted in favor of the Contritionist theory.

(2) Two of the most famous theologians who attended the Sixth Session of the Tridentine Council were Dominicus Soto and Melchior Cano. Both in their subsequent writings not only adhered to Attritionism, but expressly cited Sessio VI, caput 6, in support of their contention, while nearly all the other sixteenth-century divines who wrote after the Sixth Session of the Council²² understood the Tridentine passage as treating of justification without the Sacrament.

(3) The first writer who tried to prove the necessity of the caritas initialis (in the form of contritio existimata) for the validity of Penance from the sixth chapter of Session VI of the Tridentine Council was Martin Alphonsus Vivaldus. He admits, however, in his Candelabrum Aureum Ecclesiae Sanctae Dei, published towards the close of the sixteenth century, that his interpretation is novel.²³

The intrinsic reasons militating against the Contritionist interpretation of the Tridentine decree are well stated by Suarez and other later theologians. They may be summarized thus: Sessio VI, caput 6, of the decrees of the Council, while it treats of the dispositions required for justification in adults, does not deal exclusively with sacramental but likewise with extra-sacramental justification, which latter is effected by means of perfect contrition (contritio caritate perfecta). In an enumeration of all the conditions required for justification in this general sense, perfect charity had necessarily to be mentioned.²⁴

Readings: Chr. Lupus, De Contritione et Attritione, Louvain 1666. — Morinus, De Contritione et Attritione, in that writer’s Opera Posthuma, Paris 1703. — Le Drou, De Contritione et Attritione, Rome 1707. — Benaglio, Dell’ Attrizione, Milan 1846. — J. Deharbe, S.J., Die vollkommene Liebe Gottes in ihrem Gegensatz zur unvollkommenen Reue und in ihrer Anwendung auf die vollkommene und unvollkommene Reue nach der Lehre des hl. Thomas, Ratisbon 1856. — J.J. Surin, S.J., Über die Liebe zu Gott, Mayence 1883. — E.J. Hanna, art. “Contrition” in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IV, pp. 337–340; idem, art. “Attrition,” ibid., Vol. II, pp. 65 sq. — H. Denifle, O.P., Luther und Luthertum in der ersten Entwicklung, Vol. I, pp. 229 sqq., Vol. II, pp. 454, 577, 618 sq., Mayence 1906. — J. Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and Its Antagonists, New York 1914, pp. 101 sqq. — Th. Slater, S.J., “Is an Act of Contrition Difficult?” in Questions of Moral Theology, pp. 355 sqq., New York 1915. — D. Barry, “The Contrition Required in Confession,” in the Irish Theol. Quarterly (1917), No. 47, pp. 202 sqq.

The student may also read with profit St. Francis de Sales’ Treatise on the Love of God, and H. C. Semple, S.J., Heaven Open to Souls, New York 1916.