Earlier this week, I posted an article on the conditions for a valid confession titled ‘Is My Confession Invalid?’ as a special study of something brought up in my earlier article titled ‘Few Catholics Will be Saved.’
In this article, I promised that I would expand on certain notes made on the Roman Catechism’s treatment of the conditions for proper contrition. Theologians typically draw nine notes of proper contrition from the Roman Catechism:
This brilliant exposition of the Roman Catechism became the seedbed for the teaching of the theologians that contrition must be true (not apparent), real (not a mere speculative judgment), proper (formal displeasure), per se formal (not merely virtual), loving (i.e., includes some love of God, although not necessarily the theological virtue of charity), essentially supernatural, efficacious (an act absolutely repugnant to sin, i.e., the act is against sin as such, even if a man falls into sin contrary to this act), universal (extending to all mortal sins), and supreme (according to [the subject’s appreciation of the] object, i.e., that the intellect affirms that sin is to be hated above all things and, consequently, that the will is ready to suffer all things rather than to sin). This is extensively explained and demonstrated by Doronzo in his De poenitentia, tom. ii, cap. iv, art. 25.
In this article I will be going over each of these individually, with more or less detail. As mentioned, this article will be more scientific in nature, eschewing the more practical style of my aforementioned article. Therefore, I am paywalling this article.
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