Penance

“ The word ‘penalty’ is not technically exact. Strictly speaking, the Inquisition was concerned not with crimes and punishments, but with spiritual errors and penances.416 Thus, when the tribunal consigned some one to prison, its formula ran that the man in question shall betake himself to prison and there penance himself on a diet of bread and water. No confessor will regard the mere expression of contrition as sufficient in itself; nor will the genuine penitent be satisfied. Penance is the outward and visible sign of sincere repentance, and an earnest of future amendment of life. ”

“ See how great was his innocence, how wonderful his holiness and unspotted sanctity!
But again I must ask: Why such excessive rigor of penance? Is it right for an innocent man, who has never done any wrong, to be to be punished and chastised? I know well that some of the saints led innocent and holy lives, and yet did severe penance ”

“ A. Works of penance are any kind of punishment which the sinner willingly undergoes, in order to satisfy for sin; and as the nature of punishment requires that it be painful and afflicting to self-love, so anything whatsoever that is naturally painful and afflicting to us, and which we willingly undergo with the view of satisfying for our sins, is a penitential work. ”

“ Instruct us, how we should live after penance. I tell you—abstain from all crimes. And I add: not only, after having done penance, should a man keep himself from crimes; but likewise before, whilst he is in health ; because he knows not, when death approaches, that he shall be admitted to penance, and be able to confess his sins to God and the Priest. Therefore I said, that you should live well before penance, and better after it.-Would you then remove all doubt, and escape all uncertainty? Do penance while you enjoy health. ”

“ Wherefore in order to satisfy as briefly and shortly as possible, your desire and question, the full and perfect description of penitence is, never again to yield to those sins for which we do penance, or for which our conscience is pricked. ”

“ PENANCE. In the law of England, penance is an ecclesiastical punishment or penalty, used in the discipline of the Church of England, by which an offender is obliged to give a public satisfaction to the Church for scandal done by his evil example. For small offences and scandals, a public satisfaction or penance is required to be made before the minister, churchwardens, and some of the parishioners, as the ecclesiastical judge shall think fit to decree. ”

“ What should a penitent do who knows he cannot perform the penance given? A. A penitent who knows he cannot perform the penance given should ask the priest for one that he can perform. When we forget the penance given we must ask for it again, for we cannot fulfill our duty by giving ourselves a penance. The penance must be performed at the time and in the manner the confessor directs.
Q. 749. {192} What is the examination of conscience? A. The examination of conscience is an earnest effort to recall to mind all the sins we have committed since our last worthy confession. ”

“ For some sins men were required to do penance during the whole of their lives, and absolution was only granted them in death; but the common course of penance consigned men for ten, fifteen or twenty years to its various humiliating stages. ”

“ For as one guilty of all sins will not enter the gate of eternal life, so also if one be guilty of only one sin. A penance, moreover, is false when the penitent does not resign a curial or commercial occupation, the duties of which he cannot perform without committing sin, or if he bears hatred in his heart or does not repair an injury or does not pardon an offense, or if he carries arms in contravention of justice. ”

“ In this sense we do not refuse to admit the justice of a call to penance, when it proceeds from those who are not of us,—that is, of a warning carefully to examine our religious life and pastoral conduct, and to remedy what is found defective. ”

“ There are only three, and penitence is combined with each. When one has transgressed a positive commandment, and done penance, he is atoned for before he goes away from his place. As it is written [Jerem. iii. 14] : "Return, O backsliding children." If he has transgressed a negative commandment, penitence suspends (the sentence) , and the Day of Atonement atones. ”

“ But when we wilfully sinned after baptism, it is but just that we should be obliged to make some satisfaction.
Q. 802. Is the slight penance the priest gives us sufficient to satisfy for all the sins confessed? A. The slight penance the priest gives us is not sufficient to satisfy for all the sins confessed: (1) Because there is no real equality between the slight penance given and the punishment deserved for sin; (2) Because we are all obliged to do penance for sins committed, and this would not be necessary if the penance given in confession satisfied for all. ”

“ The penitent himself behoved to deposit the price of his pardon in the chest. [316] Angry looks were given to those who were audacious enough not to open their purses. [317]
If among those who pressed forward to the confessionals, there happened to be any one whose crime was publicly known, though of a kind which the civil law could not reach, he behoved, first of all, to do public penance. ”

“ If a layman kills another man with thoughts of hatred, if he does not wish to relinquish his arms, let him do penance 7 years, without flesh and wine 3 years.
5. If any one kills a monk or a clergyman, let him relinquish his arms and serve God272 or do 7 years' penance. He is in the judgment of the bishop. But he who kills a bishop or a presbyter, the judgment concerning him is in the king.
6. He who by the command of his lord kills a man, let [pg 629] him keep away from the church 40 days; and he who kills a man in a public war, let him do penance 40 days. ”

“ If the guilty person should show sincere proofs of penitence, or by liberal giving of alms made satisfactory recompense for wrongs done, his penance might be eased, or the term of his excommunication shortened, and his Church privileges partly or wholly restored. ”

“ The penitentiary system, according to which the priest enforced a code of moral law in the confessional by the sanction of penance—penance which must be performed as a condition of admission to the sacrament of the Eucharist—had been from early times a great instrument in the civilization of the raw Germanic races. Penance might consist in fasting ”

“ We must apply ourselves seriously to the consideration and practice of those things which promote and excite truly penitential dispositions in the soul; such as serious meditation on the four last things, and the great truths of eternity, the practice of self-denial and mortification, with works of charity and mercy; for experience shows that as those who live pleasant lives and pamper the body never acquire sentiments of penance, so those who practise the works of penance soon obtain the true spirit of it. ”

“ Except in trifling cases, which merited no real punishment, such spiritual penances as we occasionally meet with are conjoined with material penalties. A man sentenced to imprisonment may perhaps be required to fast on Fridays for six months or a year, and to recite on those days a prescribed number of Ave Marias and Paternosters or other prayers. ”

“ To deny that sin remains in a child after baptism is to trample down Paul and Christ together. 3. The leaven of sin, though no actual sin may be present, delays the soul departing from the body from entering heaven. 4. The imperfect charity of a dying man carries with it great fear as necessary, which of itself alone is enough to cause the punishment of purgatory, and hinders the entrance of heaven. 5. That there are three parts of penance,—contrition, confession, and satisfaction,—is not founded in the Sacred Scripture, nor in the ancient holy Christian doctors. ”

“ Where are those who, having begun as sinners, end as penitents? Show me, in your manner of living, the smallest trace of penitence. Are your graspings at wealth and power, your anxieties to attain the favour of the great, (and by these means an increase of employments and influence,) —are these proofs of it? Would you wish to reckon even your crimes as virtues?—that the sufferings of your ambition, pride, and avarice, should discharge you from an obligation which they themselves have imposed? You are penitent to the world, but are you so to Jesus Christ? ”

“ We are all sinners, O my God! and Thou knowest our hearts! What we know of our errors is, perhaps, in Thy sight, the most pardonable; and we all allow that by innocence we have no claim to salvation. There remains, therefore, only one resource, which is penitence. After our shipwreck, say the saints, it is the timely plank which alone can conduct us into port; there is no other means of salvation for us. Be ye whom ye may, prince or subject, high or low, penitence alone can save you. Now permit me to ask where are the penitent? ”

“ To one that hath committed Murther, if the Judge should only ordain a Fine, it were a madness to call this a punishment, and to repine at the sentence, rather than admire the clemency of the Judge. Thus, our offences being mortal, and deserving not only Death, but Damnation, if the goodness of God be content to traverse and pass them over with a loss, misfortune, or disease, what frensie were it to term this a punishment, rather than an extremity of mercy, and to groan under the rod of His Judgements, rather than admire the Scepter of His Mercies! ”

“ When penitence manages to lead their fugitives back, harsh and implacable masters restrain their cruelty, and we are merciful to enemies who have surrendered. What could you ask, or wish for, more? These well-born and respectable young men lie suppliant before your eyes and, what ought to move you more strongly still, were once bound to you by the ties of friendship. If they had embezzled your money or repaid your faith in them with treachery, by Hercules, you have ample satisfaction from the punishment already inflicted! ”

“ The statutory basis of the punishment is found in an Act, 3 Edward I. (1275) , c. 12:—
“It is provided also, That notorious Felons, which openly be of evil name, and will not put themselves in Enquests of Felonies that Men shall charge them with before the Justices at the King’s suit, shall have strong and hard Imprisonment (prison forte et dure) , as they which refuse to stand to the common Law of the Land: But this is not to be understood of such prisoners as be taken of light suspicion.” ”

“ The circumstances, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, which have brought the prisoner before you this day, involve a long catalogue of crimes that as far transcend, in the hideousness of their guilt, the offences of a common felon as his rank and position in life do that of the humblest villain who ever stood before a court of justice. ”

“ The mitigation of punishment, with which judges always embellish their promises to prisoners, in requital of candid confessions, appears to me like the little book mentioned in the revelations of St. John, 'sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly.' We know of many examples where prisoners have fared worse for speaking than for keeping silent. However it may be with others, we have not the least desire to talk away our own lives. Concerning the rack, which judges always present as the other alternative, we must submit to it as well as we may, all of us having strong frames and stout hearts. ”

“ In one of Her Majesty’s prisons a young man—a felon, with the bearing of a gentleman and the garb of a convict—counts the years as they go by and wonders what justice there can be in heaven that a cruel fate should raise this bar of shame between him and the young wife he loves. ”

“ Punishment.—Severe punishment such as bucking and gagging, hanging up by the thumbs, walking the beat carrying heavy loads, sometimes whipping and even shooting, to the death practiced in the army and prison almost invariably falls to the lot of a soldier who wilfully disobeys known rules and regulations, but these punishments are sometimes administered by tyrannical officers, puffed up with a little brief authority, to gratify their own personal spites and prejudices. ”

“ How good God is, what an adorable jailer, to sow so many flowers in our prison yard!... How explain this wonderful, consoling pity, which makes our punishment so mild? For no one has ever doubted that we are punished—we only do not know for what. ”

“ And my companion said to me, This is the prison of these souls, which thou hast seen. For when they have fully received their punishment for that which each has done, others succeed them. Some are fully eaten up, others are given up to other punishments. ”

“ There is, and it cannot be said too often, no reforming influence in punishment; no reforming power in revenge. Only the best of men should be in charge of penitentiaries; only the noblest minds and the tenderest hearts should have the care of criminals. Criminals should see from the first moment that they enter a penitentiary that it is filled with the air of kindness, full of the light of hope. ”

“ I was myself beginning to feel a sentiment of pleasure, and to picture to my mind the unfortunate felon, converted, by a few words of counsel, and still fewer dollars of charity, into an honest and worthy member of society, when—oh horror of horrors!—the repenting convict suddenly snatched up a brand from the fire, and discharged it, with a violence that would have felled an ox, full upon the head of his patron. ”

“ And the very ministers of penitence, who should have been the judges of our hatred, frequently become its apologists, adopt a party with the public, enter into all the animosity and prejudices of their penitents, proclaim the justice of their quarrel, and are the cause that the only remedy destined to strike at the root of the evil, answers no other purpose than that of decorating it with the appearance of godliness, and of rendering it more incurable. ”

“ THE KING.
Imprisonment in darkness.
THE JAILER.
Sixth disciplinary punishment?
THE KING.
Imprisonment in fetters.
THE JAILER.
By that you must understand you are chained all awry, so that after the first hour all the devils you have in your body say good-bye to you! Seventh disciplinary punishment?
THE KING.
Flogging.
THE JAILER.
(Having reached the window.) You shall shed your hide here yet! You, you thief, shall clamber up and down the Jacob's ladder until you fall dead. (He passes in front of the King, leaves the cell and shuts the door from the outside.) ”