Canon Law Codes 985 and 240

SOURCE: The New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law [2000]
 
 
Canon 985. The director and assistant director of novices, and the rector of a seminary or of any other institute of education, are not to hear the sacramental confessions of their students resident in the same house, unless in individual instances the students of their own accord request it.
 
Canon 240
 
§1. In addition to ordinary confessors, other confessors are to come regularly to the seminary. Without prejudice to the discipline of the seminary, students are always free to approach any confessor, whether in the seminary or outside it.
 
§2. When decisions are made about admitting students to orders or dismissing them from the seminary, the opinion of the spiritual director and confessors can never be sought.
 
It does happen in Canon Law that certain laws repeat themselves because they apply under several different headings in the Code. In this case Canon 240 appears in the section under “The Formation of Clerics.” Canon 985, almost identical to Code 240, appears in a later section covering “Ministers of the Sacrament of Penance.” Both deal with the Sacrament of Penance, but here with subtle shades of meaning.
 
The main concern of the Law here is the integrity of the Sacrament of Penance, and specifically the “seal of confession,” the one facet of the sacrament that is known to any man on the street. The State of Washington passed legislation this year that priests hearing confession are “mandated reporters” of child abuse, and face prison if they do not report said information to authority. See Bishop Robert Barron’s commentary here.
 
Both Canons 985 and 240 address the issue of seminarians preparing for ordination, and presumably young men preparing for solemn vows or promises as brothers in religious orders or fraternities where the rector/superior and others on the staff are priests available for confessions. Religious orders and communities of women do not have the precise problems outlined in 985 and 240—although my guess is that the conflict of privacy and spiritual direction in both men’s and women’s houses of formation is always a concern.
 
The conflict, to be precise, is votation. In seminaries and houses of formation the faculty and administrators must vote periodically on the progress or regression of candidates to vows and orders. Canon 240-2 states “the opinion of the spiritual director and confessors can never be sought.” I worked summers for a former seminary rector who told me of a case where a seminarian/cleric had systematically confessed to every voting member of the seminary board, and thus there was nobody who could say a bad word about him at votation. [The situation was referred to Rome; I guess that ploy had been tried before.] Canon 240-1 states that outside confessors “are to come regularly to the seminary,” to give a seminarian a full range of choices when frequenting the Sacrament of Penance. On the other hand, 985 offers the choice to the student to confess to his director/rector, giving the candidate the freedom in conscience to seek insight and counsel from someone he trusts. My novitiate class in 1968-69 was visited every Tuesday by two friars from a neighboring parish to hear our confessions, but they told my Novice Master that “nobody was going.” Those were the 60’s, all right.
 
In scanning related material in the New Commentary, candidates for orders and solemn vows/promises go through a considerable screening which includes a psychiatric component and competent references outside the Sacrament of Penance. At the same time, the final decision to be ordained is also a moral one on the part of the cleric that, in the best of circumstances, is made with a trusted and knowledgeable confessor and an experienced spiritual director.
 
DO THESE CANONS APPLY ELSEWHERE?
 
The Irish monks, as early as the 400’s A.D., were developing the format for the Sacrament of Penance as we know it today: sorrow for sin, oral confession of specific misdeeds, absolution, and a post-confession act or deed to make reparation. For most of our history, then, confession has embraced a “defensive posture,” i.e., deliverance from the devil and evil that we might enter the Kingdom of God. As I get on in years, the Sacrament of Penance looks less to me like an insurance policy, and more like a challenge to recognize the wondrous God who created me from a love I will never fully understand. The “offensive posture” of rushing to meet God’s love sounds foreign to us in a confession discussion, where we so often confess in anonymous code that the “seal of confession” is almost redundant: I was uncharitable/I missed Mass/I lied/I drank too much/I used the pill/I was impure.
 
Good priests know by grace, study, and experience that their ministry in the confessional is far greater than stamping passports to Purgatory. Unfortunately, we don’t talk much about the confessor as a spiritual director who, with the penitent’s openness, kindly probes for the core of our spiritual hunger and emptiness. [Clock time, of course, is a major factor, but for something so important, we can figure something out.] In the confessional the priest is as much an alter Christus, “another Christ,” as he is when he consecrates the bread and wine at Mass. In the Sacrament of Penance, it stands to reason that we encounter Christ with the same intensity as receiving communion, but here we take the role of Zacchaeus.
 
The conversion of Zacchaeus as it appears in Luke Chapter 19 seems very quick and dramatic, and it may be that standing face to face with Jesus had something to do with that. Luke was, after all, a literary artist. Based upon years as a confessor, a psychotherapist, and a struggling Catholic though, I would venture to say that, practically speaking, for most of us conversion is a history, a lifelong journey through the desert to the Promised Land on poor sandals. We don’t talk about confession that way—it is usually described as a clean start, an erasure of the past. In fact, I sat through a sermon a few months ago where the homilist was talking about confession, and he kept repeating in a mantra, “God forgets.” Once confessed, forever gone. That didn’t seem right. Comforting to some, maybe. But it is not a true way to catechize the Sacrament of Penance. Our life with God is a whole. Like the AA Big Book says, alcoholics like myself do the Fourth Step—the moral inventory—repeatedly till we die, in the comfort that our Higher Power forgives us.
 
As we age, we look back. Confession is a place for that. I confess twice a year—to a Trappist and a Franciscan—and I take out my spiritual GPS and describe to them my walk through the desert, where I’ve been and where I need to go in the years I have left. I am not Luther; I believe in the sacraments’ forgiving of my life’s sins, but I still regret many things over my life and even more that I left undone. My confessors seem to understand that and reframe the narrative, often using my past as an interpretative guide to the future. I might add here that I take the Penitential Rite of the Mass very seriously--our venial sins are forgiven by the words of Absolution at the beginning of Mass if we are sorry. [Some celebrants whiz through the Penitential Rite like Jesse Owens.]
 
Canons 985 and 240 boil down to giving seminarians a wide freedom of selection in choosing a confessor and a spiritual director within the formation structure for vows and orders. As a pastor, there was another population I thought about where penance and spiritual direction was concerned: my employees and advisors. I tried from time to time to bring neighboring priests into the parish during Advent and Lent to give my staff [and the whole parish, really] the opportunity to confess or seek counsel from someone other than their pastor. I wouldn’t say there was a stampede, but I still believe in the principle.