PURPOSE. — Here it is to be understood as an act of the will, namely the will not to sin in the future. It must not therefore be a mere wish, nor on the other hand is it necessary that it include an actual promise or vow to avoid all sins. The purpose may be twofold: explicit and formal, if it is made by a special and distinct act from the contracting of sin; implicit and virtual, if it is already included in another act in which the avoidance of sin is necessarily required, for example, contrition.
I. NECESSITY. — For the validity of the Sacrament of Penance, at least an implicit purpose is required, which is necessarily contained in every true and universal contrition, since true contrition consists of two distinct elements: the detestation of past sins and the will to avoid them in the future. Whoever detests an act already committed in the past must necessarily have the will to avoid it in the future; otherwise the detestation would not be true or certain. This is the opinion commonly held by moralists; but to this the Bellarmine (De Sacramento Penitentiae, I. II, Venice 1599, cap. 6) and Concina (Theol. dogm. mor., Rome 1749, de Sacr. poen., I. I, diss. 3, cap. 1, q. 8) object, demanding an explicit purpose. The latter bases his argument on the fact that
the Council of Trent requires a “propositum non peccandi de cœtero” (sess. XIV, cap. 4, de Poen.). This reason is false, inasmuch as the Council, when enumerating the explicit acts of the Sacrament of Penance on the part of the faithful, enumerates only contrition, confession, and satisfaction, without any mention of the necessity of an explicit purpose. Just as the acts of faith and hope are required implicitly in this Sacrament, so too must this be said of the purpose. In practice it is almost impossible to have sincere contrition without a true and real purpose, since it is an essential part of it; just as it is impossible to believe in God’s mercy and justice without the act of faith, or to obtain forgiveness together with the graces to avoid future occasions of sin without the act of hope. Nevertheless, for the greater efficacy of the Sacrament, an explicit purpose, universal and particular according to the needs of the penitent, is better.
For one who repents of mortal sins for a particular reason, at least for the validity of the Sacrament itself, it is required that he have at least a habitual aversion to every mortal sin: so teach the majority of authors, although not all moralists share this opinion.
II. QUALITIES. — The purpose must be true: that is, it must really be the will to do what is promised, as an effect of the actual will that commands a certain action and forbids another, even though in the future this imperative may fail. Constancy therefore does not pertain to the real efficacy of the purpose. It is required only that at this moment one sincerely and effectively intends not to sin again, since the object of the purpose is the present will, not the future event which cannot be in our power and is subject to various circumstances which human reason can hardly evaluate at present. From this it follows that one must carefully distinguish the purpose from the penitent’s persuasion: one may have a good purpose, yet at the same time fear, based on past experience, of falling back into sin because of human frailty and inconstancy. In this case, if the purpose is strengthened by trust in divine grace, one certainly has a true and sincere purpose. In this matter the acts of the will must not be confused with those of the intellect: the purpose is an act of the will, persuasion an act of the intellect.
The purpose must be effective, that is, it is required that the will move the intellect to use all necessary means, both positive and negative, to avoid sin, its proximate occasions, and to make reparation for any damage that may have resulted from sin. Whoever wills the end must also will the means to attain II. For this quality too it is required that the penitent have at present the serious will to use all means to remove sin.
Finally, the purpose must be universal, in that it must extend to the exclusion of all mortal sins. In this it differs from sorrow, which embraces only sins committed, whereas the purpose must extend even to sins not perpetrated. However, it is not necessary to have a particular purpose for each individual sin, but it suffices to have the general purpose of not sinning mortally again. For venial sins, a firm and effective purpose is required, as for mortal sins; it is not, however, necessary that it be universal. On the other hand, although the Council of Trent (sess. VI, can. 23) teaches that it is impossible, without a special privilege, to avoid all venial sins, nothing forbids in practice the making of a firm and effective purpose to avoid all and each venial sin, even semi-deliberate ones.