SACRAMENTAL SATISFACTION. – In the language of the Catholic Church, this expression denotes the prayers, good works, or various practices of piety that the confessor imposes upon the penitent before granting absolution. It is also customarily called “sacramental penance,” in order to distinguish it from works of piety that each person may perform on his own. Such satisfaction is the condition for the forgiveness of sin. By accepting it, the sinner manifests the disposition in which he finds himself, or in which he ought to find himself, to repair the offenses committed against God. This makes clear the primitive meaning of the term “to satisfy.”
Etymologically, it means “to do enough” to content someone, to appease him, to obtain that he renounce his desire to punish an injury or demand payment of a debt. It includes the idea of justice, but not of strict justice, because satisfying a creditor is not equivalent to reimbursing the full amount of a debt, but rather to acknowledging oneself a debtor by the care taken to satisfy him to the extent possible. Similarly, in repairing an offense, to satisfy for it is not equivalent to undergoing the punishment it deserves, but to performing an act, more or less burdensome, in which one manifests the confession of having become guilty and the intention of seeking forgiveness. Now, in sin there is something of all this: a debt to be paid, an injury to be repaired, anger to be appeased, and forgiveness to be sought. The penitent’s acceptance of the satisfaction imposed upon him is like a confession of the debt he has contracted with respect to divine justice, and completes his contrition and confession. Therefore, s. belongs
to those acts by which the penitent is asked to contribute in some way to the constitution of the Sacrament administered by the priest. It differs from the other two acts, contrition and confession, only in that it may be performed after absolution. Once it has been accepted, omitting the promised satisfaction constitutes a more or less grave sin; nevertheless, the sins for which it was imposed remain forgiven. For although the intention of satisfying God forms part of the repentance for having offended him, the fulfillment of the satisfaction, as such, properly tends only to obtain remission of the temporal punishment that remains to be undergone after the remission of guilt.
This doctrine of s. s. was defined by the Council of Trent against the Protestants, who obstinately persisted in denouncing it as an injury to the infinite efficacy of the satisfaction offered for us to God by Christ himself. But Christ, the Apostles, and the Church have always required penance on the part of the sinner; therefore, there can be no doubt concerning this obligation. Certainly Christ has made forgiveness possible for us, but his formal will is that, in order to enjoy it, we ourselves give proof that we appreciate the gravity of the evil from which he has obtained our liberation. Having returned to grace with God through the merits of the Redeemer, and thus having been placed beyond the reach of eternal punishments, it does not immediately follow that we can thereby escape the temporal punishments by which God reserves the right to make everyone feel the cost of having taken sides against him (sess. VI, chaps. 14 and 15; sess. XIV, chaps. 8 and 9; canons 13–15; Denz-U, 807–10; 901–906; 923–25).
Nevertheless, the remission of the temporal punishment that remains to be undergone after the recovery of Grace does not constitute the sole purpose of sacramental penance, which, in the Church’s understanding, is ordered also to other ends. It serves not only to recall the gravity of sin, but must also contribute to correcting and reducing its consequences, which are many and at once natural and supernatural in character. Indeed, the capitulation of conscience represented by every sin reverberates throughout psychological and moral life as a whole. The will remains weakened; through repeatedly yielding to or abandoning oneself to a passion, one becomes its slave; this produces a servitude from which absolution in itself does not free one at all; a personal reaction is required.
Once they have been healed of the evil that consists in the deprivation of Grace, there remain in the soul traces, almost wounds, sometimes very deep, of sin. Penance in general, and sacramental penance in particular, have as their purpose and effect to heal them, and absolution gives a right to special helps intended to assist in this restoration and recovery; these, however, are not completed except through s. s.
This multiplicity and variety of purposes assigned to s. s. explain the variety of forms it may assume, and has in fact assumed, throughout the centuries. Without ever losing sight of its primary purpose, which is reparation for sins already forgiven or still to be forgiven, the ministers of the Sacrament of Penance have always considered it within their competence, indeed their duty, to apportion it variously, taking into account not only the gravity of the faults committed, but also the mentality of the guilty and the conditions of life in which they found themselves; not all the sick recover through the same remedies. Now, nothing is more variable than the assessment of these factors.
At the time when multitudes of men were flocking into the Church, ignorant even of the notion of sin and of the necessity of keeping away from it or repairing it, the Church deemed it appropriate to impose upon those who were guilty of the gravest offenses long penances that were publicly manifest. It did so by establishing, beginning in the third century, what is today called “public penance,” and which in the language of the Church is designated by the expressions: “to ask for, impose, receive, and perform penance.” Fervent Christians also resorted to it for lesser faults. This public penance, while aimed at the amendment of the guilty person, also served to warn against the temptation to imitate him, and reparation for the offense committed against God likewise assumed the character of reparation for the scandal given to the Christian community. Normally it was to be performed before absolution, but it was not uncommon for it to be performed afterward or even to be omitted. This occurred particularly in the case, much more frequent than the others, in which it was imposed upon the sick in danger of death. This also proves that the fulfillment of penance was not considered indispensable for receiving absolution from the sin for which it had been imposed; and it further entails the obligation of recognizing in the form of penance thus practiced an institution or custom of properly ecclesiastical origin, and consequently one open to modification, even to the point of abolition. This was pointed out in the seventeenth century by Fr. Petau (v. PETAU) to the Jansenist A. ARNALDISTI (v.), who found in the disappearance of this practice proof of the corruption that had occurred in the Church over several centuries. The reply was that the authority that had approved and approves the current practice is no less infallible than that which had adopted the practice of public penance. Accordingly, some years later (1699), Pope Alessandro VII proscribed the doctrine that sought to trace the ancient custom of performing penance before absolution to a “law of Jesus Christ” rather than to a provision of the Church (Denz-U, 1306); this proscription was renewed by Pius VI in 1794 against the Synod of Pistoia (Denz-U, 1534).
Rimane pertanto che la penitenza sacramentale, quale è comunemente imposta oggi, abbia piuttosto un aspetto simbolico. Come tutto lo stesso Sacramento, essa è un « segno »; significa, richiama al penitente il dovere che gli resta di fare penitenza per i peccati, di cui riceve l'assoluzione. Ridotta, come avviene spesso, alla recita di alcune preghiere, deve certamente alla virtù del Sacramento il potere di ottenere una remissione delle pene temporali superiore a quella che avrebbe potuto ottenere di per se stessa; ma è nello stesso tempo un invito a procurare personalmente, con il soccorso della Grazia, la propria piena liberazione dalle conseguenze del peccato. Come diceva s. Cipriano (Epist., 55, 20) e come ricordano i teologi, colui che si limita a compiere il minimo di penitenza imposta dal confessore, si espone o si condanna a pagare, dopo la morte, il suo debito verso la giustizia divina, che gli sarebbe stato possibile già in questa vita, se egli stesso si fosse applicato a fare coscienziosamente penitenza.