SACRAMENTAL SATISFACTION
In the language of the Catholic Church, the expression denotes the prayers, good works, or various acts of piety that the confessor imposes upon the penitent before granting absolution. It is also commonly called "penance" (penitenza sacramentale) to distinguish it from acts of piety that one may perform on one's own initiative. Such satisfaction is the condition for the forgiveness of sin. By accepting it, the sinner manifests the disposition in which he is or ought to be, namely, to make reparation for the offenses committed against God. This clarifies the primitive meaning of the term "satisfaction."
Etymologically, it signifies "to do enough" to satisfy someone, to placate him, to obtain that he renounce the desire to exact punishment for an injury or to demand payment of a debt. The idea of justice is included here, but not in a rigorous sense, for to satisfy a creditor does not mean to pay the full amount of a debt, but rather to acknowledge the debt by taking pains to satisfy it to the extent possible. Similarly, in making reparation for an offense, to satisfy for it does not mean to undergo the punishment it deserves, but to perform an act, more or less burdensome, in which one manifests the confession of one's guilt and the intention to seek forgiveness. Now, in sin there is something of all this: a debt to be paid, an injury to be repaired, anger to be placated, 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 it completes his contrition and confession. Therefore, satisfaction 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 can be performed after absolution. Once accepted, the omission of the promised satisfaction would constitute a sin, more or less grave; yet the sins for which it was imposed remain forgiven. For although the intention to satisfy God is part of the repentance for having offended Him, the fulfillment of the satisfaction, as such, does not properly aim at obtaining the remission of the temporal punishment that remains to be expiated after the guilt has been forgiven.
This doctrine of sacramental satisfaction was defined by the Council of Trent against the Protestants, who persisted in denouncing it as an affront to the infinite efficacy of the satisfaction offered to God by Christ Himself. But Christ, the Apostles, and the Church have always required penance from the sinner; hence 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 of appreciating the gravity of the evil from which He has delivered us. Restored to grace with God by the merits of the Redeemer and thus shielded from eternal punishments, it does not follow that we are thereby exempted from temporal punishments, by which God reserves to Himself the right to make all men feel how costly it is to have taken sides against Him (Sess. VI, chaps. 14 and 15; Sess. XIV, chaps. 8 and 9; chaps. 13–15; Denz.-U., 807–10; 901–906; 923–925).
Nevertheless, this remission of the temporal punishment that remains to be expiated after the recovery of grace is not the sole purpose of sacramental penance, which, in the mind of the Church, is also ordered to other ends. Indeed, it does not serve merely to remind one of the gravity of sin, but must also contribute to correcting and reducing its consequences, which are many and of both natural and supernatural order. For the capitulation of conscience represented by every sin reverberates throughout the entire psychological and moral life. The will is weakened; by repeatedly yielding to or indulging a passion, one becomes its slave; this produces a servitude from which absolution in itself does not free one at all—personal reaction is required.
Once healed of the evil that consists in the privation of grace, there remain in the soul traces, almost wounds, sometimes very deep, of sin. Penance in general and sacramental penance in particular aim at healing, and absolution grants a right to special aids to assist in this rectification and healing, which, however, are not completed except through sacramental satisfaction.
This multiplicity and variety of ends assigned to sacramental satisfaction explain the variety of forms it can take, and in fact has taken, throughout the centuries. Without ever losing sight of the primary end, which is reparation for sins forgiven or to be forgiven, the ministers of the sacrament of Penance have always considered it their right, indeed their duty, to vary it according to not only the gravity of the faults committed but also the mentality of the guilty and the conditions of life in which they find themselves—all the sick are not healed by the same remedies. Now, there is nothing more variable than the assessment of these factors.
At the time when multitudes of men, ignorant even of the notion of sin and of the necessity to avoid it or make reparation for it, flocked to the Church, she judged it opportune to impose on those guilty of more serious faults long and public penances. Beginning in the third century, she did so by establishing what is now called "public penance," which in the language of the Church is designated by the expressions: "to ask for, to impose, to perform, to do penance." Even fervent Christians resorted to this for lesser faults. This public penance, while aiming at the amendment of the guilty party, also served to warn others against the temptation to imitate him, and the reparation for the offense given to God took on the aspect of reparation for the scandal given to the Christian community. Normally it was to be performed before absolution, but it was not rare for it to be performed afterward or even omitted. This occurred particularly in the much more frequent case in which it was imposed on the sick in danger of death. This also shows how the fulfillment of the penance was not considered indispensable for receiving absolution of the sin for which it was imposed; it also underscores the obligation to recognize in this form of penance thus practiced an institution or custom of properly ecclesiastical origin, and consequently subject to modification even to the point of suppression. This was noted in the seventeenth century by Fr. Petau (v. PETAU) in his controversy with the Jansenist A. ARNALDISTI (v.), who saw in the disappearance of this practice proof of the corruption that had occurred in the Church over many centuries. The authority, he was told, that has approved and continues to approve the present practice is no less infallible than that which had adopted the practice of public penance. Therefore, a few years later (1699), Pope Alexander VII condemned the doctrine that claimed to trace the ancient custom of performing penance before absolution back to a "law of Jesus Christ" rather than to a disposition of the Church (Denz.-U. 1306); this condemnation was renewed by Pius VI in 1794 against the Synod of Pistoia (Denz.-U. 1534).
It therefore remains that sacramental penance, as commonly imposed today, has rather a symbolic aspect. Like the Sacrament itself, it is a «sign»; it signifies, and reminds the penitent of the duty that still rests upon him to do penance for the sins for which he has received absolution. Reduced, as often happens, to the recitation of a few prayers, it must certainly owe to the power of the Sacrament the ability to obtain a remission of temporal punishment greater than it could have obtained by itself; but at the same time it is an invitation to procure personally, with the aid of grace, one’s full liberation from the consequences of sin. As St. Cyprian says (Epist., 55, 20) and as theologians recall, he who limits himself to fulfilling the minimum of penance imposed by the confessor exposes himself or condemns himself to pay, after death, his debt to divine justice, which it would have been possible for him to discharge already in this life, had he himself applied diligently to doing penance.