Dist. 21, Part 2, Art. 2, Q. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/21/q/bon-sent-IV-d21-p2-a2-q2
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### Question II. *Whether the one confessing can license the confessor to reveal his sins.*

Secondly it is asked whether the one confessing can license the priest. And that he cannot, seems [shown]:

1. Because we are constrained to conceal confession by the mandate of a superior, namely the Pope; but an inferior cannot absolve [anyone] from the mandate of a superior: therefore neither [can he] license [anything] contrary to the mandate.

2. Likewise, the seal of confession was instituted not only on account of avoiding scandal to the one confessing, but also [scandal] to the unity of the whole Church: therefore however much the one confessing may will it, if [the priest] reveals [it], he does prejudice to the whole Church: therefore he cannot be licensed by him.

3. Likewise, this seal was instituted on account of avoiding scandal; but if someone reveals [it] by license, the same scandal can be aroused as without license, because the one confessing might repent of the licensing and impose upon the priest the revelation of the confession; and since he has judgment on his own behalf, the same scandal could be stirred up as also [would be] without license.

4. Likewise, if they can be licensed, then since wicked and impious priests might pretend a license [had been] given to them, it would seem then that under this cloak they could reveal a confession with impunity; but this is unfitting: therefore etc.

**On the contrary:**
1. The concealment of confession is in favor of the one confessing; but anyone can yield his own right: therefore the one confessing can give a license to reveal.

2. Likewise, he who can tell the sin through his own self can, through the priest, lay it bare to another priest: therefore also through that [priest] reveal [it] to another.

3. Likewise, what is told to a man as to a man, in a case of utility, can and ought to be told by him: but the one confessing, who tells the confessor as [he tells] God, can tell [him] as a man: therefore he can give a license of revealing to another.

4. Likewise, it is established that a superior can send to an inferior and bestow upon him the authority of absolving from some enormous sin; but he could not do this unless he could, through the will of the one confessing, reveal the sin to another: therefore etc.

### Conclusion

> The one confessing can license the confessor to reveal [his] sins, in a case in which no scandal is feared.

**I respond:** It must be said that, as was touched upon, a priest ought not to reveal [a confession] on account of two [things], namely because he knows [it] only as God [knows it], and again, lest he scandalize the people, or even the one confessing himself. And since the one confessing can bring it about that [the priest] should know [it] as a man; when he makes him [his] messenger, he can license him in a case in which no danger of scandal is feared, as the reasons adduced in the second [series] show. — But where danger of scandal is feared, however much the penitent may license the priest, the priest ought not to take it up. Now danger of scandal can be feared when it could probably be conjectured that the priest has revealed his confession. Hence if [the penitent] says that he should report the sin to another, the priest himself ought to constitute the penitent his messenger, not to make himself a go-between; and thus scandal is avoided, and the seal of confession is not broken. And let this be understood with that general supposition, that the sin of anyone is to be made manifest to no one, except to him who can be of profit and does not wish to do harm; let this also be understood of one's own sins, not of another's. For the penitent cannot nor ought to entrust the telling of another's sins to anyone, unless perhaps in a case in which he himself ought to tell [them] and could better procure that [person's] good through another than through himself, caution always being applied, so that from this the Church may not be scandalized. And thus the objections are answered.

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