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Does Fear of Hell Suffice for Absolution or is Some Love of God Required? Saint-Cyran and the Jansenists were contritionists and maintained that one cannot be validly absolved unless one has the love of God as a motive for one’s repentance. The Jesuits were attritionists and maintained that a fear of punishment is a sufficient motive. The dispute did not begin with them but had been going on for some decades. In 1667 Pope Alexander VII had the Holy Office issue a decree that said that the Holy See had decided nothing on the matter and he ordered that those discussing the matter “not dare charge either opinion with a note of any theological censure or contumely”. We shall briefly take some background to the controversy from Leszek Kolakowski (God Owes Us Nothing, 1998) and then see the decree of the Holy Office, which we have taken from Denzinger (The Sources of Catholic Dogma, 1957.) The question of contrition was a natural corollary to, indeed a part of, that of the sacrament of penance. Contrition is real (perfect) repentance; the sinner, with his heart ground to ashes, deplores and regrets his wrongdoings not for personal gain but because they offended God; repentance arises from love of God. Attrition, or imperfect repentance, is a sinner's regret and sorrow rooted in his fear of damnation (gehennae metus) and shame. The former kind of repentance is thus disinterested, concentrated on God alone, while the latter is selfish. The moot point was not the superiority of contrition but rather whether attrition had any value at all (or whether it was even a sin itself) and, correspondingly, whether perfect repentance was necessary for forgiveness or, perhaps, attrition sufficed. As to absolution, the controversial issue was whether it had a “declarative” or an “operative” value (the Jansenists tended to reject the latter interpretation). The strongly worded statement by Luther to the effect that the sinner is made a hypocrite and a worse sinner by a repentance that consists of (or perhaps even simply includes) sorrow over the loss of eternal bliss and the incurrence of eternal damnation was condemned in Leo X’s bull, and the anathema was repeated in the 14th session of the Council of Trent. The more detailed explanation makes a distinction between contrition and attrition: the latter, if it includes the will to abstain from sin and the hope of forgiveness, is God's gift and helps the penitent pave his way to justice. Attrition cannot per se lead to justification without the sacrament of penance but it prepares the sinner for the illapse of grace. This amounted to rejecting the concept of attrition as a sin; it was supposed to be helpful but the question of whether attrition can be sufficient to deserve forgiveness (with the sacrament, to be sure) was not clearly resolved. After decades of quarrelling among theologians and bishops, the cautious Holy Office (in 1667, under Alexander VII) issued a decree ordering both sides—those who asserted the necessity of an act of love of God for the reception of grace in the sacrament of penance and those, more numerous (quae hodie inter scholastics communior videtur), who denied this necessity—not to censor and insult each other until a definitive decision came from the Holy See. Such a decision, however, was not to be taken, except that the previous verdicts were more or less repeated. Perfect and Imperfect Contrition [From the decree of the Sacred Office, May 5, 1667] Concerning the controversy: Whether that attrition, which is inspired by the fear of hell, excluding the will to sin, with the hope of pardon, to obtain grace in the sacrament of penance requires in addition some act of love of God, to some asserting this, and to others denying it, and in turn censuring the opposite opinion: . . . His Holiness . . . orders . . . that if they later write about the matter of the aforementioned attrition, or publish books or writings or teach or preach or in any manner whatever instruct penitents or students and others, let them not dare charge either opinion with a note of any theological censure or contumely, whether it be that of denying the necessity of any love of God in the aforementioned attrition inspired by the fear of hell, which seems to be the more common opinion among scholastics today, or whether that of asserting the necessity of this love, until something has been defined by the Holy See concerning this matter.

Saint-Cyran