Seal of the Confessional and the Anglican Church
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The Seal of the Confessional is a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that protects the words spoken during confession. Though confession is practised by communicants of the Anglican Church its status as an Anglican sacrament differs from that in the Church of Rome, as do the censures on disclosure.
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[edit] Henry VIII and the Reformation
The whole system of spiritual jurisdiction and the administration of canon law in England was transformed by the advent of the Reformation. Under King Henry VIII, the Submission of the Clergy Act 1533 deprived the laws of the Catholic Church, under the headship of the pope, of all the validity in England which had been based on the mere ground of their being decrees of the Catholic Church. That statute appointed a commission of thirty-two persons, sixteen lay and sixteen ecclesiastical, to inquire into the various ecclesiastical constitutions and canons, and it enacted that those that, in the opinion of the commissioners or the majority of them, ought to be abolished, should be abolished. Those that, in their opinion, ought to stand, should stand, the king's assent being first obtained. However, until such a determination was made, any canons, or constitutions which were not contrary to the laws, statutes, or customs of the nation or were not to the damage of the Royal prerogative, were still to be used and executed as before.
The statute was repealed in the reign of Queen Mary but revived in that of Elizabeth I. However, the commission never completed its labours and never arrived at any determination.
A similar intention was pursued by other statutes in the same reign. Thus the preamble to the Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533 states that the realm of England is subject only to such laws as have been made within the kingdom or such as, by the sufferance of the sovereign, the people of the realm have taken by their own consent to be used among them, and to the observance of which they have bound themselves by long use and custom, which sufferance, consent, and custom are the basis of the force thereof.
In an Act of the same reign relating to marriage, the prelude runs thus:
Whereas the usurped power of the bishop of Rome hath always intangled and troubled the meer jurisdiction and regal power of this realm of England.
There is, also, the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Act 1545, which declares that:
... by the word of God [the king is] supreme head in earth of the church of England
- having power and authority to exercise all manner of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Thus, in the reign of Henry VIII, the whole basis of Catholic canon law, the jurisdiction of Roman Church with the pope for its head, was removed, and for such canon law and ecclesiastical jurisdiction as remained a new basis was constructed, viz, that of the consent of the English nation and the royal sufferance. Frederic William Maitland observed that these various statutes impose upon the ecclesiastical courts:
... not merely new law, but a new theory about the old law. Their decisions were dictated to them by acts of Parliament -- and that is a very new phenomenon. In this reign we come upon a sudden catastrophe in the history of the spiritual courts.
The Catholic Encyclopedia offers the following analysis:
Henry's reign is the introduction of the Protestant Reformation into England inasmuch as it nationalizes the Church, makes it dependent upon the State, separates it from the authority of the pope, and constitutes the king supreme head. Still we find the king sternly checking the growth of Protestant doctrine and by the Statute of the Six Articles, passed in the thirty-first year of his reign, we find it declared that "auricular confession is expedient and necessary to be retained and continued, used and frequented in the Church of God", and it was thereby made a felony to assert a contrary opinion. Therefore, with the exception, conceivably, of its exclusion in cases deemed to offend against the king's prerogative which was then carried to great lengths, there is no reason to think that the privilege of the seal would not have been observed in that reign.
However under the infant Edward VI and his Calvinistic uncle, leader of the council of regency Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, the Church of England rapidly became protestant in its doctrine also, and in matters other than that of its headship. In 1547, the first year of Edward's reign, there is a mention of confession in a royal injunction issued to all his subjects, clergy and laity. The ninth of the royal injunctions issued that year runs as follows:
That they [i.e. parsons, vicars and other curates]] shall in confessions every Lent examine every person that cometh to confession to them, whether they can recite the articles of their faith, and the Ten Commandments in English, and hear them say the same particularly.
[edit] The Book of Common Prayer
In the first Book of Common Prayer of Edward VI, published by parliamentary authority in 1548, the communion service prescribes a general confession. The service for the visitation of the sick contains a mention of confession and a form of absolution in the following words:
Here shall the sick person make a special confession, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter: After which confession the Priest shall absolve him after this sorte: Our Lord Jesus Christ who hath left power to his Church to absolve all sinners which truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences; and by his authority committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy ghost. ... and the same form of absolution shall be used in all private confessions.
The second Prayer Book, which was published in 1552, contains the same form as the first Prayer Book in the service for the visitation of the sick, but it omits all mention of private confession. It also prescribes the general confession in the service before the Communion, but also expressly denies transubstantiation or consubstantiation. This denial was omitted in the third Prayer Book and is omitted from the Prayer Book as finally settled in 1662. The service for the visitation of the sick remains the same in that final version with the exception that, instead of saying "Here the sick person shall make a special confession", it says: "shall be moved to make a special confession of his sins , and that, after the direction to absolve him, there are the words "if he humbly and heartily desire it". The mention of private confession is omitted.
There is an indication of the nature of the confession spoken of from the exhortation to the communion service, prescribed in all the versions of the Prayer Book, which directs the minister to exhort the congregation in the following words:
And if there be any of you whose conscience is troubled and grieved in anything, lacking comfort or counsel let him come to me or to some other discreet and learned priest, taught in the law of God, and confess and open his sin and grief secretly, that he may receive such ghostly counsel, advice and comfort that his conscience may be relieved and that of us (as of the ministers of God and of the Church) he may receive comfort and absolution to the satisfaction of his mind, and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness: requiring such as shall be satisfied with a general confession not to be offended with them that do use, to their further satisfying, the auricular and secret confession to the Priest: nor those also which think needful or convenient for the quietness of their own consciences particularly to open their sins to the priest to be offended with them that are satisfied with their humble confession to God and the general confession to the church.
The latter part, from "requiring, etc.", was omitted in the second and subsequent Prayer Books. In the ordination service prescribed in the Prayer Book the bishop is to speak the following words:
Receive the holy ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God now committed to thee by the Imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain they are retained.
[edit] The Books of Homilies
The two Books of Homilies are official documents of the protestant Church of England. The publication of homilies was encouraged by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and other leaders of the Reformation in England and by the sovereign, King Edward VI. They were designed for the use of the clergy in their parish churches, mainly in order to put doctrine before the people in plain language. The first Book of Homilies appeared in 1547. The reading of the homilies or one of them every Sunday in parish churches was enjoined by royal authority. They subsequently received sanction from the mention made of them in the communion service contained in the Prayer Book. It is evident that it was intended that further homilies should be written later.
The second Book of Homilies was published by the authority of Queen Elizabeth I and was appointed to be read in every parish church. It contains a homily on repentance, the second part of which, definitely and with argument, condemns the doctrine of the necessity of auricular confession. The condemnation concludes as follows:
I do not say but that, if any do find themselves troubled in conscience, they may repair to their learned curate or pastor, or to some other godly learned man, and shew the trouble and doubt of their conscience to them, that they may receive at their hand the comfortable salve of God's word: but it is against the true Christian liberty, that any man should be bound to the numbering of his sins, as it hath been used heretofore in the time of blindness and ignorance.
[edit] Queen Mary
We find, on the other hand, on the revival of Catholicism under Edward's successor, Queen Mary, some special mentions of confession which appear to indicate that its practice was regarded as one of the tests of orthodoxy. In 1554, Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, stated in the articles of visitation of his diocese:
Whether any person have refused or contemned to receive the sacrament of the altar, or to be confessed and receive at the priest's hand absolution according to the laudable custom of this realm?
– Art. XX
Among similar articles set forth in 1557 by Cardinal Pole for the visitation of his Archdiocese of Canterbury, is the statement:
Touching the Lay People. III. Item, Whether they do contemn or despise by any manner of means any other of the sacraments, rites or ceremonies of the church, or do refuse or deny auricular confession?
[edit] Analysis from the Catholic Encyclopedia
The Catholic Encyclopedia (1911) offers the following analysis:
This may be said to constitute the official documentary evidence of the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England with regard to confession. It was not ranked as a sacrament, and the exercise of it was to be optional, the only instance with regard to which we find any imperative words used being that of a dying person who should feel his conscience troubled with "any weighty matter". It may be that these last words are a literal translation of the Latin "gravi materia" frequently used, and so, perhaps, may denote, approximately, grievous or mortal sin. But even as to this occasion we find, as already pointed out, the words "shall make" altered to "shall be moved to make". It was not part of the doctrine of the Church of England as it continued established under Edward VI and, subsequently, from the accession of Elizabeth onwards, that auricular confession was necessary for forgiveness. The Statute of the Six Articles was repealed in the first year of Edward VI. The opinion and belief in the Protestant Church of England during that and the succeeding centuries were opposed to such a doctrine.
[edit] Anglican canonists and theologians
[edit] Hooker, Gibson and Ayliffe
Richard Hooker, the Caroline divine, was opposed to obligatory confession. Edmund Gibson, in his Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani (London, 1761) dismisses the sacraments of penance and extreme unction as:
Title XXI. The Two Popish Sacraments of Penance and Extreme Unction.
In the Parergon Juris Canonici Anglicani of Dr. John Ayliffe (London, 1726), the introduction (p. XL) says:
Tho' several Titles of the Canon Law are out of use with us here in England by reason of the gross Idolatry they contain in them, as the Title of the Authority and Use of the Pall, the Title of the Mass, the Title of Relicts, and the Worship of the Saints, the Title of Monks and Regular Canons, the Title of keeping the Eucharist and Chrism, and such other of the like Quality: Yet these are retained in the general.
It is true that he does not include confession amongst these titles, but, on the other hand, he makes no reference to any laws as to it in the Church of England. Moreover, in the chapter on public penance (p.420) we find a statement that penance is distinguished by the Romanists and the canon law as (1) external which includes confession to a priest, and that it is this first kind which they make a sacrament for the interest and advantage of the priesthood as it consists in the absolution of the priest. Ayliffe continues:
... but we Protestants who deny Penance to be a Sacrament say that it consists in sorrow, confessing to God in Foro Conscientiæ.
[edit] Wheatley
In Charles Wheatly's Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer, being the substance of everything liturgical in Bishop Sparrow, Mr. L'Estrange, Dr. Comber, Dr. Nichols, and all former Ritualists, Commentators or Others upon the same Subject, collected and reduced into one continued and regular method and interspersed all along with new observations, there is the following comment on the words contained in the service for the visitation of the sick, discussed above:
i.e. I suppose if he has committed any sin, for which the censure of the Church ought to be inflicted or else if he is perplexed concerning the nature or some nice circumstances of his crime.
– p.374
On the words of absolution there is marginal note:
Seems only to respect the censures of the Church
- which, the Catholic Encyclopedia contends, apparently means "that it is not the imparting of a Divine forgiveness for the actual sin."
[edit] Canon 113
The only occasion in which the concealment of a confession is imposed as a duty by the protestant Church of England seems to be in the canons that were made in 1603. Canon 113 deals with the suppression of evil deeds by the reporting thereof by the persons concerned with the administration of each parish. It provides for the presentment to the ordinary by parsons, vicars, or curates of the crimes and iniquities committed in the parish. It concludes with the following reservation:
Provided always, That if any man confess his secret and hidden sins to the minister, for the unburdening of his conscience, and to receive spiritual consolation and ease of mind from him: we do not in any way bind the said minister by this our Constitution, but do straitly charge and admonish him, that he do not at any time reveal and make known to any person whatsoever any crime or offence so committed to his trust and secrecy (except they be such crimes as by the laws of this realm his own life may be called into question for concealing the same) under pain of irregularity.
[edit] Analysis of Canon 113
The Catholic Encyclopedia makes the following analysis:
There are three points to be observed in the canon: First, the confession there referred to, from the likeness of the words used to those used in such parts of the liturgy as mention confession, which have been noticed above, seems to be the confession mentioned in the liturgy, viz, such form of confession as survived in the protestant Church of England. Second, there is an express exemption from the duty of secrecy where such duty should conflict with one imposed by the civil power under a certain penalty. There does not appear to have been, in fact, at that time any law which made the mere concealment of any crime, including treason, an offence punishable with forfeiture of life. But this in no way affects the principle laid down in the canon. The exemption is a marked departure from the pre-Reformation ecclesiastical law on the subject as shown by the pre-Reformation English canons and otherwise. Third, even apart from the exemption, the language used to declare the injunction bears a marked contrast to the language used to declare the secrecy in pre-Reformation days. It is evident that secrecy is not quasi of the essence of this confession, as Lyndwood had declared it to be of the confession of which he wrote. The confession as to whose secrecy the Fourth Lateran Council in behalf of the Church in the whole world, and the English Councils of Durham, Oxford, etc., in behalf of the Church in England, had made stringent decrees seems to have been banished by the Reformation.
It results from the Submission of the Clergy Act, mentioned above, that a canon is void if it contravenes common or statute law, and, accordingly, it becomes void if at any subsequent period a statute inconsistent with it is passed, as was held in the case of R v. Dibdin (Law Reports, 1910, Probate, 57). It does not seem that there was in 1603 any statute to which canon 113 was necessarily contrariant or that any has been passed since. When we have to decide whether or not it conflicted with the common law it must be remembered that many items of the common law must have disappeared or have undergone considerable alteration by such a change in the whole national life as that which was caused by the Reformation. Rules of canon law and certain precepts of the Church had, undoubtedly, formed some of the stones in the growing fabric of English common law. So, where the practices to which these rules or precepts applied were repudiated or considerably modified one must expect a corresponding cessation or modification of the common law relating thereto. Of many such instances confession would be one. Even the established Church of England did not claim for this confession which she sanctioned absolute inviolability, as the canon which has just been quoted shows.
[edit] Sources
- This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
