This is the second part of an article which we published on Tuesday, Mr Phillip Campbell’s investigation into what the writers of the “progressive” theological journal Concilium were saying about reform of the sacrament of Confession in the years which immediately followed the most recent ecumenical council. This installment is a detailed consideration of the particularly perverse work of a theologian named Jean-Marie Tillard. Once again, our thanks to Mr Campbell for sharing his highly interesting and useful work with us.
The End Game: Abolition of the Sacrament of Penance
The end game should be fairly obvious at this point: if any sinner can obtain forgiveness by receiving the Eucharist, there is no need for an individual sacrament of penance. Tillard concludes his argument by questioning the teaching of Trent that Catholics guilty of mortal sin must go to confession before receiving communion:
Why, if what I have said is correct, must one hold that “those whose conscience is weighed down by mortal sin must first go to sacramental confession if they can find a confessor”, before they approach the Eucharistic table? Does this not improperly diminish the value of full participation in the Paschal meal? [20]
In typical sophist fashion, Tillard phrases his proposition rhetorically, but the implication is clear—if the Eucharist is the sacrament of reconciliation, we do not need a separate sacrament to deal with grave sins committed after baptism.
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| The Prodigal Son Not Doing Anything Particularly Wrong Because He Wasn’t Acting from Deliberate Malice, by the Austrian painter Franz Christoph Janneck (1703-61). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons. |
But what about the Church’s teaching that only venial sins can be wiped out by the Eucharist, but not mortal? Tillard side steps this by denigrating the very distinction between mortal and venial sin, complaining that “these categories are awkward” [21], and preferring that
in the present-day context, one would distinguish between sins of real malice in which bad will is evident, and sins which are possibly serious in terms of matter but which imply a capitulation of the will (if, indeed, it has occurred at all) apart from the “pressure of meditated and relished malice”. These distinctions, especially the latter, are illuminating: reception of the Eucharist is enough to efface all sins where no real malice is apparent. [22]
If the sinner can be forgiven merely by approaching the Eucharist with good faith, there is no longer any need for a distinct sacrament of penance. Tillard’s conclusion makes this point crystal clear:
In strict theological terms, the presence of this contrition (and the votum guaranteeing it) suffices for the sinner—whatever the gravity of his sin—to be able in truth to eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus, and not unto his own damnation (1 Cor. 11, 27-30)… Provided that the votum exists, even though he has sinned gravely, the Christian can receive the body and blood of the Lord without previous sacramental confession, and can obtain his reconciliation from that body: one might say that God “anticipates” the confession which will make explicit a reality already essentially present in its eucharistic source. [23]
Tillard’s Canards
Where does one begin to dismantle this nonsense? Tillard is quite right that the source of the Church’s reconciliatory power flows from the Eucharist, as the Eucharist is the sacramental representation of Cavalry, the sacrifice of Christ to God the Father which is the source of all grace. Nor is he wrong to say that baptism and confession both derive their efficacy from Christ’s sacrifice, and hence these sacraments have what we might call a “eucharistic orientation” to them. From this, however, he makes several extraordinary leaps that are completely unjustified.
Tillard’s biggest problem is his conflation between sacramental grace ex opere operato and ex opere operantis, that is, the power inherent in the sacrament objectively versus what is able to be appropriated by the particular recipient due to his disposition. While Tillard is quite right to note that the Eucharist contains the grace to forgive all sins, he errs grievously about the conditions under which this can be appropriated by the recipient. The Church acknowledges that this can happen in cases of perfect contrition, but we have seen that Tillard drastically reinterprets perfect contrition to be an almost meaningless gesture. Since every sinner is able to receive full forgiveness of even the gravest sins by simply showing up, Tillard’s theology reduces the concept of ex opere operantis to an almost meaningless placeholder.
His equation of the “well-intentioned” act of the grave sinner coming to Communion with the votum by which a child is brought to the font of baptism is ridiculous. An infant is incapable of expressing mature faith at the font. An adult sinner is fully capable of repenting and going to confession before Communion. Tillard’s comparison completely ignores this fundamental distinction.
His misapplication of Aquinas is damning. Tillard frequently cites from the Summa, Tertia Pars, Q. 79, Art. 3 to argue that persons culpable of mortal sin can normatively have their sins expunged by receiving the Eucharist. But Article 3 asks “Whether forgiveness of mortal sin is an effect of this sacrament?”, to which St. Thomas responds in the negative, rightly citing 1 Corinthians 11. We have already seen how Tillard twists Thomas’ meaning of “not sufficiently contrite,” which is bad enough, but even more astonishing is how he uses Question 79 to argue in favor of the very thing Aquinas is denying in Question 79. His conclusion that coming to the Eucharist in a state of grave sin is the very act by which one is forgiven seems downright satanic—an appellation I do not use lightly!
Tillard’s proposal to do away with classifying sins as mortal and venial in preference for those of “malice” versus those where “no bad will is evident” is far too subjective to be useful. All men desire to be happy, which is plain to “all who use their brains” as St. Augustine says. [23] All men act from a desire to be happy, either rightly or wrongly. Most sins are not due to willing the bad but willing some good in a disordered way. Those who sin do so because, in a perverse way, they think it will make them happy. Even the man who hates his circumstances so much as to kill himself does so because, in a certain sense, he believes he will be “happier” dead than alive. The vast majority of us do not sin through “bad will.” Even sins like adultery often proceed from lofty—albeit drastically misplaced—motives that are in themselves positive. In other words, asking sinners to reflect on whether they have sinned through pure malice would functionally eliminate the concept of grave sin from Catholicism altogether.
Finally, Tillard completely misses a fundamental sacramental principle many Catholic children used to learn in catechism—the distinction between the sacraments of the dead and sacraments of the living. If the Eucharist is the source of all grace, why does God so ordain that we have other sacraments, such as baptism and confession? The Eucharist is a sacrament of the living; that is, it is ordered towards nourishing grace in the lives of Christians who are already alive to God. Baptism and confession are sacraments of the dead; that is, they are ordered towards bringing spiritual life to those who are dead. In III, Q. 79, so frequently cited by Tillard, Aquinas makes the common-sense observation that the signification of the Eucharist (bread and wine) pertains to those who are alive, as only the living can eat and drink. Tillard either does not understand or does not admit that sacramental grace must be dispensed differently depending on whether one is in a state of grace or not.
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| St Thomas Aquinas Triumphing Over Heretics, 1471, by the Florentine painter Benozzo Gozzoli (1421-97.) Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons. |
Having spent the better part of a year reading these Concilium essays, I am consistently shocked at the disdain which the authors have for basic Catholic truths, as well as the complexity they introduce into theological questions which are fairly cut and dry. In conclusion, let us cleanse our palette of Tillard’s convoluted nonsense with a citation from Aquinas, who in two sentences speaks with greater truth and clarity than anything in Tillard’s tedious essay:
It is written, “He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself”: and a gloss of the same passage makes the following commentary: “He eats and drinks unworthily who is in the state of sin, or who handles (the sacrament) irreverently; and such a one eats and drinks judgment, i.e. damnation, unto himself.” Therefore, he that is in mortal sin, by taking the sacrament heaps sin upon sin, rather than obtains forgiveness of his sin. [25]
[20] Tillard, 51
[21] Ibid., 52
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid., 54
[24] St. Augustine, City of God, Book X, Chap. 1
[25] STh, III, Q. 79, Art. 3
