# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1857_S245
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Excerpts as Contributions to Pastoral Casuistry.   245

pastor also had reasons that drove him to feel he must lay the evil report before his penitent? For Paul says: Lay hands suddenly on no man, 1 Tim. 5. Likewise Dr. Luther: Not only do those dishonor the Sacrament who receive it unworthily, but also those who give it unworthily. But if I am to learn whether someone is worthy, I must indeed ask him what I have heard of him, and afterward hear from his answer whether he is worthy and whether he is sorry for his sin and wills to amend. For when he still defends the sin and is in sum an impenitent sinner, the pastor cannot absolve him. — What then? What if now in confession the blessed hour should have come in which God willed to work the knowledge of sins? For men cannot of themselves know their sin, and although they know that they have done it, and know also that in it they have done wrong, and that it is not hidden from many others either, still they take no account of it, but go to the Sacrament nonetheless — indeed, as Dr. Luther has written, many cover their sins, shameful deeds, and vices with the reception of the Sacrament. Since, then, people do not of themselves know their sin, or have no sorrow over it, but God must work repentance and sorrow — yet he works repentance and sorrow not without means but through means — therefore it is necessary that a pastor speak with his penitent about the evil rumor that is going about concerning him, in case God should be willing through his office to grant repentance, so that the penitent might begin to enter into himself and to gain repentance and sorrow over the sin he has hitherto committed.

(See Thesaurus Consilior. of Dedekennus II, fol. 752.)

On the same subject Balduin writes as follows: "When someone's sin is indeed known by rumor but not yet confessed, and the one who stands under suspicion nevertheless desires absolution from sins, he is indeed to be heard kindly, even if he himself makes no mention of that offense in confession; but the confessor must call the rumor to his memory and inquire without passion how the matter stands, whether he is conscious of it in his conscience, and ask him to conceal nothing of it. If he confesses the offense and has sorrow over it and promises henceforth to desist from it, then he is to be received with open arms as a penitent sinner, absolved of that sin, and admonished in brotherly fashion to guard himself against it henceforth. But if he not only denies the deed but also excuses himself at length, then he is not to be compelled to admit the deed either by the withholding of absolution or in any other way, for a minister of the Church is no torturer of consciences; yet the circumstances of the deed are to be set forth to him, and he is to be warned that here, placed before God's countenance, he cannot deceive Him who knows the heart, and therefore to be asked to free himself by an honest confession from the burden of conscience, with the reminder how great a sin it is to seek to deceive God, who searches heart and reins and who threatened His people with all His wrath when they denied and glossed over their crimes, 2 Kings 17:9, and