De convenientia institutorum Romanae Ecclesiae cum Evangelica libertate

1. Those who think wickedly and maliciously of the Roman Church¹ strive to cast all the laws and decrees of the popes into a kind of servitude. Thus they try to turn the people, eager for liberty, away from obedience to it.

They say—leaving other matters aside²—that you have wrung from us this sacramental confession, whispered into the priest’s ear, and that it was established by Christ’s laws, as you say.³ Does it not impose the utmost servitude on us that the Roman Pontiff has summoned to his own judgment the examination of certain graver crimes, while allowing inferior priests to absolve only lesser offenses? Is it not true that, just as it was said to Peter, “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,”⁴ so too it was said to the other Apostles, “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,”⁵ and again, “Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them”?⁶ If, then, the power to absolve was granted to all the Apostles, for themselves and their successors, without distinction, on what grounds does the Roman Pontiff claim this authority for himself, wishing the graver crimes to be brought only to him?⁷ This plainly also detracts from the ordination of priests. For when a priest is ordained, the bishop says to him:⁸ “Receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose you retain, they are retained.” It follows that all priests seem equal in this remission of sins.

2. But we must first observe that in the Catholic Church there are two kinds of power over the mystical body: one of order, the other of jurisdiction.⁹ The power of order accompanies the nature and office of the priesthood; by it, I mean, a priest has within himself the power to absolve a person from sins. The power of jurisdiction, by contrast, is the power by which someone may exercise judgment over another as that person’s judge. Christ therefore conferred equal power of order on all the successors of the Apostles and their disciples,¹⁰ but bestowed on Peter’s successor not only the power of order but also the fullest power of jurisdiction.¹¹ For he made him head of his Catholic Church and commanded him to feed his sheep and lambs and to strengthen his brothers.¹² Whoever is entrusted with the care of a multitude in every respect is also granted jurisdiction over it. Moreover, anyone who is bound by right to absolve another from sin must be equipped with both authorities: without the power of order, he could absolve no one; and without jurisdiction over someone as a subject, he could not exercise the judgment required for absolution. For every judgment is exercised over a subject, just as the proper act of any power requires its proper matter.¹³ A person becomes subject to a priest through jurisdiction and prelatial authority. Therefore the Roman Pontiff, whose jurisdiction extends to all, can absolve every Christian from sins,¹⁴ while other priests can absolve not everyone indiscriminately, but only those assigned to them as subjects.

3. Again, just as no priest can exercise the power of his order over everyone, unless perhaps the danger of death arises—even though priestly power is broad by its very nature—so too, although his power extends to every kind of crime, he cannot exercise it in its full breadth when the person who governs the Christian commonwealth in spiritual matters has prescribed limits for its use. Every principality has this general rule: the heads of all the orders are constituted under the prince’s authority,¹⁵ so that they may do nothing beyond what the prince has entrusted or at least permitted them to do. For just as it lies within his discretion to appoint as judges those whom he deems qualified, so he can entrust a certain number and kind of cases to their judgment, reserving the rest to his own discretion. In the order of the heavenly hierarchy, which presides over all bodily things, we hold, on the authority of the holy Doctors,¹⁶ that all lower things are subject by divine ordering to the angelic order called the Powers.¹⁷ We assign individual provinces to the Principalities, which are lower by nature,¹⁸ and entrust the care of particular people to the Angels subject to the Principalities. Thus the lower the place angels occupy in the order of nature, the more their exercise of power is limited and constrained.¹⁹

4. I would therefore grant that Christ and the bishop who ordains them both say to all priests, “Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose you retain, they are retained,”²⁰ and that for this reason all have equal power of order. But I would add that this power, insofar as it concerns absolving sins, can be exercised only over those who are subjects²¹ and only for crimes that their superior has not reserved to his own judgment. The order of a well-governed commonwealth rightly requires that the person who holds its highest rank and office should govern all the lower orders. Therefore, to establish some order²² in the exercise of this priestly power, the keys of heaven are first promised to Peter alone; with the other Apostles looking on, he alone is told, “Whatever you bind,”²³ and so forth; then the others too are granted the power to bind and loose.²⁴ From this very order in which the power was conferred, we can clearly see that the authority of all priests was established under Peter’s authority, and that Peter can restrict its exercise to certain persons and specified crimes.

5. We must not overlook that, although the power of jurisdiction may seem to concern the external and contentious judgment of cases, common Catholic usage also calls the power to judge someone in the more secret forum of conscience a power of jurisdiction. It is the authority to administer justice to a subject in the forum of penance. With what justification, then—to return to where I digressed—could anyone dare deny that the Supreme Pontiff may decree that certain crimes be brought before him?²⁵ The entire order of the ecclesiastical hierarchy would be overturned, and confusion would arise in the Christian commonwealth, if bishops were made equal in every respect to the Roman Pontiff, and priests to bishops. The result would be that the Church had no principate and the Christian commonwealth no government.

6. Although for a time there was no difference in title between higher and lower presbyters,²⁶ there²⁷ being no distinction, as Jerome attests in his commentary on the Epistle to Titus²⁸²⁹, they were called bishops and presbyters interchangeably—as is clear from the First Epistle to Timothy, chapter 5,³⁰ and the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 20³¹—yet in actual fact there was always a distinction of authority between them, even in the Apostles’ time, as Dionysius says in The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chapter 5.³²³³³⁴ Hence the gloss on Luke 10, “After this the Lord appointed,” and so forth, says: “Just as the Apostles are the pattern for bishops, so the seventy-two disciples are the pattern for presbyters of the second order.”³⁵ Later, by the custom of the Church, to avoid schism, it became established that the higher priests be called bishops and the lower, presbyters. Augustine therefore counted the claim that presbyters and bishops have equal authority among the heretical doctrines of the Arians.³⁶

7. Lutherans may ask: Very well, let the Roman Pontiff and the other prelates reserve whatever crimes they wish to their own judgment;³⁷³⁸ what benefit or use does this reservation of crimes bring to the Christian people?³⁹ It seems a diabolical invention,⁴⁰ devised solely for profit—especially since one must offer money if one is to obtain absolution from the Pontiffs for such crimes.

I shall explain its benefit, but first we must remove the false premise they have put forward. This reservation of crimes was devised not, as they pretend, for profit, but for the salvation of people.⁴¹ There may be some bishops so stained by avarice and sacrilege that they reserve certain crimes to themselves for the sake of gain. But those who observe the true Christian religion seek in this matter only the salvation of Christians; they care for nothing else than to restore to Christ the souls redeemed by his blood, cleansed of guilt. The benefit of reserving crimes is this: experienced people are deterred from graver and more serious offenses when they understand that obtaining absolution for them will be difficult and see that they must have recourse to the Pontiffs. For the same reason a monetary penalty is sometimes imposed for such crimes. We have reached such a height of avarice⁴² that we are more pained by the loss of money than by fasts, pilgrimages, vigils, or any other hardship. Consequently, those inclined to wrongdoing are deterred from committing crimes more by a monetary penalty than by any other kind of punishment. This, then, is the advantage we derive from reserving sins: it deters us from the license to sin that might otherwise drive us headlong into eternal damnation.

The custom of the Roman See and of other prelates, by which certain graver crimes are brought before their tribunals, is therefore in no way to be condemned, since it should be attributed not to greed for money but to the desire to root out wrongdoing. Yet, since we have fallen into such calamitous times⁴³ that every sort of reprobate and obscure person censures the conduct of the Roman See—even though it was introduced by the holy Fathers with a pious religious purpose—it might perhaps be most salutary to enact laws forbidding any priest to demand a monetary penalty for hearing a confession. But if the seriousness of the crimes and the circumstances of the persons involved require that they be expiated by a monetary penalty,⁴⁴ the penitent should distribute it among Christ’s poor, at the confessor’s discretion.⁴⁵