[Question:]{.underline} Is Confession to a post-conciliar priest valid?
[Answer:]{.underline} This question is poorly worded. It should read: Is confession to a post-conciliar priest profitable for one’s soul?
The requirements for the validity of the sacrament of penance are that there be an ordained minister, who has jurisdiction to hear confessions, who has the intention of doing what the Church does, who uses the correct words of absolution, and a penitent, who accuses himself of sins committed after baptism, and expresses his contrition. The fulfillment of these conditions is generally not difficult. The form of the sacrament of penance was not determined precisely by our Divine Savior, so that any form that includes the words “I absolve you from your sins” is valid. The difficulty with modern priests lies in their intention. Do they truly have the intention of absolving from sins, which means, do they really believe that God has committed this power to them? Here there can certainly be a doubt, especially given that the very nature and gravity of sin has been so undermined by modernism, as well as the necessity of expiation, through penance, and the sacramentality of the sacrament of penance (Cf. St. Pius X, Lamentabili, 39-47). Is it not for this reason that they rarely make themselves available for Confessions.
However, given the correct intention, there will generally be no reason to doubt the validity of the absolution. The real problem is the spiritual direction that accompanies the administration of what is now called “reconciliation”. This name is not entirely false, for it is certainly true that the sinner is reconciled to God when his sins are forgiven. However, the change from the traditional title of “penance” is an immediate consequence of the devaluing of the role of making up for sin, by a firm purpose of amendment, by avoiding the occasions of sin, by the performance of good works, and most particularly by works of satisfaction, such as those imposed by the priest.
A confessor influenced by the post-conciliar theology, desiring to be exclusively a friend and not also a judge, will consequently fail to reprimand the sinner, as we all need to be reprimanded from time to time. He will fail to give a penance in proportion to the gravity of the fault. He will fail to insist on the avoiding of the occasions of sin, and he will fail to take into account the wounds of original sin, exacerbated by actual sin. He will not believe sufficiently in his authority to be an effective instrument. Brainwashed by the “God is luv” mentality, he fails to appreciate the extraordinary power and sublime greatness of the Divine Mercy of which he is the vehicle, through which reparation is truly made to divine justice for the horror of our sins, in which reparation we must play at least some, albeit a small, part. Moreover, he will demean the regular “confessions of devotion”, in which we confess our venial sins, even indeliberate, every couple of weeks in our efforts to strive for perfection. He will not consider our sins as sufficient matter, but rather will treat us as bothersome, obsessive compulsive, scrupulous and legalistic, nor will he understand our combat to mortify every attachment to venial sin.
Consequently, a traditional Catholic may go to Confession to a Novus Ordo priest, but only in a case of necessity, when no traditional priest is available, and when he has to go to Confession on account of mortal sin. In the absence of this necessity his soul will greatly profit from the delay while he waits to find a good traditional confessor. This does not, however, take away from the fact that there still do remain in the Novus Ordo some good confessors, who have not understood the gravity of the crisis in the Church, but who have not accepted the modernist watering down of the sacrament of penance.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.