PENANCE 175 



a priest to name a penitent and say he has 

 committed such and such a sin, of which he (the 

 priest) has knowledge only through confession, or 

 to say that the penitent told him such a sin in 

 confession. Any direct breach of the seal, even 

 if the sins revealed are but slight, is a grievous 

 violation of justice and a sacrilege. 23a It is 

 called complete (violatio plena) if it includes the 

 name of the penitent, the character of his sin, and 

 the fact that he confessed it. When one of 

 these details is lacking, the violation is termed 

 partial (partialis). 



b) The seal is broken indirectly when the con- 

 fessor says or does, or omits to say or do, some- 

 thing from which others may gain a knowledge 

 of confessional matter, or by which a penitent 

 may be justly aggrieved or confession made odi- 

 ous. 24 Such an indirect violation of the seal is 

 merely a venial sin when the danger of publicity 

 is slight or the carelessness of the confessor not 

 grievously sinful. 



Direct violation of the seal admits of no parvitas mate- 

 riae, whereas indirect violation does. Thus the matter 

 would be slight, and the sin consequently venial, if a con- 

 fessor would reveal something he had heard in confes- 

 sion through inadvertence, in the firm belief that the 

 identity of the penitent was unknown or the danger of its 

 being guessed extremely slight. 



23a Codex Iuris Can., can. 889. 24 Cfr. Gury, op. cit., II, n. 506- 



508. 



