The last three posts focused on the delicts against the faith: heresy, apostasy and schism. The following posts will focus on the more grave delicts (delicta graviora) against the sacraments reserved to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith. Today’s post focuses on the crime of solicitation to indecency (crimen sollicitationis ad turpia), a more grave delict against the sacrament of penance.
Canon 1385 states: “A priest who in confession, or on the occasion or under the pretext of confession, solicits a penitent to commit a sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue, is to be punished, according to the gravity of the offence, with suspension, prohibitions and deprivations; in the more serious cases he is to be dismissed from the clerical state.”
The first major document on this delict is Pope Gregory XV’s constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis, issued on 30 August 1622. In the document, Pope Gregory reserved the crime of solicitation to the Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, later renamed the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in 1908, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1965, and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2022. On 1 June 1721, Pope Benedict XIV reaffirmed the Church’s teaching on the crime in his constitution, Sacramentum poenitentiae. With the Constitution, Sollicita ac provida, of 9 July 1753, he confirmed the competence of the Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition.
Subsequently, there were other constitutions and decrees of the Congregation of the Holy Office on this delict. Most notable is the instruction ‘On the Manner of Proceeding in Causes of Solicitation’ with the Latin title, Crimen Sollicitationis, issued in 1922 and addressed to patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, and ordinaries of the Latin and Oriental Rite to assist them in dealing with complaints against priests accused of solicitation at the confessional or other forms of grave sexual misconduct. The document was issued only in Latin. Although Pope Pius XI approved the instruction in a specific form, it was not promulgated in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (Acts of the Apostolic See) as other documents issued by the popes or the Holy See. The instruction clearly stated at the beginning: “to be kept carefully in the secret archive of the curia for internal use. Not to be published or augmented with commentaries.” In 1962, the Holy Office issued a revised version with the same instruction for secrecy. Today, the document is no longer secret. Although the document was issued only in Latin, an official English translation is now available on the Vatican website.
Crimen Sollicitationis presents an extensive definition of the delict of solicitation, citing Sacramentum Poenitentiae. It says:
“The crime of solicitation occurs whenever a priest – whether in the act itself of sacramental confession, or before or immediately after confession, on the occasion or under the pretext of confession, or even apart from confession [but] in a confessional or another place assigned or chosen for the hearing of confessions and with the semblance of hearing confessions there – has attempted to solicit or provoke a penitent, whosoever he or she may be, to immoral or indecent acts, whether by words, signs, nods, touch or a written message, to be read either at that time or afterwards, or he has impudently dared to have improper and indecent conversations or interactions with that person (Constitution Sacramentum Poenitentiae, §1)”. (Crimen Sollicitationis, 1)
Therefore, the crime of solicitation is not restricted to what happens during the celebration of the sacrament itself. It includes actions before and after the sacrament. In light of this, collecting the phone number of someone who comes to confession for the purpose of friendship falls within the delict of solicitation. It is irrelevant if it happens before or after confession. If the number is not collected for friendship, but the communication later descends into an amorous relationship, the offence is also present.
Priests are recommended not to give their number directly to anyone who comes for confession. If, following a confession, the penitent wants to seek spiritual direction, material assistance or some other information, it is advisable to tell the penitent to go and seek the number (whether personal or institutional) from the bulletin or other people. This extra step could save the priest from any future accusations of having solicited through the way he advised the penitent.
Canon 982 states: “A person who confesses to having falsely denounced to ecclesiastical authority a confessor innocent of the crime of solicitation to a sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue, is not to be absolved unless that person has first formally withdrawn the false denunciation and is prepared to make good whatever harm may have been done.” A subsequent post will say something about this.
One must note that sexual abuse can occur following the crime of solicitation. In its Vademecum ‘On Certain Points of Procedure in Treating Cases OF Sexual Abuse of Minors Committed by Clerics’, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith provides that it includes “sexual relations (consensual or non-consensual), physical contact for sexual gratification, exhibitionism, masturbation, the production of pornography, inducement to prostitution, conversations and/or propositions of a sexual nature, which can also occur through various means of communication” (Vademecum, 2). It also includes grooming and inducing one to pornography, acquisition, retainment, exhibition and distribution of pornographic images of minors (Can. 1398 §1).
Therefore, any of these that occur following the sacrament of confession could be, in addition to the crime of solicitation, the sexual abuse of minors if the penitent is a minor. If the penitent is an adult, it is the sexual abuse of a vulnerable adult because, at that point, the penitent’s liberty is restricted because of the circumstances of the sacrament (cf. Vos Estis Lux Mundi, art 1, §2). If one argues against the vulnerability of the adult, the sexual abuse of “one to whom the law recognises equal protection” comes into place. Here, the penitent requires protection from the priest at the confessional, but the priest fails to do so (cf. Can. 1398).
May God continue to help us🙏🏾
K’ọdị🙋🏾♂️
