ls written to
assist the penitents in the discovery of their sins, in which sexual
errors also find a place. Opinions as to the wisdom of giving such
manuals to penitents are certainly very divergent. When we read the
authoritative decisions, for the use of confessors, pronounced by
Catholic theologians upon sexual faults, we are sometimes astonished at
the practical insight displayed in these decisions; the opinions
expressed must, indeed, often appear dubious to the strict moralist, and
yet they are occasionally marvellously well adapted to the practical
requirements of the case. In many instances, however, even this cannot
be admitted; and however right from the practical point of view the
decisions may sometimes be, we must not overlook the dangers of the
confessional. Cases have been personally known to me in which, at the
confessional, penitents have been cross-questioned in such a way about
sexual details that unfavourable consequences were, in my opinion,
extremely likely to ensue. This statement applies with equal force to
the case of children, who have to go to confession as soon as they
arrive at the "age of reason."[141] No one will dispute the assertion
that the father-confessors gather much experience in the exercise of
their profession, and that most of them possess sufficient tact to avoid
asking improper questions. But to assert this of all of them would be to
rush to the other extreme; and for the same reason that in the latter
part of this chapter I shall express myself as opposed, at any rate in
part, to sexual instruction in schools, do I think that to ask such
questions of children as are sometimes asked in confession, may in
certain circumstances lead to very undesirable results. When the child
penitent describes to the confessor sexual faults (masturbation, &c.),
however well intentioned the words of the confessor may be, it is
impossible that they should be so individually adapted as is really
necessary in such cases; and the detailed discussion of these matters
which sometimes follows is open to grave objection. In what I have just
said, it is far from my intention to attack one of the sacraments of the
Catholic Church; but the matter is one to which it was necessary to
allude, and I will merely add that the error must be avoided of taking
as a basis for criticism much that is written with a party bias against
the Catholic Church, and much also of the mockery of the confessional
which abounds in