Contrition comes from the verb conterere , which means crush , break . It is a metaphor borrowed from bodies to designate the state of a mind torn by its repentance and permeated with the sharpest pain: what repeated blows of a hammer do to iron to soften it, pain does, so to speak, to the soul in order to convert it.

This term is attached to religion to express the feeling of the soul that returns from its wanderings and passes from the state of sin to the state of grace; and it is consecrated by the language of the Scriptures: Scindite cora vestra , Joel 11:13. [1] Cor contritum et humiliatum Deus non despicies , Psalm 50. [2]

The Council of Trent, sess. 14, chap. iv , defines contrition in general this way: Contritio est animi dolor ac detestatio de peccato commisso, cum proposito non peccandi de cætero , [3] a definition which is suitable to contrition , as it has been necessary in all times to obtain the remission of sins. But under evangelical law it also requires a vow to fulfill everything that is necessary in order to receive worthily the sacrament of penitence. That is what the ancient scholastics expressed by this definition related in Saint Thomas, part III, question I, article 1 in corpor.: Contritio est dolor de peccato assumptus, cum proposito confitendi et satisfaciendi . [4]

Luther strangely distanced himself from these notions when he reduced penitence to this maxim: optima pœnitentia nova vita. He was taking the part for the whole, and as he would have it, no contrition for the past, no necessity to blame oneself for one’s failing. It was easy to cite against him a crowd of authorities, and among others these words of Saint Augustin to Severus, Ep. 63: Quasi non dolenda sint quæ male gesta sunt, etiamsi quantum possunt, postea corrigantur . And these from the same father, sermon 351: Non sufficit mores in melius mutare et a factis malis recedere, nisi etiam de his quæ facta sunt, satisfiat per pœnitentiæ dolorem, per humilitatis gemitum, per contriti cordis sacrificium . The Council of Trent, sess ion 14, canon v , expressly condemned this error of Luther’s.

The conditions or properties of contrition in general are that it be free, supernatural, true and sincere, intense and vehement.

It must be free: it is an act of the will, and not a feeling extorted by remorse of conscience, as Luther taught, who claimed that the fear of eternal punishment and contrition , far from disposing man to grace, served only to make him more and more hypocritical and sinning: a horrible doctrine rejected by the Council of Trent, session 14, canon v .

It must be supernatural, both by dint of grace, without the aid of which one cannot have genuine contrition for one’s sins, and by dint of the motive that provokes it. Some lax casuists having asserted that the attrition conceived out of a natural motive, provided it be honest, is sufficient in the sacrament of penitence , the general assembly of the French clergy in 1700 censured this proposition as heretical.

Contrition must be genuine and sincere; a false contrition , but which is thought to be true, would not at all suffice, either for receiving the grace of the sacrament, or for receiving the sacrament itself.

Finally, it must intense and vehement, both with respect to the appreciation — in other words the disposition of the heart to value God over everything, and prefer to die rather than offend him; and to the intention or the intensity of the sentiment that impels the soul toward God, and away from sin; and to extension and universality, for contrition , to be good, must extend to all the sins one has committed, not excepting a single one.

Contrition is necessary for sin: that is prescribed by the precept. But when does the precept require it? That is a point on which the Church has decided nothing. The surest sentiment in practice is that one must detest the sin the minute it is committed, and purify oneself of as soon as possible through the sacrament of penitence.

That is what the soundest portion of theologians teach about contrition in general, and there is hardly any division of opinions in this regard, except perhaps from the lax authors whose opinions are not binding.

All theologians further distinguish two sorts of contrition : one which they call perfect , and retains the name of contrition ; the other imperfect , which they call attrition .

Perfect contrition is that which is conceived by the motive of the love of God, or charity properly so called; and it suffices to reconcile the sinner with God even before actual reception of the sacrament of penitence, but still with the intention or the desire to receive that sacrament, an intention or desire which includes perfect contrition . These are the terms of the Council of Trent, session 14, chap. iv .

According to the same council, attrition or imperfect contrition is a suffering and a detestation of sin, conceived through contemplation of the ugliness of sin, or through fear of the punishments of hell; and the council declares that if it excludes the sinner’s will, and if it contains the expectation of forgiveness, not only does it not make the man hypocritical and more sinning than he was (as Luther had argued), but it is even a gift of God and a movement of the Holy Spirit which in truth does not yet inhabit the penitent, but urges him to convert. The council adds that although attrition by itself and without the sacrament of penitence cannot justify the sinner, it however disposes him to obtain the grace of God in the sacrament of penitence. Id., ibid. See Attrition.

It is well to observe here, following Estius [5] and Father Morin, that the term attrition was unknown to early antiquity, that it owes its birth to the scholastics, and that it is found in no writing of a doctrinal nature before Alexandre de Halès, William of Paris, and Albert Magnus: [6] in other words, it began to be in use after the year 1220, a little more than a century after the origin of scholastic theology.

It is especially since the Council of Trent that the boundaries separating contrition from attrition have been hotly disputed; this is where the theological divisions begin. Some claim that the passage from attrition to contrition takes place via gradual nuances, more or less as in painting one transitions from one color to another; that contrition differs from attrition only in the intensity of the sorrow [ douleur ], which, to merit that name, must be taken to a certain level known to God alone; so that these two sentiments of a repentant heart differ only by the degree of sorrow that accompanies them. Others do not measure their difference by the degrees of sorrow that make these two sentiments more or less intense, but by the motive that combines with the sorrow: if fear of the punishments of hell, or the shame that follows sin, provoke the sorrow, from that moment it is only simple attrition, however great the excess of the sentiment that seizes the soul. But is this motive love of God? From that moment the sorrow that this love excites becomes contrition .

Those who declare for the first opinion recognize that attrition is combined with some love of God; and it is by envisaging it from this angle that they maintain that it suffices with the sacrament to reconcile us with God. But they do not all think the same way about love. Their division has its source in the passage of the Council of Trent where it is said that perfect contrition always justifies the sinner, even before he receives the sacrament, although that reconciliation is tied to the will to receive it. Here is the passage in the original: Circa contritionem perfectam duo docet sacro-sancta synodus: primum contingere aliquando eam charitate perfectam esse, hominemque Deo reconciliare, priusquam sacramentum pœnitentiæ actu suscipiatur: alterum, reconciliationem hanc ipsi contritioni, sine sacramenti voto, quod in illa includitur, non esse adscribendam . [7]

It is true that some rigorist theologians have objected to this adverb aliquando [sometimes] which we read in the text of the Council, and they have inferred from it that justification was not tied to perfect contrition , but accompanies it only in some circumstances, as would be that of a man about to expire, unable to obtain the sacrament, who would then find his justification in the sentiment alone of a contrite and humbled heart. But it is clear that these theologians have completely missed the sense of the Council, since it is evident from the text itself that the adverb aliquando , which they seize upon here to support their position, falls on contrition , which rarely is perfect in those who approach the sacrament, and not at all on justification, which it always produces even independently of the sacrament.

This passage has produced, among those who hold for love in the sacrament of penitence, two opposing positions on the motive that constitutes perfect contrition and imperfect contrition . Some make perfection of contrition depend on the levels of love, and others on the love itself, at whatever level, more or less perfect depending on the motive behind it. The former recognize only one kind of love, which they call charity , and they claim that it justifies the sinner before the sacrament only when it has attained a certain level of ardor which God has set for justification, and about which he did not deem it fit to instruct us, in order to keep us continually in fear and trembling. The others, besides this love of charity, allow another which they subordinate to it, and call love of expectation or love of concupiscence. The first, they say, makes us love God for himself; the second makes us love him for our own happiness, which we find, in truth, only in the enjoyment of that supreme Being. The first, according to these theologians, draws from the nobility of its motive the perfection it communicates to contrition , and makes it justifying without the help of the sacrament; the second on the contrary animates attrition and operates with the sacrament.

M. Tournély and M. Languet, archbishop of Sens, [8] have been accused of imagining this distinction between the two loves. But rather strong traces of it can be found in Saint Thomas, whose words follow: Secunda secundæ quest. 17. Spes et omnis appetitivus motus ex amore derivatur. . . . . amor autem quidam est perfectus ; quidam imperfectus. Perfectus quidem amor est quo aliquis secundùm se amatur. . . . . Imperfectus amor est quo quis aliquid amat non secundùm ipsum sed ut illud bonum sibi proveniat, sicut homo amat rem quam concupiscit. Primus autem amor pertinet ad charitatem quo inhæret Deo secundum se ipsum. Sed spes pertinet ad secundum amorem, quia ille qui sperat sibi aliquid obtinere intendit. Et ideo in via generationis spes est prior charitate. . . . . Spes introducit ad charitatem, in quantum aliquis sperans remunerari a Deo, accenditur ad amandum Deum, et servandum præceptum ejus . [9]

This system therefore is not merely imagined; it is grounded. But here is probably the advantage which the Sorbonne professor and the archbishop wanted to derive from it for the consolation of timorous souls. They walk between two shipwrecks: on the one hand, the Council of Trent recognized that contrition is perfect when it is animated by charity properly so called; on the other it requires, as does the clergy of France assembled in 1700, that those who dispose themselves to receive the sacraments, and especially the sacrament of penitence, begin to love God as the source of all justice. Attrition thus requires a love distinct from charity properly so called, which is the specific motive of perfect contrition . Now the love of hope is a genuine love distinct from charity properly so called; therefore, it can constitute attrition, and all the better so that by thus distancing themselves from the rigorism that perfect contrition requires, they distance themselves equally from the laxity that requires no love. For the lax casuists having argued this proposition: Attritio ex gehennæ metu sufficit etiam sine ulla Dei dilectione , the assembly of the clergy in 1700 declares: Neque vero satis adimpleri potest utrique sacramento necessarium vita nova inchoandæ ac servandi mandata divina propositum, si pœnitens primi ac maximi mandati, quo Deus toto corde diligitur, nullam curam gerat. The clergy therefore also requires some love: but is it a love of charity properly so called, is it a love of hope? That is something that neither the Council nor the clergy of France decides, and it seems to me that given such indecision, theologians who propose a probable sentiment, one avoiding excesses, are much less suspect than those who out of inclination for the extreme or lax doctrine, require angelical dispositions for the reception of the sacrament, or are content to allow purely human ones.

Let us now pass on to the position that excludes love even in the attrition claimed to be sufficient in the sacrament of penitence. Suarez, Canitolus, and Sanchez have recognized that this opinion was neither very ancient nor very common, but it has since acquired numerous partisans, among others Filiutius, Azor, Tambourin, and Fathers Pinthereau and Antoine Sirmond. We will not enter in this regard into the detail of the proofs and reasons they have made use of; they can be seen in the Provincials  [10] and in the notes of Wendrock , [11] or even better in the writings of the casuists. We will report on only one argument of the attritionaries, which we will refute by a very simple argument.

If, to obtain forgiveness for our errors, they say, we are commanded to love God, what advantage do we Christians, who are the children, have over the Jews, who were the slaves? What good does the sacrament of penitence do if it does not make up for the defect of love, and if it does not relieve us of the difficult obligation of actually loving God?

It is difficult to conceive how dispensing with loving God would be the privilege of evangelical law over Judaic law, and how that dispensation would have been purchased by all the blood of Jesus Christ. They would have it that the Jew, who lived under a law more characterized by fear than by love, was obliged to love his God, and they would allow the Christian to dispense with it, who lives under a law more characterized by love than by fear. Hæc est , dit Saint Augustin ( Contra Adimantum Manichaei Discipulum, chap. xvii ), hæc est brevissima et apertissima differentia duorum Testamentorum, timor et amor: illud ad veterem, hoc ad novum hominem pertinet. Which the same father explains this way in his work De moribus Ecclesiæ , chap. xxviii, no. 56: Quanquam utrumque ( timor et amor ) sit in utroque ( Testamento ), prævalet tamen in vetere timor, amor in novo . Now according to the attritionaries, it is no longer the Jew who is a slave, but the Christian, since love is made for the Jew, and fear for the Christian. We have therefore been deceived when we were told so many times that fear was the attribute of Judaic law as love is the soul of evangelical law. In the theology of the attritionaries, it is exactly the opposite. It is therefore not more in keeping with the doctrine of the fathers and with reason to think that the same sentiment that justifies the Christian with the sacrament justified the Jew without sacrament, and that the whole advantage which the first has over the second is that the grace which forms this sentiment flows more abundantly for one than for the other, and that the remission obtained by the ministry of the keys is fuller and more perfect than that merited by the love of the Jew deprived of virtue and the efficaciousness of the sacrament. Whatever some scholastics may say, they will never persuade us that God has required of the Jew, to be reconciled with him, dispositions more perfect than those required of the Christian; whereas with a generous hand he showers on the latter graces he dispensed to the former only with a sort of reservation. Let us not give the advantage to the Jews that they have love as their lot, whereas we limit ourselves to being the slaves of fear, which, however good and chaste we suppose it to be, is still inferior to love. With more grace than they, it would ill behoove us not to love God as much to obtain forgiveness for our faults. This facility of obtaining it which the attritionaries regard as a consequence of the evangelical law to which we belong, does not consist precisely in God’s asking less of us than of the Jew, but rather in his granting us much more grace than to the circumcised. To think otherwise would be to place Christianity below Judaism itself, since one religion is all the more perfect that it brings us back more to love which makes for all its perfection: Non colitur Deus nisi amando , Saint Augustine says somewhere. This would even offend the justice of God, since we would be supposing that he requires more from the one to whom he grants less. Therefore, if the Jew were ordered to love God if he wanted to be reconciled with him, it is perhaps even more commanded to the Christian who is favored by a larger number of graces.

But if, following the principles of the attritionaries, the precept of the love of God does not oblige at the very moment when the penitent sinner solicits divine clemency and mercy, in what circumstance then, at what time, according to them, does the precept oblige?

It is well to hear them themselves on this matter: “When is one obliged to have actual affection for God?” says one of them. “Suarez says it is enough if one loves him before the article of death, without determining any time; Vasquez, that it still suffices at the article of death; others, when baptism is received; others, when one is obliged to be contrite; others, on feast days; but our father Castro Palao combats all those opinions, and rightly so. Hurtado de Mendoza claims that one has that obligation every year, and that we are being treated very favorably still not to be obliged more often. But our father Coninck believes we are held to it in three or four years; and Filiutius says it is probable that one is not strictly held to it more than every five years. So when? He defers it to the judgment of the wise.” These are Escobar’sterms.  [12]

One of his colleagues, Father Antoine Sirmond, [13] balances the various opinions of the casuists on the precept of the love of God in this way: “Saint Thomas says that one is obliged to love God the moment one has the use of reason; that is a little early. Scotus, each Sunday: based on what? Others when one is grievously tempted: yes, if this were the only means of fleeing temptation. Sotus, when one receives a blessing from God: fine, to thank him for it. Others, at death: that is a little late. Nor do I believe it is upon receiving some sacrament; attrition suffices for that with confession, if the opportunity presents itself. Suarez says one is obliged at one time: but at which time? He leaves you the judge, and has no idea. Now what this scholar did not know, I don’t know who does.”

Such are the excesses to which probabilism leads; and were that its only flaw, having introduced into theology such a monstrous opinion as one which, stripping attrition of love, makes it suffice for the sacrament of penitence: that would be enough to exterminate it from all the schools.

Besides, it would be a crying injustice to think or say that the opinions of these individuals are the unanimous theology of the society of which they were members. [14] The most famous theologians of this body, Laynez, Claude le Jai, and Salmeron, who attended the Council of Trent, Canisius, Edmond Auger, Maldonat, Cardinal Tolet, Father Petau, etc., all recognized the necessity of some love, at least begun, combined with attrition, to make it sufficient in the sacrament of penitence, and neither Cheminais nor Bourdaloue favored relaxed ethics. See Probabilism.

In truth, we owe this testimony to the Jansenists, that they rather well avenged the rights of divine love against the relaxed principles of the attritionary casuists. But do these Jansenists, so proud against the Jesuits when it is about the love of God, have nothing for which to reproach themselves on this article? That is what we must examine in few words.

It is an accepted principle in the theology of the Jansenists that there are only two principles of our acts, to wit: love of charity, which relates everything to God, and the love of cupidity, which relates everything to ourselves. What I conclude with the Jansenists from this principle, is that every act that does not proceed from charity necessarily has its source in cupidity, which infects it and makes it vicious. Another no less intimate principle, nor less essential to the system of the Jansenists, is that every grace, whatever form it takes in a heart, is itself the love of charity, and that it taints, if I may put it this way, all the acts it causes us to produce. Now this grace, as the Jansenists confess, never produces in us a love of God dominating over that of his creatures, every time it finds itself in conflict with a cupidity that is superior to it in degree. See Relative Delectation. On the other hand, it always produces in us a beginning of love of charity, although inferior in degree to cupidity, because grace, in their principles, always acts according to all the energy of present forces. See Delectation. [15]

That given, here is the argument one can make against the Jansenists. When the grace that impels us to the love of charity (it is indeed the nature of all graces, in the Jansenist system, since they say that in the law of love they flow only to inflame hearts); when, then, this grace falls unfortunately on a cupidity that is greater than it in degree, love which it produces in a heart is indeed a true love of charity, a supernatural love, but this love which it ignites is inferior to the love of creatures, a work of cupidity, in the same relation and the same proportion as grace is to cupidity. Therefore, there can be a love of charity, a supernatural love, which however does not dominate in the heart over the love of creatures. Now one will ask the Jansenists, can the Holy Spirit, who is the author of all order, inspire in us a love which in our soul would balance God with the creature? Is it then loving God with a supernatural love, a love which the Holy Spirit itself lights, to love something more than God? A love which can only be injurious to God, can it then be his work? I would as soon hear it argued that one can have a supernatural faith that does not extend to all the revealed articles, as to tell me that one can have a supernatural love which does not place God in our heart above all the creatures. That is the opinion of all the orthodox theologians, that all true love of God is a love of preference, what the school expresses in these terms: omnis verus Dei amor est appretiative summus : in other words, the lightest breath of love which the Holy Spirit inspires in us makes us love God more than all the creatures. Any other love is unworthy of God, and cannot be the work of grace.

If you now ask an enlightened man, one who is neither carried along by the self-interest of a corps nor fascinated by partisan spirit, what he thinks about the extent of the great precept of love, he will answer you that what he thinks of it is what you think of it yourself, provided you love God. Give me a heart that loves, he will say, a heart dominated by the love of God; that heart cannot contain within itself the love which will devour it. That love will diversify in an infinite number of ways; it will take the form of the most indifferent actions; it will paint itself in a thousand objects that elude those who do not love; it will work itself up through the obstacles that prevent it from joining with the God who lights its flames. But, you will add, at what time will that heart love? You will be answered with the same impartiality; is that then a language one should use with a heart full of it love? Let us study its duties, not in the books of the casuists, who should never have subjected acts of love toward God to calculation, but rather in those which a virtuous and faithful wife who burns for him with a chaste and legitimate flame gives to her husband: this love, which nature and duty kindle in the two hearts is an image, albeit imperfect, of the love the Holy Spirit pours into those he takes pleasure in enriching with his favors.

But after all, you will add, what is then the surest opinion and the most followed on contrition and on attrition? The one which the clergy of France expresses in these terms: Hæc duo imprimis ex sacrosancta synodo tridentina monenda et docenda esse duximus: primum ne quis putet in utroque sacramento (baptismi et pœnitentiæ) requiri ut præviam contritionem eam, quæ sit charitate perfecta, et quæ cum voto sacramenti, antequam actio suscipiatur, hominem Deo reconciliet: alterum, ne quis putet in utroque sacramento securum se esse, si præter fidei ac spei actus, non incipiat diligere Deum, tamquam omnis justitiæ fontem ; whence it follows that perfect contrition is not a necessary disposition for receiving the sacrament of penitence, and that attrition is sufficient, provide it is accompanied by a nascent love.

Is that nascent love a love of charity or a love of hope? The Council and the assembly of 1700, using the terms incipiat diligere Deum , did not determine whether it is a love of charity or of friendship, whether a love of concupiscence or of hope. Their silence must command ours. Could we without the most criminal presumption flatter ourselves to explain what the universal Church and a distinguished portion of that same Church have not deemed it proper to declare? We are not unaware that numerous theologians have claimed to explain these oracles; but as the opinion which they have chosen in advance is always the one to which they are quite resolved to adapt and relate the meaning of the terms of the Council and of the assembly of the clergy, we leave to the intelligent reader the task of weighing their explanations to decide whether they are as correct as they imagine. See Tournély, Traité de la pénitence, vol. I, quest. iv–v, and Witasse, Traité de la pénitence, quest. iii, sect. 1–3, art. 1–3, etc.  [16]

1. “Rend your heart” (Joel 2:13).

2. “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (from the Miserere , also Psalms 50 (51):17.

3. “Contrition [...] is a sorrow of mind, and a detestation for sin committed, with the purpose of not sinning for the future.” Nineteenth ecumenical council of the Church, held in Trent, 1545–1563, cited in the translation by J. Waterworth (London: Dolman, 1848).

4. “Contrition is an assumed sorrow for sins, together with the purpose of confessing them and of making satisfaction for them.” St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica .

5. Willem Hessels Van Est (1542–1613), Catholic theologian, born in the Netherlands, professor at Louvain and Douai in Flanders (now Belgium). Estius is the Latinized version of his name.

6. Alexander of Hales (1185–1245), St. William of Æbelholt (1125–1203), and Albertus Magnus (1200–1280).

7. “The Synod teaches moreover, that, although it sometimes happens that this contrition is perfect through charity, and reconciles man with God before this sacrament be actually received, the said reconciliation, nevertheless, is not to be ascribed to that contrition, independently of the desire of the sacrament which is included therein.” Session XIV, chapter iv. See note 3 above.

8. Honoré Tournély (1658–1729), professor of theology at the Sorbonne; Jean-Joseph Languet de Gergy (1677–1753), archbishop of Sens.

9. For a translation of the full quotation, see Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Second Part of the Second Part, Question 17, article 8.

10. Provinciales , i.e. , Lettres provinciales (1657), a satire by Blaise Pascal of casuist theology and practice.

11. Guillaume Wendrock is a pseudonym of Pierre Nicole (1625–1695), one of the principal Jansenists.

12. Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza (1589–1669), famous Spanish Jesuit theologian.

13. Antoine Sirmond (1591–1643).

14. I.e. , the Society of Jesus or Jesuits.

15. The only article on delectation is Délectation victorieuse [Victorious delectation], by Mallet.

16. Charles Witasse or Vuitasse (1660–1716), Tractatus de sacramento poenitentiae (1717); he was removed from his theology position at the Sorbonne for refusal to accept the bull Unigenitus .