Thanks be to God, more and more Catholics are returning to the Sacrament of Penance. Saint Thomas Aquinas tackled the question as to whether Confession is necessary for salvation. Here’s what the Angelic Doctor wrote in Summa Theologiæ (Quæstio LXXXIV, Articulus V):Respondeo dicendum quod aliquid est necessarium ad salutem dupliciter: uno modo, absolute; alio modo, ex suppositione. Absolute quidem necessarium est illud sine quo nullus salutem consequi potest, sicut gratia Christi, et sacramentum Baptismi, per quod aliquis in Christo renascitur. Ex suppositione autem est necessarium sacramentum pœnitentiæ, quod quidem necessarium non est omnibus, sed peccato subiacentibus; dicitur enim in II Paralipomenon: “Et tu, Domine iustorum, non posuisti pœnitentiam iustis, Abraham, Isaac et Iacob, his qui tibi non peccaverunt.” “Peccatum” autem, “cum consummatum fuerit, generat mortem,” ut dicitur Iacobus I. Et ideo necessarium est ad salutem peccatoris quod peccatum removeatur ab eo. Quod quidem fieri non potest sine pœnitentiæ sacramento, in quo operatur virtus passionis Christi per absolutionem sacerdotis simul cum opere pœnitentis, qui cooperatur gratiæ ad destructionem peccati, sicut enim dicit Augustinus, super Ioannem: “qui creavit te sine te, non iustificabit te sine te.” Unde patet quod sacramentum pœnitentiæ est necessarium ad salutem post peccatum, sicut medicatio corporalis postquam homo in morbum periculosum inciderit.
I respond by saying that a thing is necessary for salvation in two ways: the first way, absolutely; the other way, by reason of supposition. A thing is absolutely necessary for salvation if no one can acquire salvation without it, as it were, the grace of Christ, and the Sacrament of Baptism, through which one is born again in Christ. Out of supposition the Sacrament of Penance is necessary, for it is necessary not for all, but for those who are in sin; for it says in 2 Chronicles: “And You, Lord of the just, have not appointed repentance to the just, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who did not sin against You.” But “sin, when it is completed, begets death,” as states James 1. And therefore it is necessary for the sinner's salvation that sin be removed from him, which indeed cannot be done without the Sacrament of Penance, in which the power of Christ's Passion operates through the priest's absolution at the same time with the acts of the penitent, who cooperates with grace unto the destruction of sin, as indeed Augustine says, concerning John: “He Who created you without you, will not justify you without you.” From which it is evident that the Sacrament of Penance is necessary for salvation after sin, even as bodily medicine after man has fallen upon a dangerous disease.
