him from his fault: he must have recourse to the bishop, and it is safe to presume that he will not relapse for a considerable period. In the second place he is deprived of the power of absolving his accomplice—an attempt to do so is a sin reserved to the Pope, and, as every woman knows that such absolution is invalid, the misconduct is once more liable to come to the cognizance of the authorities. The second sin which is reserved to the Pope is a false denunciation of a confessor by a woman, so that one has a guarantee of the genuineness of such denunciations as are actually made.
Thus it is obviously ill-advised for the unfaithful priest to make an evil use of the confessional, for the danger of exposure is sternly prohibitive. A devout Roman Catholic is horrified at the very speculation; an impartial thinker, whose estimate of human nature is neither unduly raised by thoughts of special graces nor depressed by prejudice, will think of priests as men more than usually exposed to temptation and handicapped with an enforced celibacy, but will give them credit, on the whole, for an honest effort to realise that higher integrity which they profess. He will not think them superhuman with the Catholic, nor infrahuman with the ultra-Protestant: he will not believe that any of their habitual practices are inherently immoral, but he will expect the occasional lapses which no large body of men can prevent. And he will be perfectly right.
