Two Concepts of Attrition and Contrition - Theological Studies

18 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
with all his contemporaries (though today perhaps many of his followers
would hesitate before his optimism) that a penitent who comes to
confession will actually have contrition. 59 But even when he has not,
he will at the moment of receiving absolution be given the necessary
contrition, "ex attrito fit contritus virtute clavium." 60 Without this
switch over to contrition he could not be justified.
Will the penitent notice this change? Not necessarily. Rather, per se
he will not, 61 because the infusion of sanctifying grace and charity does
not occur on the level of his consciousness but in the depths of his
soul. There, on the ontological level, to an act of attrition succeeds in
virtue of power of the keys an act of contrition formed by charity. In
his psychological awareness his sorrow and detestation for sin, whether
including in its motivation a reason of fear or not, may and ordinarily
does remain after the absolution what it was before. Only when his
repentance would in no way show the signs of contrition would a
psychological change be necessary. There is a possible discrepancy
between these two levels of reality, the ontological plane and its psychological
unfolding in the consciousness. St. Thomas states this in unambiguous
terms. 62
The Modern Conception of Attrition-Contrition
1) The modern conception calls attrition a sorrow and detestation for
sin motivated by imperfect or interested reasons, for example, by
m
Quodl., 4, a. 10: "ut plurimum contritio praecedit tempore." Cf. De Blic, op. cit.,
p. 342.
60
The phrase itself does not seem to be found in St. Thomas; he says, loc. cit., "Quandoque
contingit... quod aliqui, non perfecte contriti, virtute clavium gratiam contritionis
consequuntur." Cf. De Blic, op. cit., pp. 348 f.; Dondaine, op. cit. pp. 12 f.; De Vooght,
op. cit., pp. 244 f.: "Aussi longtemps done qu'il n'y a pas d'acte de contrition, il n'y a pas
de pardon" (244). "Mais dans Fe'conomie normale de la grace, un instrument sensible,
eccle*siastique, le produit instrumentalement: le sacrement de penitence" (245).
61
Cf. De Blic, op. cit., pp. 349 f.: "sans que psychologiquement aucune modification
consciente soit intervenue."
62
Cf., for example, De Veritate, q. 10, a. 10, ad 1: "Actus ille dilectionis quem in nobis
percipimus secundum id quod est de se perceptibile, non est sufficiens signum caritatis
propter similitudinem naturalis dilectionis ad gratiam." Cf. below n. 92 about the signa
contritionis in one who has attrition only. There is no need here to determine exactly to
what extent this discrepancy between the psychological and the ontological level can exist.
For our purpose it suffices to note that they need not and often do not coincide, in such
manner as not to allow a transposition of a statement about one to the other without
further check. This partial divergence between the two levels of reality explains why different
viewpoints lead to partially dissimilar conceptions of attrition-contrition.