Thursday, April 18, 2024

Kenneth E. Kirk, "The recovery of death-bed penitents"

  

The recovery of death-bed penitents

 

(i) Sometimes a penitent who received absolution on his (presumed) death-bed recovered unexpectedly. The earliest custom, in these cases, was to hold him exempt from further penance. So Cyprian, ep. 64, I—'pacem quomodocumque a sacerdote Dei semel datam non putavimus auferendam'; cp. Ib., 55, 13; Dionysius Alex., ep. ad Canon. (ed. Feltoe (1905), pp. 59-62).

 

(ii) Conc. Nic., can. 13 (supra, pp. 278, 511), whilst insisting that all sinners who desired it must be reconciled on their death-beds, enacted that if they recovered they must complete their appointed course of penance: εδ δε απογνωσθεις και κοινωνιας παλιν τυχων παλιν εν τοις ζως ν εξετασθη, μετα των κοινωνουντων της ευχης μονης εστω. So also Greg. Nyssa., ep. ad Letoium, 5: and community. Hence (Leo, ep. 167, 9 ad Rust.), a sick man who had sent for a priest prematurely, and on his arrival found himself a little better, would rather naturally plead for a postponement of the rite.

 

(iii) The Nicene canon had not actually said that sinners were to be absolved, but only that they were to receive the viaticum . . . (Kenneth E. Kirk, The Vision of God: The Christian Doctrine of the Summum Bonum—The Brampton Lectures for 1928 [London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1931], 512)