The Duties of a Confessor

The confessor must help the penitent to make an integral Confession, a sincere act of contrition and a firm purpose of amendment; he should also give suitable advice.
Integrity. The priest is recommended to make a practice of questioning any penitent who comes to him for the first time unless the penitent is clearly well instructed, precise, and has already said on his own initiative everything that is necessary. The questions should normally bear upon the penitent's state in life; for example, whether he is married or not, his age, his occupation, the date of his last Confession.

It is also useful to ask the penitent about the more common types of sin and their causes, if he has not been sufficiently explicit. In order to discover whether he may be hiding some sin of a more serious nature of which he is ashamed, the priest should put the following general question: "Is there anything else weighing on your conscience, anything at all which you would like to get off your mind?" If there is no reply, that is a sign that he still considers himself blameworthy in the sight of God, and he must then be helped with care and discretion to reveal what may be of a serious nature and altogether necessary for the integrity of his Confession. In such cases, the priest should ask explicitly about those sins which may likely have been committed by the penitent in his or her state of life, and implicitly about other more serious sins which could have been committed.

In dealing with the virtue of purity, the priest must formulate his questions in such a way as to be readily understood by the guilty, and yet they must be sufficiently veiled and discreet as not to offend the innocent. For instance, if the penitent confesses an act which of its nature produces culpable pollution, the priest must not ask whether pollution actually took place. This question must never be put to women.

Contrition and amendment. In helping the penitent to make a sincere act of contrition and a firm purpose of amendment, the confessor must be guided by his priestly charity and avoid being too lenient or too severe. He should remember that here he will receive much assistance from the Sacramental grace of Orders, which is a modal determination of Sanctifying Grace, and therefore of charity, and entitles him to increasingly higher actual graces in hearing Confessions.
When a penitent is not sufficiently disposed to receive the Sacrament, priestly charity urges the confessor to do all that he can to obtain sincere sorrow and a firm purpose of amendment. It guides him in the use of all his powers of persuasion, and while the priest is thus trying to help the penitent, so is Christ helping His minister. In fact, without this profound confidence in Christ's help at that moment, the priest would never succeed in his efforts to urge or make acceptable the necessary spirit of contrition. The priest's voice alone, without God's help, could never dispose a penitent. What is required in such circumstances is a supernatural eloquence, brief and to the point, convincing and full of charity. He must say to the penitent: "My child, try to appreciate the evil you have committed. What evil has God done to you that you should despise His authority in this way? If Jesus Christ had been your greatest enemy, could you have treated Him more abominably than you have done? It was out of love for you that He sacrificed His life on the Cross to save you from eternal punishment-----and see what you have done and said against him in return. What will happen to you if you persevere in your refusal to make a humble submission to God, if you do not ask for His grace of sincere contrition and amendment? Then again, what good have you obtained from all your sins? You are simply preparing yourself for a life of unhappiness here on earth and the loss of eternal life. Remember the words of Christ: 'Come to me, all you that labor, and are burdened, and I will refresh you.' [Matt. 11: 28] God has so far given you time for conversion-----do not delay any longer. Together with me you must intercede from the bottom of your heart for the grace of conversion, so that you may be genuinely sorry and receive through absolution the grace of contrition and of firm resolve to cooperate with God's help in the avoidance of sin for the future."

That is how saintly priests have always succeeded in moving their penitents to sorrow for sin, thus avoiding laxity and Jansenistic severity.

The confessor who possesses genuine priestly charity readily absolves all sinners who are well disposed for the Sacrament or in whom he cannot find any sign of insufficient dispositions. And those who are not properly disposed he tries to move to sincere contrition.
If there is any doubt about the penitent's resolve to avoid sin in the future, the priest should not refuse him absolution unconditionally but promise to give it when the penitent is better disposed. A case in point would be when the priest is doubtful about the dispositions of those who have contracted habits of sin, of those who frequently fall into the same sin after repeated Confession and without any effort at emendation, and of those who are in the occasions of sin. [Cf. St. Alphonsus, Praxis confessarii, c. iv.]

The habitual sinner may be absolved as often as he seriously undertakes to employ the means necessary to overcome his habit, but he cannot be absolved if he refuses this undertaking.