Background
It was occasioned by the following incident: A Jansenist priest, ostensibly the confessor of a dying ecclesiastic, proposed seven questions to the doctors of the Sorbonne for solution. The most prominent of these questions was the one whether absolution can be granted to an ecclesiastic who confessed that he rejects, in the sense of the Church, the five propositions condemned by Pope Innocent XII as Jansenistic; but, since it was not clear to the penitent that these propositions are actually contained in the Augustinus of Jansenius, he thought it sufficient to observe a "respectful silence" (silence respectueux) concerning this question of fact, and, with this restriction, signed the formula prescribed by Pope Alexander VII.
Forty doctors of the Sorbonne, among them Ellies Du Pin, Petitpied, Bourret, Sarrasin, and Natalis Alexander, decided that absolution could not be withheld, since the case was neither new nor extraordinary, and since the penitent's opinion was not condemned by the Church. Though the decision was given secretly on 20 July 1701, the Jansenists published the case in July, 1702, with the signatures of the forty doctors of the Sorbonne. As probable authors of the "Cas de conscience" are mentioned: Eustace, the confessor of Port-Royal; Fréhel, curé of Notre-Dame-du- Port, at Clermont; Du Pin; Petitpied; Alquebille Perrier; and others.
Whoever may have been its author, Roulland, a doctor of the Sorbonne, edited it, and Cardinal Noailles knew of its existence before it was published, and is even said to have promised his own signature.
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