Reply #21: I have to disagree with this, doctrinally

[Maeve]

The problem was that, according to traditional Church doctrine, a person cannot be punished for a sin they have been forgiven for. When someone repents, it is not our place to question the validity of their repentance or whether or not they really meant it.

You still have to make up for the consequences of the crime; the sacrament only remits the eternal punishment, not the temporal (yeah, Baltimore Catechism talk, but that was my first double-check resource! Question #277 --"Why does God require a temporal punishment as a satisfaction dor sin?" "To teach us the great evil of sin and to prevent us from falling again." And in the note to #275--"Thus Adam, Moses, Aaron and King David were forgiven their sins but were nevertheless punished.")

More of a problem was that the bishops and other priests thought they knew more about how to "prevent another fall" than they did--pride, in other words. They were foolish enough to leave the alcoholic alone behind the bar over and over again--leaving them in "a near occasion of sin".