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Roman Catechism
Necessity Of Satisfaction
Such being the nature of satisfaction, it will not be difficult to convince the faithful of the necessity imposed on the penitent of performing works of satisfaction. They are to be taught that sin carries in its train two evils, the stain and the punishment. Whenever the stain is effaced, the punishment of eternal death is forgiven with the guilt to which it was due; yet, as the Council of Trent declares, the remains of sin and the temporal punishment are not always remitted.
Of this the Scriptures afford many conspicuous examples, such as are found in the third chapter of Genesis, in the twelfth and twenty-second of Numbers, and in many other places. That of David, however, is the best known and most striking. Although the Prophet Nathan had announced to him: The Lord also hath taken a-way thy sin, thou shalt not , yet David voluntarily subjected himself to the most severe penance, imploring night and day the mercy of God in these words: Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin; for I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me. Thus did he beseech the Lord to pardon not only the crime, but also the punishment due to it, and to restore him, cleansed from the remains of sin, to his former state of purity and integrity. This he besought with most earnest supplications, and yet the Lord punished his transgression with the loss of his adulterous offspring, the rebellion and death of his beloved son Absalom, and with the other chastisements and calamities with which he had previously threatened him.
In Exodus, too, we read that though the Lord yielded to the prayers of Moses and spared the idolatrous Israelites, yet He threatened the enormity of their crime with heavy chastisement, and Moses himself declared that the Lord would take severest vengeance on it, even to the third and fourth generations. That such was at all times the doctrine of the holy Fathers in the Catholic Church, their own testimony most clearly proves.