Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/27

 SIN

SIN

compatible with its fulfillment (I-II, Q. Ixxii, a. 5). As regards their malice, sins are distinguished into sins of ignorance, passion or infirmity, and malice; as regards the activities involved, into sins of thought, word, or deed (cordis, oris, opcris); as regards their gravity, into mortal and venial. This last named division is indeed the most important of all and it calls for special treatment. But before taking up the details, it will be useful to indicate some further dis- tinctions which occur in theology or in general usage.

Material and Formal Sin. — This distinction is based upon the difference between the objective elements (object itself, circumstances) and the subjective (ad- vertence to the sinfulness of the act). An action which, as a matter of fact, is contrary to the Divine law but is not known to be such by the agent con- stitutes a material sin; whereas formal sin is com- mitted when the agent freely transgresses the law as shown him by his conscience, whether such law really exists or is only thought to exist by him who acts. Thus, a person who takes the property of an- other while believing it to be his own commits a mate- rial sin; but the sin would be formal if he took the property in the belief that it belonged to another, whether his belief were correct or not.

Internal Sins. — That sin may be committed not only by outward deeds but also by the inner activity of the mind apart from any external manifestation, is plain from the precept of the Decalogue: "Thou shalt not covet", and from Christ's rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees whom he likehs to "whited sepulchres . . . full of all filthiness" (Matt., xxiii, 27). Hence the Council of Trent (Sess. XIV, c. v), in declaring that all mortal sins must be confessed, makes special mention of those that are most secreti and that vio- late only the last two precepts of the Decalogue, add- ing that they "sometimes more grievously wound the soul and are more dangerous than sins which are openly committed". Three kinds of internal sin are usually distinguished: delectatio morosa, i. e. the pleas- ure taken in a sinful thought or imagination even without desiring it; gaudium, i. e. dwelling with com- placency on sins already committed; and desiderium, I. e. the desire for what is sinful. .\n efficacious desire, i. e. one that includes the deliberate intention to realize or gratify the desire, has the same malice, mortal or venial, as the action which it has in view. An inefficacious desire is one that carries a condition, in such a way that the will is prepared to perform the action in case the condition were verified. When the condition is such as to eliminate all sinfulness from the action, the desire involves no sin: e. g. I would gladly eat meat on Friday, if I had a dispen- sation; and in general this is the case whenever the action is forbidden by positive law only. When the action is contrary to natural law and yet is permis- sible in given circumstances or in a particular state of life, the desire, if it include those circumstances or that state as conditions, is not in itself sinful: e. g. I would kill so-and-so if I had to do it in self-defence. Usually, however, such desires are dangerous and therefore to be repressed. If, on the other hand, the condition does not remove the sinfulness of the action, the desire is also sinful. This is clearly the case where the action is intrinsically and absolutely evil, e. g. blasphemy : one cannot without committing sin, have the desire — I would blaspheme God if it were not wrong; the conihtion is an impossible one and there- fore does not afTect the desire itself. The pleasure taken in a sinful thought {delectatio, gaudium) is, gen- erally speaking, a sin of the same kind and gravity as the action which is thought of. Much, however, depends on the motive for which one thinks of sinful actions. The pleasure, e. g. which one may experi- ence in studying the nature of murder or any other crime, in getting clciir idea-s on the subject, tracing its causes, determining the guilt etc., is not a Bin; on the

contrary, it is often both necessary and useful. The case is different of course where the pleasure means gratification in the sinful object or action itself. And it is evidently a sin when one boasts of his evil deeds, the more so because of the scandal that is given.

The Capital Sins or Vices. — According to St. Thomas (II-II, Q. cliii, a. 4) "a, capital vice is that which has an exceedingly desirable end so that in his desire for it a man goes on to the commission of many sins all of which are said to originate in that vice as their chief source". It is not then the gravity of the vice in itself that makes it capital but rather the fact that it gives rise to many other sins. These are enumeratied by St. Thomas (I-II, Q. lx.\xiv, a. 4) as vainglory (pride), avarice, gluttony, lust, sloth, envy, anger. St. Bonaventure (Brevil., Ill, ix) gives the same enumeration. Earlier writers had distinguished eight capital sins: so St. Cj-prian (De mort., iv); Cas- sian (De instit. coenob., v, coll. 5, de octo principaH- bus vitiis); Columbanus ("Instr. de octo vitiis princip." in "Bibl. max. vet. patr. ", XII, 23); Alcuin (De virtut. et vitiis, .xx\di sqq.). The number seven, however, had been given by St. Gregory the Great (Lib. mor. in Job. XXXI, xvii), and it was retained by the foremost theologians of the Middle Ages.

It is to be noted that "sin" is not predicated univo- cally of all kinds of sin. "The division of sin into venial and mortal is not a division of genus into species which participate equally the nature of the genus, but the division of an analogue into things of which it is predicated primarily and secondarily" (St. Thomas, I-II, Q. Ixxxviii, a. 1, ad lum). "Sin is not predicated univocally of all kinds of sin, but primarily of actual mortal sin . . . and therefore it is not necessarj' that the definition of sin in general should be verified except in that sin in which the nature of the genus is found perfectly. The definition of sin mav be verified in other sins in a certain sense " (St. Thomas, II, d. 33, Q. i, a. 2, ad 2um). Actual sin primarily consists in a voluntary act repugnant to the order of right reason. The act passes, but the soul of the sinner remains staineil, deprived of grace, in a state of sin, until the disturbance of order has been restored by penance. Tliis state is called hab- itual sin, macula peccati. rcatus culpa; (I-II, Q. lx.\xvii, a. 6).

The division of sin into original and actual, mortal and venial, is not a division of genus into species be- cause sin has not the same signification when applied to original and personal sin, mortal and venial. Mortal sin cuts us off entirely from our true last end ; venial sin only impedes us in its attainment. Actual personal sin is voluntary bj' a proper act of the will. Original sin is voluntary not by a personal voluntary act of ours, but by an act of the will of Adam. Orig- inal and actual sin are ilistinguished by the manner in which they are voluntary {ex parte actus); mortal and venial sin by the way in which they affect our relation to God {ex parte deordinationis). Since a vol- untarj' act and its disorder are of the essence of sin, it is impossible that sin should be a generic term in respect to original and actual, mortal and venial sin. The true nature of sin is found perfectly only in a personal mortal sin, in other sins imperfectly, so that sin is predicated primarily of actual sin, only second- arily of the others. Therefore we shall consider: first, personal mortal sin; second, venial sin.

III. MoRT.\L Six. — Mortal sin is defined by St. .\ugustine (Contra Faustum, XXII, xxvii) as "Dic- tum vel factum vel concupitum contra legem a;ter- nam", i. e. something said, done or desired contrary to the eternal law, or a thought, word, or deed con- trary to the eternal law. This is a definition of sin as it is a volunt.ary act. As it is a defect or privation it may be defined as an aversion from Gofl, our true last end, by rea-soii of the ]>reference given to some mutable good. The definition of St. Augustine is accepted