Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/659

 L I G U O 11 I 637 whether even such a modified expression of dissent from his teaching as occurs in the Apologia of Cardinal Newman in 1864 be now feasible without risk of censure. For the letters apostolic of Pius IX. declare that the works of Liguori may be used publicly in the same manner as the writings of other doctocs of the church, such as Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Thomas Aquinas ; with, however, this notable difference that, whereas the teaching of those earlier doctors is necessarily qualified and conditioned by the subsequent development of theology, and by the suc cessive glosses which they have received, on the other hand, Liguori s recent date makes him the sole authoritative interpreter of all moral theologians earlier than himself, while no writer has yet appeared to modify authoritatively, much less to supersede, his own moral teaching. It may seem, at first sight, that a great advantage is gained by having thus a standard text-book on morals, even if some exceptions may be taken to its rulings in certain cases, because it may be expected to check serious divergency of opinion, and to put, indirectly at least, a high ethical ideal before the body of religious teachers. This, however, can be the case only when such a text-book expressly repudiates the principle of probabilism, and so comes to be ranked amongst rigorist works. For once probabilism is conceded as part of the system, as is the case with Liguori, then every opinion not officially con demned by authority, which is set down in the text-book itself, and is fortified with the names of any casuists of repute, becomes thereby probable and sanctioned, even though it be not the one professed by Liguori himself. Thus it may freely be followed by any priest in the confes sional ; and, what is yet more startling, it is the common and preferable doctrine that a penitent in confession can require absolution to be given him as a right, if he claim to have followed a probable opinion as to the act involved, even though not only the opposite opinion may be the more probable in the confessor s judgment, but that of the penitent seem absolutely false, and the confessor is there fore bound sub gravi to absolve in such a case (Lig., Theol. 3 for., vi. 605) ; nor is it necessary that the opinion which the penitent advances should really convince or satisfy his own conscience. It is enough that it stands in the books, and is citable. Accordingly, the only practical effect of such a text-book as Liguori s is to undermine all rigorist propositions, and to make tenable every lax proposition, except the very few which have been specifically condemned. As regards Liguori himself, his usual method is to begin with taking very high ground, and to state in unexception able terms the moral obligation of the precept w,ith which he is concerned, but then to evacuate it of all real force by exceptions and qualifications. That such was felt to be the case, even in the relaxed society of his own day, appears from the frequency with which, even before his death, his moral teaching was impugned in Italy and France as of dangerous consequences, and from the number of apologies he was obliged to put forward in its defence. He lays down broad general propositions, such, for example, as that all voluntary departure from the divine rule, whether of human and natural law or of revealed law, is sin (Theol. J/o?-.,ii. 1, 1); that nearly all sins against the decalogue are mortal sins (Ibid., ii. 52, 2); that all sins, whether mortal or venial, deserve punishment (Ibid., ii. 51, 1, 2); and, specifically, that all lying and falsehood is a breach of one precept of the decalogue (Ibid., vi. 1, procem.}, and all theft and dishonesty a breach of another (Ibid., iv. 518) ; but the favourable impression which such un impeachable rulings produce is not maintained on further inquiry. In the first place, he lays down that, to make any act sinful, three conditions must be fulfilled : (1) it must be done with consent of the will ; (2) it must be free, that is, it must be in the power of the will to do it or leave it undone ; (3) there must be intellectual consciousness (advertentia) of its evil nature. These look specious enough, and against the first no objection can be raised. But Liguori then alleges that violent gusts of passion or desire, which disturb the reason, and take away liberty of action, sometimes excuse from sin (Ibid., ii. 1, 2). He is not speak ing of actual insanity, which is not under consideration ; and he adds that evil acts done by a drunken person are either not sinful at all, or are at most venial sins (Ibid., ii. 1, 4), because the effect cannot be more sinful than the cause. And as to the degree of advertence necessary as a condition of sin, he first mentions the stricter view 7, that actual and immediate attention to the nature of the act is not required, but that a virtual knowledge of its character suffices, by which a man might reasonably be expected to recognize it, since otherwise all evil-doers who are blinded by their passions, or by a long course of malpractices, may go on taking no notice, and continue to commit sins with moral impunity. He then states the laxer and com moner view, that some direct advertence of the sinful nature of the act is necessary to constitute sin in doing it, and proceeds to reconcile these two opinions by ruling that voluntary ignorance, whether due to conscious neglect, to deliberate following of passion, to a course of evil habit, or to omission of the degree of consideration which the act demands, does not excuse from sin ; but that all other forms of it do acquit the offender. The obscurity insepar able from some of these qualifications complicates a sufficiently simple matter, and in any case the doubter is at liberty to fall back on the laxer opinion. But there is one exception ; unbelievers and heretics cannot plead ignorance as their excuse. All their errors, of whatever kind, are imputed to them as sin (Ibid., ii. 1, 4). A further difficulty is created by the distinction made between mortal and venial sins, and by the inferences drawn from this distinction. &quot; A mortal sin is that which, by reason of its gravity, dissolves grace and friendship with God, and merits eternal punishment. It is called mortal, because it takes away the principle of spiritual life, that is, habitual grace, and brings death on the soul. A venial sin is that which, by reason of its slightness, does not take away grace and friendship, though it abates the warmth of charity, and deserves temporal punishment. It is called venial, because, without damage to the principle of spiritual life, that is, grace, it brings on the soul an easily curable weakness, and easily obtains pardon&quot; (Ibid., ii. 51). This seems at first merely a recognition of the broad practical distinction between serious and trifling offences acknowledged by every sound ethical thinker and by every civilized penal code. But its consequences go much further, for in the Roman system of casuistry the aim is as a rule to attenuate mortal sins into venial ones ; while these latter are regarded as of such little moment as scarcely to deserve the very name of sin. This appears from the fact that, whereas the canon (xxi.) Omnis iitriusque sexus fidelis of the council of Lateran (1215), which first made private confession compul sory, enjoins the confession of all one s sins at least yearly, on the other hand, the council of Trent (Sess. xiv. c. 5) lays down that only mortal sins need be so disclosed, while venial sins, though they may be named in confession, according to the practice of devout persons, can be passed over in silence without any fault. And Liguori gives his own sanction to the proposition that a Christian does not sin gravely who proposes to commit every one of the venial sins (Tkeol. J/b?-., v. 1, 12). Such being the light estimate of these sins, it might be fairly supposed that great care would be taken to mark them off so clearly from mortal sins that even the least instructed conscience could not