Question IX: When one who swears incautiously from habit sins mortally

IT IS ASKED here whether rash oaths, emitted out of habit without full investigation of the truth, are mortal.

IT IS ASSUMED, moreover, that oaths of this kind arise from a habit that has not been retracted; for if you have the resolve to uproot it, the oaths are not judged to remain formally out of habit, but only materially, and involuntarily, and hence it matters nothing for culpability. So notes Sanchez lib. 3. cap. 5. Suarez lib. 3. de Iuram. cap. 6. num. 8. Manuel primo Tomo summae, cap. 191. n. 12. et others with Bassaeus V. Iur. 4.

THE FIRST opinion says that such oaths are lethal, because, if they are false, they are perjuries of themselves; and if they are true, this is still only per accidens; and as far as the swearer's side is concerned, they were undertaken with the danger of falsity. So Francis, and Didacus Victoria, in certain rules of the confraternity of the name of Jesus, Alcozer cap. 15. fol. 50. Medina lib. 1. summae, cap. 14. §. 4. Manuel primo Tomo summae, cap. 191. num. 11. Petrus Ledesma 2. Tomo, tract. 11. cap. 3. dub. 4. dicto 2. Lopez, citing Ioannes de Penna p. p. Instruct. cap. 42. Raphael de Turri 2. 2. quaest. 88. art 3. dub. 3. Tannetus hic, num. 10. et disput. 1. quaest. 8. dub. 7. Azorius tract. 1. lib. 11. cap. 3. quaest. 3. et others cited by Diana; Caietanus 2. 2. quaest. 89. art. 3. Navar. summae, cap. 12. num. 6. Valentia 2. 2. disp. 6. quaest. 7. puncto 3. Sayrus lib. 5. cap. 5. num. 10. Armilla V. Periurium, ubi et Caietanus, et Angles flor. 2. part. quaest. unica de voto, art. 1. diffic. 3.

THE SECOND opinion is that oaths of this kind, by force of habit, are not mortal. So Maior 3. dist. 39. quaest. 4. Scotus there quaest. unic. art. 1. Pitigianus there art. 7. Angel. V. Iuram. 3. Sylvest. V. blas. quaest. 4. Antonin. p. p. tract. 10. Sotus de abusu iuram. cap. 12. Suarez lib. 3. cap. 7. de Iuram. Reginald. tract. 2. lib. 18. cap. 6. sect. 3. num. 85. Sanchez sum. Tom. 1. lib. 3. cap. 5. num. 28. Ioan. Sancius select. dub. 10. who bring forward D. Thom. quaest. 98. art. 3. ad 2. Durandus 3. dist. 39 q. 5. Richardus there art. 3. quaest. 2. Paludanus quaest. 2. art. 1. Rubio quaest. 1. art. 2. et others, whom Diana heaps up part. 3. tract. 5. miscell. resol. 62. ubi ait, a grave burden falls, not only on penitents, but also on confessors of the opposite opinion. And they assert the same entirely also of one who blasphemes out of habit. For my part I would not refuse this, if some displeasure at least had preceded, as with Layman lib. 5. tract. 1. cap. 3. Tanner in the place cited, and Bassaeus above.

AS FOR D. Bonaventure, first, he speaks thus in the place cited: There is a certain kind of oath that is not deliberate, as when one swears in common speech, not attending to whom he invokes, nor to what, but out of a certain habit; thus it is not a mortal sin but venial, because of this, that the tongue is set on slippery ground. So the Holy Doctor in the body of that question. But in the reply to the third, where the number 24 is marked, he says: When someone swears out of a certain habit, or in jest, not deliberating about the excellence of the truth in testimony of the one invoked, he does not properly contemn, because there it is rather a due omission of honor, and a certain negligence, than the infliction of insult.

WHENCE D. Bonaventure seems to intend only that one is then excused from mortal sin by reason of habit, when one swears because of a slipperiness partly natural, partly contracted, and of such a kind that it cannot morally be retained. Thus he also seems to understand dist. 28. quaest. 3. in corpore, where he explains the slipperiness of the tongue by that saying of D. James 3: He who offends not in word, the same is a perfect man. Thus D. Thomas also seems, who says: He who swears falsely from a slip of the tongue, if he does not advert to it, does not seem to have the intention of swearing, and therefore is excused from the crime of perjury. Thus both seem to be for the first opinion.

THEREFORE I ASSERT with the first opinion that such oaths are mortal.

IT IS PROVED first from D. Bonaventure lib. 3. Pharetrae, cap. 3. in fine from D. Augustine lib. contra mendacium, cap. 15. where he says: I say to you, do not swear at all, lest by swearing once, one comes to facility in swearing, from facility to habit, and from habit falls into perjury.

THE LIKE things are had from D. Chrysostom homil. 14. ad populum, where he says: it is evident that one who swears much will of necessity fall into perjury; D. Isidore lib. 10. Synon. cap. 10. where he says: Assiduity in swearing makes perjury, and lib. 2. de summo bono, cap. 31. While we make use of the habit of swearing, we incur the crime of perjury. D. Bernard Libro de modo bene vivendi serm. 31. where he says: The use of swearing leads a man to perjury.

FINALLY D. Bonaventure, at the end of the question cited, appends that of Ecclesiasticus 23: Let not thy mouth be accustomed to swearing, for in it are many falls.

IT IS PROVED secondly. Those sins that are willed in their cause are infected with their natural malice, if they have been foreseen, or ought to have been foreseen: and their malice is increased even by the subsequent evils; as I showed in the first part of the second part concerning sins committed in drunkenness, Tract. 3. disput. 1. quaest. ultima: but willed perjuries are in a habit which the swearer does not will to uproot: Therefore they have the malice of their perjury, which is a sin mortal by genus. The minor is proved, because he voluntarily deprives himself of due discretion, and of the necessary examination and scrutiny of the truth, and so exposes himself to the danger of perjury; and consequently, even if he says the truth, he is still guilty of perjury, according to the rules handed down with Sanchez quaest. 7.

SANCHEZ num. 28. answers our argument, and from it erects his own reason; for these rash oaths are not directly voluntary, as is clear, because that inadvertence was invincible; for if it were vincibilis, it would by no means excuse even him who swears not out of habit, which is false; nor are they voluntary indirectly, for what is indirectly willed he seeks, so that one can and is bound to avoid it: but at the time at which one swears inadvertently, he cannot avoid it.

THEN, sins arising from ignorance culpable at the beginning, and foreseen in their cause, as happens in the foreseen sins of drunkards, are affected with no new malice, but are denominated evil by sole extrinsic denomination from their cause. So also these inconsiderate oaths have malice only in their own cause.

BUT these do not solve the problem; for that inadvertence in customary swearing is vincibilis, being foreseen, and can be removed together with the habit itself itself, and so it draws from it new malice, as we said of the sins of drunkards, and proved at length in the first part of the second part, in the place adduced. Therefore he who is accustomed to swear thus, and does not care to uproot that habit of swearing inadvertently, wills that inadvertence; and the perjury that follows from it; as the drunkard wills the loss of the use of reason, and fornication, blasphemies, and other things committed inconsiderately in it, which, since they were foreseen, or ought to have been foreseen, add new malice to drunkenness, as I said in the place cited. And so it follows that it is a mortal sin, if the willed habit of swearing be the whole cause, or gravely influencing, while, adverting to the habit, he does not try to uproot it, does not grieve, does not resolve to abstain. Indeed, that I may grant the opposite opinion for the quiet of conscience, I shall admit it in the dispute on Perjury, quaest. 3.