Doubt IV: Whether one who omits all the Hours of one day commits several sins

By several sins we here understand those that are consummated by external omission; for if the will, merely internally, have determined itself concerning each individual hour to omit them, no one doubts that there are as many sins as there are repeated acts of will; since even thus one could sin several times about the same hour numerically, intending by a moral interruption to omit it altogether.

Some think and maintain that there are as many sins as there are hours omitted, in the same way as if you omitted some hour for ten consecutive days, or neglected the fast for one entire week of Lent; thus Lessius, book 2, chapter 37, dub. 9; Tabiena, v. hora, question 18; Frascus, on Justice, book 1, chapter 20, number 19; and it seems the view of Toledo, book 2, chapter 12.

They maintain this on a single argument which they suppose: because there are as many precepts of praying as hours omitted; and sins are multiplied by the multiplication of the precept.

Nevertheless fifteen Doctors maintain the opposite, in Diana, resol. 5, to whom add Tannerus, dispute 2, question 1, number 145; and Suarez confesses this to be the more common and sounder opinion, book 4 on the canonical hours, chapter 25, number 18.

There is one argument for all: because they are all parts of one office, and there is a single precept to recite them all as one total office; but the opposite argument is solved by this one, because the diverse parts of the same office, in relation to diverse days, cannot make one thing; a sign of which is that an hour habitually said today cannot, absolutely, be said tomorrow while preserving the precept; and yet each hour of the same day can be said validly and licitly at any time of that day.

Yet in relation to God it is just the same as if there were one sin or seven, since the malice is as great in seven as in one alone, they being equivalent; nevertheless Suarez urges that in confession the number of omitted hours be disclosed on account of the very aggravating circumstances.

There are, however, some, whom Suarez does not approve, who admit indeed that to omit several hours is one sin if it is done by a continuous, not a discrete, action, so that after Prime he omits Terce, and after this, the next following one; but that it is otherwise if after Prime he says Terce, and after this omits None, etc., in nearly the same way as it is one sin to maim a man now, and then, after some time, another sin to kill him.

But this reasoning, with respect to the office, is defective, since there is but one omission, even if in discrete parts; because an office is not said to be altogether omitted until the time prescribed for it has wholly passed; wherefore he who would determine in the morning hours not to say Prime, and afterward would say it, even after the other hours, up to the last point of the prescribed time, would not be said to omit Prime, although intending it he would have sinned, because no hour is omitted so precisely that it is not said in its time; since the inversion of hours can be done without sin, but because the will, in the very instant when the necessary time for saying them pressed upon him, persisted in the resolve to omit them.

Hence you have that it is one thing to omit certain hours in effect, another to omit them in fact; and this, I think, is to be noted on account of the censures impending over those who do not recite the hours; for he who would resolve in his heart to pass over some part of the office, as to the sin, which I call the effect of omission, has already omitted it, yet he would not undergo the censures until the last instant of time had passed, because up to that point he could have recalled the intended omission, and so avoided the censures.

Hence also you have that one censure would punish him who omitted all those hours in one day, because it is one sin; but otherwise if it should happen on diverse days.