Chapter V — By the authority of the Venerable Innocent XI, Supreme Pontiff, Probabilism is proved to stand condemned

I. Two decrees this supreme Pontiff published, by which Probabilism is overthrown: the one in 1679, directed to the universal Church; the other in 1680, given to the General of the Society of Jesus, in which he perspicuously declares that he detests Probabilism. See Tome 2 of the Apparatus, book 3, dissertation 3, chapter 2.

II. In the former decree four propositions are condemned, which are as it were the four hinges of Probabilism. I shall weigh them in few words. The third is this: In general, when we do anything relying upon probability, whether intrinsic or extrinsic, however slight, provided one does not depart from the bounds of probability, we always act prudently.

III. The Probabilists answer that the thesis was condemned on account of those two words, in general and always: because, they say, Judges and Confessors cannot use a less probable opinion. A futile response. For the Pontiff condemned separately the use of the less probable opinion in Judges and in the administration of the Sacraments. Others cavil that a slight probability is not true probability. A vain evasion. For in the proscribed thesis it is said: provided one does not depart from the bounds of probability. Therefore the use of true probability stands condemned.

IV. The other condemned proposition is this: I probably think that a judge can judge according to an opinion even less probable. Before the birth of Probabilism no theologian, so far as I know, taught this thesis. It is a legitimate offspring of Probabilism. Before the Pontiff's decree the Probabilists commonly defended it, as the Salmanticenses testify, treatise 29, chapter 1, point 4; and Fr. Camargo attests that about seventy Probabilists maintained, before the decree, both that a judge can use the less probable opinion, and all the rest. Therefore, by the testimony of seventy Probabilists, the use of the less probable opinion is condemned absolutely no less in respect of all men than in respect of judges. And with good reason did they assert it. For this is the single foundation of Probabilism: He who acts probably, acts prudently; therefore he acts licitly. Hence this principle either stands everywhere, or nowhere. They rejoin that he acts prudently who follows an opinion practically probable, not he who follows an opinion speculatively probable; and that the less probable opinion in the tribunal is only speculatively, not practically, probable. Why? Because practical probability regards the licit or the illicit; speculative probability meditates rights and laws. An opinion which decides to whom estates, fiefs, and fields are owed is not practical. A most amusing fiction! The judge, then, adjudging the estate to Peter according to the more probable opinion, judges according to an opinion speculatively, not practically, probable?

V. Terillus — easily the prince of reflex Probabilism — answers that the judge is bound to pronounce sentence according to what appears to him truer, every human affection being excluded. But why are not the judges of souls also bound to do the same? By no means, replies Fr. Terillus, On conscience, question 24, number 26, page 476, in these words: I answer that there is a disparity, because the Confessor forms the dictate of his own conscience dependently upon the dictate of the conscience of the penitent. For the penitent does not sin, nor is he excused from sin, through the judgments of the Confessor, but only through his own judgments. Therefore the Confessor, who must judge concerning the sin of the penitent, must look to the opinion which the penitent has followed in good faith; which opinion, even if directly less probable, excuses the penitent from sin, and therefore determines the Confessor to say that that opinion, though directly less probable, frees from sin the man who follows it in good faith. But the judge does not regulate his own judgment by the judgment of the litigants: otherwise he would have to pronounce sentence in favor of both. And so the judge regulates his own judgment and his own sentence by those things which seem more probable to himself, not to others; and therefore he must follow those things which he himself, all things weighed, judges to be more probable.

VI. Many of the Probabilists complain when we cry out with raised voice that these are unheard-of and portentous paradoxes. But I most humbly beseech them, and earnestly beg, that, prejudices laid aside, they be willing seriously to weigh whether this doctrine can be joined — I do not say with the Gospel, but with common sense. The Confessor forms the dictate of his conscience dependently upon the dictate of the penitent? Who can bear to hear this? The Confessor sitting in the tribunal either is, or is not, a judge. Who will deny that he acts the person of a judge? Therefore, as judge, he cannot depend upon the judgment of the penitent. If Confessors depended upon the judgment of their penitents, and not upon the laws of the Church and the divine law, penitents would always have to be absolved, and never bound. For no Catholic approaches the tribunal who does not have a dictate by which he judges that he ought to be absolved. For if they judged themselves unworthy of absolution, they would assuredly not approach it.

VII. Another disparity between the Judge and the Confessor the Probabilists commonly assign. The judge, they say, cannot follow the less probable opinion, because, if it be false, the evil is not avoided which thence befalls Caius, who loses his cause. On the contrary, if the less probable opinion which the Theologian follows be false, no evil follows: for the violation of the law is then material; and, on the other hand, God suffers no harm. So teaches Terillus, On conscience, question 24, number 53: God is incapable of all harm; he can only be dishonored through offense. But every offense is manifestly avoided through the good faith of the agent, reasonably established. And a man, in the case of the objection, is not bound to judge in favor of God; though the judge is bound to pronounce sentence for the more probable part. Terillus is followed by La-Croix, Viva, Segneri in his epistles, and the other Probabilists.

VIII. I am compelled, against the end of brevity that I set before myself, to transcribe the principal words of the Probabilists themselves: because readers would in no way believe that these paradoxes could have been devised by Theologians. God is incapable of all harm. True enough. Therefore so much diligence is not to be applied that his offense may be avoided, as must be applied that the temporal losses of a single man may be averted? What, I ask, is more unworthy of Christian ears? This response, the more common it is among the Probabilists, the more inept it is, and the fuller of scandal. For, this being granted, iniquity might be drunk like water, since God suffers no harm from it. How horrendous this is, everyone sees. That response is refuted on two heads. 1. The violation of the law, however material, is a grave evil in itself. That it is not imputed to you as fault, as the Probabilists contend, is per accidens, on account of invincible ignorance — if indeed it be present; but in reality it is a real transgression of the divine law. And this is a far graver harm than the evil inflicted upon Caius by the loss of his estate. Therefore, if the Judge sins, more gravely sins the Theologian using the lesser probability. 2. The Probabilists are evidently deceived when they say that this transgression is material in the Theologian, but not in the Judge. Tell me: why is the transgression of the law formal in the Judge? Because the Judge does not apply all diligence and industry to avoid the transgression of the law. Well and rightly said. But is not all diligence and industry morally possible perhaps necessary, absolutely and apart from any circumstance whatever, that the offense of God may be avoided? If you use the lesser probability, you do not apply the aforesaid diligence: because you not only neglect, but positively repudiate, all the probability that lies before you. Therefore you sin, just as, by the definition of the apostolic See, the judge sins. Therefore the use of the less probable opinion makes criminal in equal measure every Theologian who neglects to avoid the danger of the divine offense, as it makes criminal the judge who neglects to decline the danger of injuring the right of Caius. What do you mutter? Is greater diligence in finding the truth required in the judge of temporal things than in the judge of eternal salvation? Is this the prudence of Probabilism — to make more of temporal detriment than of the loss of eternal salvation? Is it not a monstrous prudence which in the least things, such as earthly things are, demands the utmost diligence, and in the greatest things, such as eternal things are, a lesser solicitude? Would God be too severe if, in the settling of controversies over his law, he commanded his judges the use of the greater probability — while those Princes are not severe, nor Rigorists, but benign, who command their judges that in controversies about eaves-drippings, about a beam, about an estate, they embrace the more probable doctrine? The whole of holy Scripture commands that we search the divine law, and love it above gold and topaz. The Probabilists, on the contrary, will have us love the civil law, which declares the rights of contracts, of estates, of sales, more than the law of God, and embrace the greater probability in these causes. This is the benign probabilistic Theology. Although it be more verisimilar to you that your action violates the law of God and offends God himself, provided it be probable that you will not violate the law, you act prudently and holily in performing the action which you more probably judge to violate the Law and to contemn God. On the contrary, a civil judge would be unjust and criminal if he applied this rule.

IX. The last disparity, finally, devised by the Probabilists is this. A pact intervenes between judges and the Commonwealth, that judgments be pronounced according to the more probable opinion. But by this pact Theologians and Confessors are not bound. But whence do the Probabilists prove this pact? Their prince answers, question 24 On conscience, number 15, Terillus: For this presumed will, from the very constitution of nature, is equivalent to a pact, and has the force of a pact. This pact the other Probabilists obtrude, especially Fr. Paolo Segneri: they obtrude this pact, I say, as the last anchor to which they tie their shipwrecked Probabilism.

X. This anchor is of straw, and chimerical. That pact, limited to civil judges alone, is fictitious. Nay, I say that this pact has been implanted by the author of nature in all men. This pact is a fruit of the divine light signed upon the countenance of all souls. The civil Commonwealth elects its judges. The ecclesiastical Commonwealth elects its judges — Bishops, Parish priests, Confessors, Theologians. Whence, I ask, do the Probabilists have it that the civil Commonwealth, but not the sacred, enters into a pact that judgments be pronounced according to the more probable opinion? Whence does the knowledge of so great a secret shine upon them? What foundation urges that this pact be instituted in the lay Commonwealth, but not in the sacred? Does the Commonwealth, insofar as it is sacred and ecclesiastical, make less of truth and justice than the lay and civil Commonwealth? In the first centuries of the Church, Bishops and Parish priests were chosen as judges of civil causes among Christians. The same often happens even today. Do those judges, outside of confession, judge according to the more probable opinions, but in the sacred tribunal according to the less probable? Will they free, in the sacred forum of penance, from restitution, from usury, from simony, the litigant whom in the lay tribunal they judged liable to restitution, or guilty of usury, according to the more probable opinion? If civil Principalities and Commonwealths impose on their chosen judges the burden of embracing, in controversies of temporal things, the greater probability, does the Catholic Church absolve her judges of eternal things from that burden? If the civil Commonwealth chooses judges more learned and more skilled, does the Church choose men less learned, less skilled, less upright? Holy Scripture, Exodus chapter 18, cries out: Provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, in whom is truth — it does not say, probability. Likewise Ecclesiasticus [recte Osee] chapter 7 [recte 4]: Woe to you for ever and beyond, because there is no truth in you.