Chapter II — Lax propositions of certain Authors

I. Fr. Tommaso Tamburini, book 1 on the Decalogue, chapter 3, number 10: "We shall say below, book 2, that a Beneficiary possessing a slender benefice is not obliged, according to a probable opinion, to pay the canonical Hours. What, then, will happen, if, all things weighed, it is doubted whether a benefice is slender or not? Answer: I think it probable, with Vasquez, that he is obliged; and equally probable, with Caramuel, that he is not obliged. Wherefore it is lawful to embrace whichever of these opinions pleases you."

II. The same Tamburini, book 2, method of celebrating Mass, chapter 6, number 5: "Thus he who, while hearing Mass by precept, or paying the divine office, should voluntarily turn over in his mind a philosophical question, or think about his own affairs, provided he kept an external attention — that is, provided he did not set up external distractions of the kind we spoke of at number 1 — would, according to the probable opinion stated, sufficiently fulfill the precept."

III. Fr. Georges Gobat, treatise 5, number 821: "It is far more probable that the essence of prayer consists with perpetual distractions, or wanderings of mind. So Cardinal de Lugo from principle. Tamburini, book 4 on the Decalogue, chapter 2, § 1."

IV. Juan Caramuel, in Theologia Fundamentalis, number 442: "I am a man, more fragile than myself, endowed with a keen and fiery temperament. In one moment I turn over the heavens, in the next I descend to the underworld. No fly moves in the Oratory which is not an impediment to me. I desire to attend to the reading, and I attend so far as I can; but I do not avoid distractions — involuntary a thousand times, sometimes even voluntary; and nevertheless I am tortured by no scruple, troubled by no doubt: because I prudently suppose that I am not bound to the internal act; that to have it is a good thing, and that to lack it is not even a light fault; that I am bound only to the reading and to external attention: that I have recited all that the Rubrics command I know so certainly that I could swear it: therefore that I have not sinned even venially in this matter I know so certainly, and so certainly that I could swear it."

V. Leander of the Most Holy Sacrament, treatise 8, disputation 5, question 37: "I answer, secondly, that it is also more probable that even the daily Preacher, who preaches daily in Lent only voluntarily, or even for a wage, is excused from saying the daily Hours, if he cannot conveniently recite them. And surely if this our opinion were not probable, and safe in practice, woe, woe to the Lenten Preachers: a thousand times woe to them."

VI. The same Leander, place cited, question 45: "One can excellently exercise and occupy himself in the contemplation of divine things, even if from it he be so carried away into ecstasy that afterward he can by no means recite — either because he is rapt for the whole day, or because from it he remains so fatigued and worn out that he cannot easily do so."

VII. Gobat, treatise 5, disputation 11, number 842: "It is more probable that one is bound to no restitution who has recited all the Hours with voluntary and perpetual distractions."