Chapter IV — On gaming and wagering

I. QUESTION I. Is a game undertaken principally for the sake of gain vicious? ANSWER. Gabriel, Toletus, and others affirm it. But others deny it. It is no sin, says de Lugo, disputation 31, to ordain a means to an end which is useful, if the end be lawful. Gain is a lawful end. Therefore the game also. This opinion, which I repute false, St. Thomas disapproves, II-II, q. 77, art. 4, where he lays down that merchandise itself, which is for the sake of seeking gain, has a certain baseness, because it serves cupidity. Public or private utility renders it lawful. A game by its own nature is instituted for the recreating of the mind. The end of a game is the solace of the mind, not gain. Therefore gain disturbs the order, and turns the game away from its end.

II. This gainful game the younger authors place among contracts, and define it: a contract in which a thing exposed by either party is attributed to the victor of the contest. They assign three conditions that it may be lawful. First, that the players have the free faculty of disposing of the thing which they expose in the game. Hence they say that those sin who play with a robber, a boy, a depositary, a fool, a son of a family, a prodigal, a cloistered religious. Second, that the game be lawful it is required that the one do not induce the other to the game by frauds, guiles, or reproaches. Third, that no frauds against the laws of the game intervene.

III. I reject this gainful game as never lawful, and as pernicious to families and to the commonwealth. The conditions which the younger authors prescribe can hinder a greater malice, but they cannot confer honesty upon a gainful game. The degree of malice I know not, although I know that a gainful game is vicious. Those who accidentally and against custom should lay out some money even principally for the sake of gain I would not condemn of grave fault. On the contrary, those who in the custom of playing were engaged principally for the sake of gain I would not free from grave fault, nor would I absolve them, unless they left off this custom. Since scarcely, and hardly even so, does it happen that grave absurdities do not follow such a custom. At first the game is undertaken for the sake of delighting the mind; but that in its progress and end it falls away into avarice and the ruin of families, experience teaches.

IV. QUESTION II. Is a game of hazard or fortune lawful? ANSWER. The civil laws themselves, Digest, On the Use of Dice, laws 1, 2, 3, severely forbid this game. There are added the peculiar laws of every kingdom, and canon law, chapter Episcopus, distinction 35, where laymen giving themselves to dice are deprived of communion, and upon clerics, deacons, and priests the penalty of deposition is imposed. The Council of Trent, session 22, chapter 1, renews the ancient canons against clerics giving themselves to dice.

V. And so a game of chance or hazard for the sake of gain is by its own nature vicious. Besides, games of cards which depend not upon industry but upon fortune, such as are the games commonly called Bassetta, Faraone, Trissac, and of dice, carry with them so many dangers that I would admit no one to the sacraments unless he first left off and said farewell to these games. Aristotle says that these gamesters and robbers are the same. Concerning the games of cloistered religious see what I have written in the Apostolico-Monastic Discipline, dissertation 6, chapter 4.

VI. Those who set out public tables for gaming, and receive players into their own house, sin mortally and are to be kept from the sacraments, as even the more kindly authors commonly affirm. Similarly St. Antoninus in his Formula of Confession, part 1, chapter 3, and part 2 of the Summa, title 1, chapter 23, § 13, teaches that makers of cards and of dice are not to be absolved. The opposite not a few teach. See what has been said concerning scandal.

VII. QUESTION III. Are wagers, commonly called scommesse, lawful? ANSWER. Sylvester, Gabriel, St. Antoninus, and others deny it. But the younger authors commonly affirm it. The discourse is not of wagers which are wont to be made by accident for the sake of recreation, but of gainful wagers, which are commonly wont to be made upon the outcome of wars, upon the victory or loss of players. Wagers of this kind can scarcely be purged of vice.

VIII. Cardinal de Lugo, disputation 31, section 6, no. 74, teaches that a wager can lawfully be made which will come about with the loss of a neighbour: because, he says, although occasion be given to the wagerer of wishing for Peter's death, this nevertheless is by accident. And at no. 75 he adds: It is inferred, secondly, that neither is it of its own nature unlawful to make a wager upon a sin to be committed by some third party. So Sánchez with others. What is the object of that wager? A sin. Is it honourable? What is the end? Gain. Is it holy? Holy, says Augustine, is that which we will. But it is more often not holy but depraved and vicious. For the paradoxes of Fr. Caesar Callini concerning gainful games, see Vol. VII, Book 3, dissertation 4, chapter 15.