§ II. On the Voluntary Placing of De-Obligating Causes

110. • De-obligating causes from observing the law can be placed either directly or indirectly, according as the agent is moved either by the end of withdrawing himself from the obligation of the law, or by another cause, nevertheless with the impediment of observing the law foreseen.

Besides, causes of this sort can be either proximate or remote, according as the law urges either shortly, or only after a notable interval of time.

Principles. - I. It is always licit to place exempting causes, and more probably even directly and proximately. The reason is that it is licit for each one to withdraw himself from the dominion of the law, for example, by seeking a place where the law is not in force ¹. - St. Lig., no. 156.

¹ ** Namely, the law obliges you to observe it as long as you remain a subject: but it does not oblige you to remain a subject. The same must be said if someone fortifies himself by a privilege, lest he be held by some law, for example, of abstinence from flesh meat, to evade which he devotes himself to the service of some hospital, or receives the Bull of the Crusade.

II. But it is not licit directly to place impeding causes, whether proximate, or even remote: the reason is that as long as someone is subject to the law, he cannot will to infringe it without such a will being a violation of the law itself ². - Reuter, no. 198.

² ** Generally this does not seem true. And indeed who will condemn him who, lest he fast, devotes himself through Lent to the service of the sick laboring under plague?

III. Indeed it will not be licit even indirectly to place proximately impeding causes, unless a proportionate necessity is present from elsewhere. The reason is that a law proximately urging proximately binds the will, and binds it to applying the necessary means lest the law be violated, and therefore to not throwing in impediments.

IV. But more probably it is licit, even without reason, to place remote and indirectly impeding causes. The reason is that the legislator is not considered to wish to confine liberty so greatly ³. For it would be too grave a burden if each one, long before the obligation of the law, were bound to abandon all works unable to be joined with that obligation, and to wait for the time of the obligation. - Lacroix.

³ Concerning the obligation of avoiding causes which impede, for example, fasting, hearing Mass, and things of this sort, Suarez excellently has these things (On Sins, disp. 3, sect. 4, no. 10): In order that these omissions be indirectly voluntary, and therefore imputable to fault, it is necessary that they not only be foreseen, but be such that the precept obliges to avoiding, for example, sickness, lest they follow: but positive precepts do not oblige to this except when the omissions follow proximately and, morally speaking, as though at the same time. From this it is also effected that when those omissions are not directly willed... they are rarely imputed to fault; because those positive precepts do not oblige with so much rigor that on account of this someone is held with so much rigor to guard beforehand against all those things which can impede their execution.

But when a cause must be considered proximately impeding, and when only remotely, can scarcely, or not even scarcely, be established by some general norm. And indeed that which precedes the time of fulfilling the precept by a space of several days is customarily held as remotely impeding; but the mind of the legislator and the gravity of the thing prescribed, and also the judgment of prudent men and the practice of the upright, must always be kept before the eyes. - See Sanchez, On the Decalogue, book 1, ch. 15, no. 4.

111. Resolves. - 1. He sins who on a fast day without just cause undertakes some labor by which he becomes unable to fast; the reason is that a law proximately urging demands that without just cause an obstacle not be placed to fulfilling it. - St. Lig., Apostolic Man, no. 20.

2. But it is certain that excommunicates are held to seek absolution from censure, so that they can satisfy the divine precept of paschal Communion. The reason is that divine precepts urge more strictly than human ones, and undergo human interpretation less. - St. Lig., Apostolic Man, no. 21. For the same reason, with paschal time already begun, you cannot go away to a place where you will not be able to communicate, without first having satisfied the precept itself. - Lacroix, no. 791.

3. He does not sin against the precept of hearing Mass who begins a journey foreseeing that on the following Sunday he will not be able to hear Mass. Yet he is not excused who does this when the precept is already urging at least morally, namely either on the same feast day or one or another hour before. Except unless some necessity or just cause intervenes.

4. Tailors and shoemakers sin who on the day before a feast day do not prepare necessary garments and shoes, if they can do this without grave inconvenience. - Reuter, no. 199. - See Cases, no. 103 and following.