ARTICLE II: ON THE OBLIGATION OF A PROMISSORY OATH

371. Principles. - I. Every promissory oath concerning a licit and honorable thing, besides the obligation of justice or fidelity which arises from a simple promise, also induces an obligation of Religion. The reason is that the promise already obligates of itself, and it is confirmed and strengthened by divine testimony invoked. - But an oath concerning an illicit or wholly useless thing does not obligate at all, because an oath, as an act of Religion, cannot be a bond of iniquity or of an idle thing.

II. The obligation of an oath is to be interpreted strictly, and follows the nature of the act or contract to which it is added, and all its conditions. The reason for the first is that the one swearing is judged to have willed to obligate himself as little as he could; but the reason for the other is that the oath does not change the nature of the act, but adds to it only the obligation of Religion, and hence ought to have the same conditions and limitations.

III. The obligation of an oath is moreover to be interpreted according to the tacit conditions included or understood in it, which are: 1° if I shall be able without grave damage; 2° if the matter shall not have been notably changed; 3° if the rights or will of the Superior do not stand in the way; 4° if the other shall have preserved reciprocal faith; 5° unless the other cedes from his right.¹

372. Questions. - Quaer. 1° Is smallness of matter given in the transgression of a promissory oath?

Resp. The FIRST OPINION denies, because not only a simple promise is violated, but a sworn promise. Therefore in any matter whatsoever grave injury is inflicted on God, whose testimony has been invoked in vain by the one swearing. - Bonacina, Lessius, Toletus.

The SECOND OPINION affirms, because in a promissory oath God is not properly brought forward as witness of the future execution of the thing promised, but only of the actual promise, or of the true intention of executing the promise. - Suarez, Navarrus, Laymann, etc. - St. Alphonsus in the Work² says each opinion is probable; but in the Homo apostolicus³ he adheres more to the second opinion.

Quaer. 2° Does a promissory oath emitted by error or deceit obligate?

Resp. Negatively, if the error or deceit concerns the substance of the thing; but otherwise if it affects only its accidental adjuncts; because a simple contract would be invalid in the former case, but not in the latter. St. Alphonsus.⁴ Yet the same St. Alphonsus⁵ notes that the opposite opinion is probable when the error or deceit concerns those circumstances which, although accidental, if they had been known from the beginning, would have deterred from the oath and promise.

373. • Quaer. 3° Does a promissory oath extorted by grave and unjust fear obligate?

Resp. It is disputed. The more common OPINION, and in St. Alphonsus⁶ by far the more probable, affirms, because an oath, acceding to a contract not invalid of itself, must be preserved from Religion as often as it can be preserved without sin. But the one who has suffered fear can either rescind the contract by force of laws, or seek relaxation of the oath, that he may be excused from the obligation of paying; but if he has already paid, he can demand back in court what he gave, or compensate himself secretly.⁷ Cf. n. 867.

Quaer. 4° How does the obligation of an oath cease?

Resp. 1° It ceases intrinsically, as a law does, by cessation of the motive cause (n. 165).

Resp. 2° It ceases extrinsically by irritation, commutation, and dispensation, as a vow does, concerning which we shall speak in the following chapter. It also ceases by relaxation or remission of the obligation made by him in whose favor the sworn promise was emitted, because anyone can yield from his own right.

374. You will resolve. - 1° He who swore an evil thing is never obligated by the oath; indeed he sins doubly if he fulfills the oath, namely against Religion and against the virtue to which the matter of the oath is opposed.¹

2° He who confirmed a prodigal promise by swearing is not obligated by the oath, because that promise is at least lightly evil. - Thus Suarez, the Salmanticenses, and others commonly with St. Alphonsus, who admits this as more probable.²

3° He who swore that he promised marriage to a rich, healthy, virgin girl of good reputation is not obligated if she falls into poverty, infirmity, infamy, or fornication, because then the simple promise does not obligate.³

4° He does not sin against the oath who, for the sake of civility, swore that he would not sit, drink, enter the house, etc. before another, if compelled by the other he sits, drinks, or enters first; because generally an oath of this sort is null from defect of intention of swearing; or, if it is valid, it is relaxed by the other.⁴

5° He does not sin who reveals a sworn secret when the law itself of the secret ceases to obligate; because an oath, as we said, follows the nature of the act to which it is joined.

6° Parents rarely sin when not fulfilling an oath of punishing children, because generally the oath concerns a useless thing, or rather disordered vengeance; added to this is that the delinquents either are already corrected, or at least have promised amendment.⁵

7° Generally merchants also do not seem to be bound by an oath not to sell for less, or not to buy for more; either because oaths of this kind are, for the most part, concerning a useless thing, or because those men do not have the mind of swearing, or certainly because in the oath there is the tacit condition, unless matters seem to go better otherwise. - Thus more commonly.

8° The oath by which alumni of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide bind themselves (see p. LXXIII, note 2), and those who here or elsewhere are ordained to the title of the American Mission, that they will not enter any Religion or Congregation without permission of the Holy See, is valid, since it is in favor of a third party.¹ Besides, the condition added, without permission of the Holy See, causes no one to be prohibited absolutely from entering Religion. (x) p. 473.

But it is violated: 1) if someone, when the Bishop commands, should refuse to receive the Orders of diaconate or priesthood; 2) if he should refuse to betake himself to that place of the diocese in which the Bishop shall have judged that he ought to labor unto the salvation of souls; 3) if through his whole life he is unwilling to remain in the same diocese, or employs crafts and deceits to withdraw himself from the authority of the Bishop, or by this manner of acting introduces for the Bishop the necessity of dismissing him; 4) if he enters a religious Order without due permission.

Yet they are not to be judged to sin: a) subdeacons who, by the counsel of a confessor or agitated by scruples, would be unwilling to be promoted to the diaconate, or deacons who for the same reason would be unwilling to be promoted to the priesthood; b) those who for a grave cause seek leave of passing to another diocese; c) those who, knowing themselves not suitable, either from defect of knowledge, or because of infirmity of soul, decline the burden of laboring in the vineyard of the Lord; yet they ought not to trust their own judgment against the mind of the Bishop and confessor.²

9° Oaths imposed for securing observance of odious laws, or laws which are of strict interpretation, as, for example, those which pertain to customs duties and other burdens, are to be reduced to the narrowest limits which the words allow.³ - Resolve the same if those laws were unjust or are deservedly presumed unjust.⁴

For one or the other of these reasons, and often for both, those seem to be excused from perjury who see to it that a double document (invoice) of the goods which they have bought, for example from Europe, be permitted to themselves: one in which the lesser price of the goods is described, another in which the greater is noted; and, with only the former exhibited, swear that they bought at the price which is reported in this former one, provided nevertheless that the formula of the oath is not of such a kind as to preclude the possibility of broad mental restriction.

It happens besides that a merchant who paid the duties defined by law could scarcely gain anything by trading for the support of himself and his own, and this for the reason that either the duty is really excessive, or defrauding the duty as to this kind of merchandise has become common, from which it has come about that merchandise of this sort, if the whole duty is paid, cannot be sold at the price at which, because of common defrauding, it is generally sold. Such a merchant also seems to be excused, if he swears with words used in the strictest sense which they allow;¹ for in these cases the tax law has become unjust, either because it imposes an excessive burden, or because practically, namely from the fact that it is preserved by almost no one, it would burden too much the merchants who preserved it.

Nevertheless officials sin most gravely who, against the oath by which they have bound themselves, accept gifts so that they allow goods to be brought in immune from duty or under a duty lower than that which has justly been established.