CHAPTER I: ON THE OBLIGATIONS OF CHILDREN TOWARD PARENTS

419. • Children are bound toward parents by a most special obligation. But three offices must be exhibited to parents by children by title of piety, namely love, reverence, and obedience. For parents have a threefold respect to children, namely by reason of cause, by reason of preeminence, and by reason of governance. Consequently children ought to love them as the authors of their existence, reverence them as Superiors, and obey them as rectors delegated by God.

Children ought to love parents with love both internal, pursuing them with a pious and benevolent affection of heart, and external: 1) warding off from them every evil and notable injury; 2) exhibiting to them signs of external benevolence; and 3) aiding them according to their capacity when they are constituted in necessity.

420. You will resolve. - 1° Children sin gravely against the virtue of piety if interiorly they hold parents in hatred; exteriorly exhibit signs of hatred to them; treat them harshly, or look upon them with fierce eyes, just as if they had hatred.

2° A fortiori, if they wish evil to them, and death itself, that they may live more freely, or be able to possess their inheritance, or that they may be liberated from the care and custody of them; if they gravely detract from them before others; if by force, deceit, or other unjust means they impede them from making a testament, etc.

3° Likewise, if they provoke them to anger, and bring grave sadness on them without a just and grave cause, especially if they sadden them even to tears.

4° If they do not furnish food and other necessaries to parents gravely in need, compelling them to begging or to exercising an art unbecoming to their state; if they do not visit them when sick, afflicted, or worn by old age, or do not sympathize with them and refuse to bring help to them; but especially if they do not aid them in spiritual necessities, namely that Sacraments be administered to them in the article of death, etc. Finally, if, when they have departed this life, they do not take care that the obsequies and ceremonies of the Church be performed in a manner congruent with their condition, or do not pray for them.

421. • Children ought to exhibit to parents reverence both internal, so that they recognize them as Superiors and therefore also have reverential fear toward them; and external, which is placed in words and deeds.

422. You will resolve. - 1° Children sin gravely if they strike parents, even lightly, but injuriously. - Likewise if they show the will of striking, for example by raising the hand against them, or seizing a stick or another instrument for striking. Likewise if in any manner they threaten them with menaces of this sort, etc.

2° Likewise if from the soul or in their presence they curse them; or if they cast insults against them, and afflict them with injuries or contumelious words by which they know they will be gravely offended; if they gravely mock them with laughter, sneers, gesticulations, reproaches, derisions, fierce aspect, etc., provided nevertheless that these things are done from contempt, not from levity or simple rusticity.

3° Speaking of itself, they sin gravely if they reprehend them very proudly and bitterly, exasperate them by contradictions, or address them with harsh words, or without cause afflict them with grave sorrow; and a fortiori if through these things they provoke them even to grave anger; if they studiously refuse them the signs of reverence according to the custom of the fatherland or of their condition, for example if they do not rise when they come, or do not uncover the head, or do not greet them, provided nevertheless that from these things the parents judge themselves gravely offended.

4° Likewise if they despise poor, wretched, badly clothed parents, or blush for them, or refuse to acknowledge them, or regard them as unknown and strangers. Except, however, if, with contempt and pride excluded, they pretend for a just cause that they do not acknowledge them, for example to avoid some inconvenience which the son would incur if his parents were known, etc.

Quaer. Do children sin gravely when striking or treating badly and irreverently parents who are dull, insane, delirious from old age, drunk, etc.?

Resp. Affirmatively, if they act from malice or contempt. - Negatively, if rebuke or some somewhat severer treatment is necessary for restraining parents lacking reason.

423. • Children ought to furnish obedience to parents in all things: 1) licit and honorable; 2) pertaining to their care; while 3) they live under their power.

424. You will resolve. - 1° Children sin more or less if in a matter looking to morals, the salvation of the soul, and the governance of the house they are unwilling to hear their parents, although want of consideration or defect of age excuses them in part. - Hence they sin:

a) If, notwithstanding the serious prohibition of parents, they frequent wicked companionships, games of chance or other games of this kind, or dangerous places, as taverns, dances, theaters, or other similar places; daughters especially sin who, against the will of parents or even without their knowledge, converse with suitors, or go out from the house by night, or speak alone with lovers.

b) If, with the command of parents neglected, they notably omit the Sacraments or other offices of religion; if they are unwilling to give attention to letters or arts congruent with their state, and thus consume time and render useless the expenses made for them.

c) If they refuse to execute those things which look much to the good governance and peace of the family, or if they wish to administer all things according to their own judgment, with the authority of the parents spurned, especially if they respond arrogantly and proudly: I will not do it; conduct your own business. - I do not want anything to be prescribed to me. - You bring weariness and disgust upon me, etc.

2° Yet not rarely in practice the disobedience of children can be excused from grave sin because of levity of mind, inadvertence, or because of a certain human negligence, and very often because of smallness of matter. Indeed they must often be judged immune from every fault because of defect of a rigorous precept on the part of the parents. For in order that a sin, especially a grave one, be committed against obedience, it is required that parents seem strictly to prescribe, not merely to advise, solicit, or signify their mind. But a true precept being enjoined is discerned from the serious or severe manner in which the matter is prescribed, and from other adjuncts, for example from the necessity and magnitude of the thing prescribed, from a penalty appended, etc.

3° But in depraved things children neither ought to obey nor can they. This is plain from natural law.

425. Questions. - Quaer. 1° Are children bound to obey parents in the choice of state?

Resp. Negatively, of itself, because: 1° God calling must be obeyed more than men contradicting; 2° in those things which pertain to the nature of the body, man is not bound to obey man, but God alone, because all men are equal by nature: "Hence... children are not bound to obey parents concerning contracting matrimony, or preserving virginity, or some other thing of this kind." St. Thomas.¹ Therefore parents sin gravely who compel unwilling children, either directly or even indirectly, to choose a state, whether religious, clerical, or conjugal; or on the contrary, if without a just cause they impede them, altogether unwilling, from choosing some state of life.

I said, of itself; for otherwise it must be said if parents, because of grave and reasonable causes, contradict children, for example if, constituted in grave necessity, they need the aid of the son, nor can he assist them here in another way except by remaining with them. - St. Alphonsus.²

Quaer. 2° Can children embrace the religious state without the knowledge of parents?

Resp. Affirmatively, of itself. Indeed sometimes the son will act more advisedly if, feeling himself divinely called to the religious or clerical state, and noticing that entrance will be unjustly closed against him by parents, he conceals the matter from them and executes the divine will. Yet this is not to be advised to children younger in age as often as the matter does not press so greatly, or it is not sufficiently established concerning the divine vocation.³

426. • Quaer. 3° Can children enter matrimony without consulting parents?

Resp. Negatively, generally speaking, as to liceity. See what is to be said in the Treatise on Matrimony, n. 1548. q. 8°-q. 10°.

Quaer. 4° What do our civil laws generally establish concerning the obligations of children toward parents?

Resp. I. Concerning the love to be exhibited to them by aiding them when they are constituted in necessity, neither the Common Law nor the Statutes of most States compel adult offspring to this, however rich.¹

II. Our laws prescribe love, reverence, and obedience in this sense, that they attribute to parents (that is, to the father, and, with him lacking, dead or legally impeded, to the mother, and, with both either dead or legally impeded, to the tutor) the right to everything which coheres with the sustenance and education of offspring, minor nevertheless. Hence among other things: a) the obligation of offspring to seek the consent of parents² for licitly entering matrimony; b) the right of domestic correction;³ c) the right of placing offspring with strangers so that they may learn some art or trade, which right nevertheless is variously limited in various States;⁴ d) the right that they can reclaim offspring from whatever place, for example from a monastery which the offspring had entered.