Notice Necessarily to Be Read

The universal and distinguished esteem which the moral doctrine of St. Alphonsus always had has greatly increased among all from the time when the Saint was numbered among the Doctors of the Church. From this very esteem there arose the desire that, since it is lawful safely to put his genuine doctrine into practice, this doctrine should be written not only compendiously, but also in that method which would be more suitable for public lectures. For a long time it has been, moreover, among the wishes of our venerable clergy that in a compendious and methodical exposition of this kind of Alphonsian doctrine account be taken of the condition which is proper to our ecclesiastical Provinces and to these regions. I have endeavored, according to my powers, to fulfill the expectation of this desire by this little work of whatever kind. In this matter indeed I frankly confess that I have played the part of compiler rather than of author. For the doctrine which I hand down, and from which I have endeavored not to recede even the breadth of a fingernail, is the doctrine of St. Alphonsus; the things which pertain to our affairs I have taken for the greatest part from the Acts and Decrees of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore and from the Moral Theology which Kenrick, of good and clear memory, wrote, with his rather difficult and at times more obscure style somewhat changed. But most especially I turned to my own use the Compendium of Father Gury, whose method and order I have followed, and several of the notes which Ballerini, Cretoni, and the Ratisbon editor added to the same; yet with very many things added and changed, as will be plain to those who read through this fifth edition of my work, and striving before other things that I should bring it as completely as possible into conformity with Alphonsian doctrine. The things which I wrote about Probabilism I owe for the greater part to a friendly confrere; the things concerning the specific and numerical distinction of sins, and likewise very many things concerning scandal and cooperation in the sins of others, and concerning certain contracts, I have from the Notes of the distinguished Van Egeren. To the work whose title is Vindiciae Alphonsianae, I frequently refer the reader who desires more concerning certain questions.

The things which I have written from my opinion alone, or from that of others than St. Alphonsus, concerning certain points which are not touched by the Holy Doctor, I have labored, as much as I could, to hand down according to his mind. The things which I have taken from our civil laws, often in the vernacular idiom, I submitted to the judgment of a most illustrious jurist of our country, to whom I render due thanks in this place.

Lest the text of the compendium be unpleasantly interrupted, and in order that I might have regard for brevity, those Decrees, Declarations, and Instructions of the Supreme Pontiffs and of the Sacred Congregations which pertain to the moral matter, and which are longer and are not exhibited in the acts of our Plenary Council of Baltimore, and likewise the faculties which are customarily granted by the Holy See to our Bishops, I have placed before the work, referring the reader to them in their own places.

I judged also that I would do something pleasing to a disciple of St. Alphonsus, if I prefixed to the Compendium certain excerpts from the Vindiciae Alphonsianae concerning the excellence and authority of the moral doctrine of St. Alphonsus, and also a Key of his moral works, or Rules for discerning the genuine opinions of the Saint.

It remains that I declare certain abbreviations which I have used in this Compendium.

1 For the sake of those who use earlier editions here, or the second edition of Father Haringer, I note: What in this edition is inscribed Book II is, in the earlier editions, Book V; what is Book III here is Book II there; what is Book IV here is Book III there; what is Book V here is Book IV there.