Article II: On the Consent of the Will

320. DEFINITION. Consent is the acceptance and complacency of the will in that which is proposed by the intellect.

Those things which precede consent or dissent must carefully be distinguished from the very act of the will consenting or dissenting. For although that act by which a man says in his heart, I will, or I do not will, is most simple: nevertheless, before the will gives full consent, very often it proceeds through certain distinct degrees, so to speak; this procession and gradation appears especially in the first mortal sin which is committed by an innocent person, or in a relapse into grave sin after long amendment, or in the transition from internal sins to external sins, or in the deliberation of perpetrating enormous crimes.

Therefore temptation precedes the consent of the will; in temptation man has himself passively. Hence there is solicitation to sin through motives alluring to it, together with a certain indeliberate delectation, which spontaneously follows in the inferior part, concupiscible or irascible; hence inclination, or propensity of the will. Finally there is deliberation of the mind weighing spiritual motives calling away from sin, and motives of sensible good alluring to evil. All these things precede consent, which is had only then when the will comes from potency to act by saying: I will, I accept; or to dissent, by saying: I do not will, I reject (V, 3; Pacetti, Synops. doctr. mor., p. 9).

DIVISION. Consent is distinguished in many ways, as was said above concerning the voluntary (n. 272).

321. PRINCIPLES. I. For every sin the consent of the will is required (V, 5). The reason is clear, because without consent the voluntary is not given, and therefore imputability is not given. The will is the principle and proper cause of sin, according to that saying (Matt. 15:19): For from the heart come forth evil thoughts, adulteries, etc. Whence St. Thomas teaches (1.2, q. 15, a. 4; q. 74, a. 7) that sin is not judged consummated unless the superior part of the soul has consented to it.

Nevertheless express or direct consent is not required; implicit or indirect suffices: for he who wills the cause also wills, though only indirectly, the effect. But merely interpretative consent by no means suffices, namely the consent which someone would have if he were placed in such an occasion. For interpretative consent is not consent, but only a certain disposition to consent: which disposition is not to be imputed as sin unless in some way it passes into act (VI, 610, obj. 4).

II. For a sin of omission a positive act of the will is required; namely the purpose of omitting the prescribed work: "For the will is not exercised nor does it sin, except through an act" (V, 9; H. Ap., III, 45). Whence an act by which the will at least chooses to have itself negatively is required, not indeed on the part of the work, but on the part of the one operating, as the internal cause of the omission (cf. n. 322, q. 2; 324, Reg. 2, 4).

322. Questions. QUAER. 1. How does he sin who has himself negatively, and does not positively resist a movement of the sensitive appetite, concerning an object gravely evil? (V, 6-9; H. Ap., III, 42).

It is noted beforehand. 1. Those movements are especially of pleasure and anger. 2. Resistance, or solicitude not to consent, can be, by reason of intensity, simple displeasure, a good purpose, express unwillingness; by reason of mode, direct, that is, contrary to the sensitive movement, or diverse, that is, by conversion to other things; by reason of act, positive, if it posits an act of resisting, negative, if it does nothing.

Resp. 1. If the danger of consent is only remote, the true opinion holds that it is venial not to resist illicit movements positively, but not mortal. The reason is: a) "because consent to sin gravely does not proceed from appetite, but from the will, which, when it does not positively consent, does not commit a mortal sin; ... b) because, if we were bound under grave obligation to repel positively all inordinate movements, we would be bound to the impossible: for it is impossible," as Cajetan says, "positively to coerce all these movements taken collectively." Nevertheless, resistance must be made "insofar as man ought to beware lest appetite draw the will after itself; but this obligation, when the danger of consent is not proximate, is only light." Cf. St. Thom., 1.2, q. 74, a. 4.

2. Where the danger is proximate, as when vivid "venereal delectation supervenes, we are bound under grave obligation to resist it positively, for example, by praying, by eliciting an act of the love of God; because movements of this kind, when they are vehement, for the most part, if they are not positively repelled (at least through an act of simple displeasure), draw with themselves the consent of the will." Thus the Doctors commonly. "It also suffices, in the act of commotion, to divert the soul to other things, since this very thing is to resist positively" (cf. n. 378).

Note. If the movements are light, it will be better to despise them.

3. If a just cause is present, "there is not an obligation of resisting carnal movements positively, namely: a) if someone has learned by experience that by resisting the movements are rather excited and increased; b) if the movements have arisen from a necessary or useful action, for example, from hearing confessions, from reading base things useful to be known, from touch necessary for healing, and the like ...; c) if the temptation lasts long, and it would be too troublesome continually to repel the movements positively."

In these circumstances "it will be enough to have oneself negatively (or permissively), with the firm purpose of never consenting; for the very actual care of not consenting then suffices to free man from fault, at least mortal fault, even if not from venial, if the resistance (solicitude not to furnish consent) is tepid."

QUAER. 2. Whether INDIRECT consent suffices, so that the omission or action following from it is in itself sin, in other words, so that the omission and the action themselves are sinful?

Resp. 1. Some deny it, because such an omission (or action), while it occurs, is not voluntary in itself, and because there is no liberty; whence it will be sin only in the cause.

2. The truer opinion affirms it. The reason is because, although for a sinful omission (or action) it is required that the voluntary be present, nevertheless the voluntary in the cause suffices, and the necessity, if it is present, is a consequent necessity which does not take away liberty (St. Alph., IV, 149; V, 10; VII, 40). But the depraved effect is called sin not from itself, but in itself, insofar as it proceeds from a cause not retracted, morally persevering, and is joined with that cause, forming with it one moral being, in almost the same way as an exterior act is denominated and is in itself sin, not from itself, but from the interior act, in which alone there is formal malice. Therefore, since that sinful effect constitutes a true sin, it must necessarily be declared in confession.¹

Hence: a) The gravity and species of sins committed from indirect consent depend entirely on the actual advertence which was directly present in the preceding consent, by thinking of vincible ignorance and of the obligation of laying it aside: because there the formal element of sin is found. But their number (unless it was already determined in the very foresight) depends on the positing of the acts proceeding from the cause not retracted; because then the material element is joined to the formal, for constituting as many sins as there are acts.

b) Sin voluntary only in the cause is imputed inchoatively and with respect to affection from the time at which its cause is knowingly posited; but consummatively and with respect to the effect, when it is completed externally in work. Whence, if the cause has been posited, although the effect has not occurred, or by reason of another supervening reason has become licit, nevertheless all the sins determinately foreseen in the cause are to be declared in confession as internal sins; on the other hand, if the effect has followed, it is not enough to confess only the cause which was posited with foresight of the sinful action or omission, but the very sin really committed must also be confessed (V, 10; cf. I, 170).

c) If the cause is not evil in itself, it assumes the malice of the effect alone: in which case it suffices to confess only the effect, for example, if play was the cause why the sacred rite was omitted. But if the cause was evil in itself, not only the effect, but also the cause, must be declared in confession: for example, if someone omitted the sacred rite in order to steal something. Nevertheless one sin can be declared separately from another (V, 9, note 2).

d) Effects are no longer imputed as sin if the cause has been retracted at least implicitly, through universal contrition, and has been removed as far as possible. For, although the effect, in its physical and material being, simply depends on the cause already posited, nevertheless it does not obtain the denomination of sin except from the cause (the past will) morally persevering, insofar as this has not been retracted through penance. Therefore, where a man repents of the cause which he posited, the effect can no longer be called sin. Thus a priest who neglected the study of theology, if once in life he truly grieved for his sins, by that very fact retracted his negligence; and consequently neither the errors which he commits, nor the harms which follow from them, are imputed to him, unless perhaps he adverts anew to his ignorance and culpably does not lay it aside.

What must be observed from this doctrine with respect to censures, and with respect to restitution, will be said in their places (n. 1264 and 978). Cf. VII, 368.