Section — Marc, Institutiones Morales
§ 2. On the Order of Charity Among Neighbors Themselves
- PRINCIPLES. I. With love of complacency, more excellent and holier creatures are to be loved before the rest. "He who is better," says St. Alphonsus with Busenbaum, "is to be loved more, and with that love which is accompanied by joy concerning goods possessed, likewise honor, worship, and reverence. Thus holy men are to be loved more than wicked parents, parents more than children or wife, benefactors more than those to whom we do good" (cf. n. 479).
II. With love of benevolence, those who are nearer to us are to be loved more. But these ought to be preferred to others according to those goods in which conjunction or friendship is founded. The reason is that, on account of the special bonds by which God has bound them to us, we ought to apply greater zeal to providing for them goods not yet possessed, and to forestalling impending evils. Whence the Apostle says thus (1 Tim. 5:8): But if any man have not care of his own, and especially of those of his house, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.
Corollaries. A. As regards the application of the rules.
In goods pertaining to preserving nature and bodily life, if the necessity is extreme, or quasi-extreme, on both sides, parents, since they have given life, are to be preferred to wife and children. If necessity on both sides is only grave or middling, help is to be given: a) to wife, because she is one flesh with the man; b) to children, as those for whom by natural right parents are bound to provide more than children are for parents; c) to parents, and indeed to the father before the mother, because the father has the more excellent notion of principle; d) to brothers and sisters; e) finally to relatives, domestics, and familiars.
"In matters pertaining to civil communication, fellow citizens are to be preferred; in military matters, fellow soldiers; in spiritual matters, spiritual sons, fathers, brothers. Yet Bannez probably teaches that carnal parents, even in spiritual matters, are to be preferred before all others: because carnal conjunction is the foundation of other conjunctions."
Per accidens it can happen that he who would naturally be placed after another is to be preferred to him, because attention must be given not only to the conjunction of persons, but also to necessity and to the goods to be procured. Thus a good mother, useful to the offspring, can be preferred to a bad father harmful to the offspring. Likewise a son necessary to the household matter, to a useless and clamorous wife (Kon., n. 279). Likewise a friend who snatched you from death is to be loved more than a brother who wished to inflict it on you.
B. As regards inversion of order and gravity of fault.
Inversion of order as regards necessity, if it is a question of grave or extreme necessity, contains grave sin; because it wounds charity in grave matter, by taking away the order itself.
Inversion of order as regards conjunction of persons is a grave sin if the excess is notable; for example, if in grave matter strangers or remotely joined persons are preferred to those proximately joined. It is a light sin if the excess is slight; for example among those proximately joined, as among parents, spouses, and children, among whom it is not openly established who is really to be preferred (Aertnys, tr. 3, n. 45).