Article III: On Consent in the Act, or on Desire and Joy

St. Thomas, I-II, q. 74, a. 7, 9.

456. Morose delight, desire, and joy differ: the first regards present time because it is concerned with an object insofar as it is here and now present to us by cognition; desire regards the future because it is an act of the will wishing for an evil thing; finally joy regards the past and is complacency or approval of an evil work perpetrated by the one rejoicing or by others. In other words, morose delight is consent in the thought present delight alone and not in the act itself; desire is also consent in the future act and in the act to be placed; joy in the past act and in the act placed.

1. If the act were present so that the sin were committed here and now, delight concerning it as present would not be morally distinct from the sin.

2. "It is wrong to confuse consent in a past act with consent in the delight of a past act thought of as present, which is morose delight." Waffelaert, De Virtutibus Cardinalibus, p. 323.

By reason of the object, desire is twofold: efficacious or absolute, which is called proposal, when someone proposes to perform the work; inefficacious or conditioned, when he wills that the work be performed by himself or by another under a certain given condition, for example, if nothing stood in the way, if he could, if it were licit, etc. This is not conditioned on the part of the will but on the part of the object: for it is not a merely interpretative will which someone does not have but would have if he knew something (this does not exist), but an actual will which he has here and now and by which he now establishes and intends that he would will the work to be performed if the condition were given.

457. Principle I. Absolute desire and joy have the same species and gravity of malice, mortal or venial, which the work has about which they are concerned, to be perpetrated or perpetrated, with all known circumstances (Matt. V, 28): for the interior act of the will has malice from the exterior act as from the object; for desire tends into the work really to be placed and consequently not as represented in the intellect as delectable but as it is on the part of the thing, and joy is concerning a past work as it was, and each tends into all the circumstances which are in the work and are not separable from it in the concrete. Whence, by difference from morose delight, desire contracts the malice of all circumstances, even those which are not held as delectable nor are the motive of the will.

Thus, for example, he who desires to sin with a married woman, not because she is married but because she is beautiful, is guilty of adultery; and he who wills to steal a sacred thing, not because it is sacred but because it is precious, is guilty of sacrilege. "In practice, however, it not rarely happens that desires are not referred to an object altogether determined, but rather to something generic. For example, someone desires to take revenge on his enemy, without determining the mode by which he wills that revenge; or someone desires to sin carnally with a person of the other sex, without being conscious to himself of the special act to be committed. In these cases it suffices to confess: I willed to take revenge on my enemy, or I willed to sin with a person of the other sex" (Prummer, Theologia Moralis I, n. 403).

458. Principle II. Conditioned desire, under a condition which takes away all malice from the object, per se is not sin, yet often it is idle and sometimes dangerous. Hence:

a) in all things prohibited only by positive right, desire under the condition "if it were not prohibited" is licit;

b) in things prohibited by natural right, naturally or ordinarily illicit or illicit outside a state, but licit in some case or state, desire is licit (although dangerous) under the condition of this state or case, for example: I would kill Peter if God commanded it; I would take a wife if I were not a religious; I would hang a thief if I were a judge; I would have intercourse with her if she were my wife;

c) things prohibited by the right of nature as essentially evil, which are never licit, are never licitly desired, because malice cannot be separated from them, for example: if it were not sin, I would will to blaspheme, to commit sodomy, to perjure myself, to avenge myself, etc.; for an impossible condition cannot take away malice.

Locutions of this kind, however, rather often only signify a natural propensity into such an object, without affection toward it, so that the sense is: I am inclined to blaspheme but I do not will it on account of the law of God; and then they are not sin. On the contrary, if it were a true desire or consent in the work, or if the sense were: I would will blasphemy not to be sin, which would still be worse than the simple desire of blasphemy.

459. Principle III. Conditioned desire, if the condition partially takes away the malice of the object, is sin, but less than absolute desire: namely, it puts on the malice which remains in the object, but does not contract that which was taken away. Thus if someone were to say: if I were not a priest I would fornicate, he would contract the malice of fornication, not of sacrilege, because the condition takes away the malice of this.

460. Principle IV. Conditioned desire, if the condition, as not pertaining to morality, in no way takes away the malice of the object, puts on its malice with all the circumstances. - The reason is that even conditioned desire consents and tends into the external work according to itself and as it is on the part of the thing. Thus if someone were to say: I would fornicate if there were no hell; if I could secretly, I would take revenge.