Question One: On Injuries in the Spiritual Goods of the Soul

344. Injury can be done in spiritual goods. - Spiritual goods are understood as not only supernatural goods which are immediately ordered to eternal salvation, namely, the grace of God, infused virtues, the right to the sacraments, etc., to which the clerical and religious state also pertain, but also natural goods such as the use of reason and free will, natural sciences, arts, and other things of this kind. Concerning all these there can be injury, because for these to be increased, obtained by use, acquired, or not omitted, everyone can have a strictly so-called right, and therefore there can be an obligation of restoring, if restitution is possible.

Whence 1) he who by an unjust means (fraud, force, fear instilled) inflicts spiritual damage on another or impedes him from obtaining a spiritual good (for example, entrance into religion), is bound to repair the damage inflicted as much as is possible; namely, he must remove force, fear, fraud, if they still endure, repair goods taken away or impeded if this is possible, and make good real damages following therefrom and foreseen at least in confusion: for everyone has a strict right that evil not be inflicted on him by an unjust means.

Likewise 2) he who from justice, namely, from office, stipend received, or contract, is bound to instruct, warn, correct his neighbor, refresh him with the sacraments, and neglects this, is guilty of injury and is bound, as much as he can, to repair the negligence and make good damages following from it, for example, a pastor who has been negligent.

On the contrary 3) he who without an unjust means inflicts spiritual damage on another or impedes him from obtaining a spiritual good (for example, by bad example, counsel, illicit prayers), is bound not from justice but only from charity to repair the damage: for injury is not inflicted on one who knows and consents, and therefore there is no obligation of restoring, unless nevertheless someone is bound from office to draw him back from evil.

345. General conclusions are easily deduced from the foregoing:

1. He who, by poison, medicine, or other means, deprives another not consenting of the use of reason, memory, free will, is guilty of grave injury and is bound to employ means, if there are any, by which the use may be recovered, and to repair damages following therefrom and foreseen at least in confusion.

2. Similarly if someone by force, fear, fraud, turns someone away from the study of letters or arts, or does not allow him to use acquired knowledge or art.

1. If someone teaches a practical error from which some evil besides the error follows for someone, he is bound to revoke the error, and to compensate the whole damage which has arisen therefrom for the one deceived or for a third party and was in some way foreseen.

2. If the error is merely speculative, for example, concerning the number of the stars, per se there is no obligation of restoring, because it is against truth alone, not against justice; nevertheless an exception is made:

a) if the error inflicts damage, as if it is concerned with dogmas of faith, especially principal ones, or with a very fundamental or universal principle from which many false conclusions arise in a matter of great moment, because such an error would pervert the intellect;

b) if the one deceiving is a teacher from office, or from contract, indeed even if without stipend and voluntarily he has undertaken the office of teaching.

In these cases he must withdraw the error.

1. If someone by force or fraud induces another to sin or draws him back from obtaining a special good, for example, from religious profession, from frequenting the sacraments, he is bound from justice to restore, that is, to remove the unjust means and to recall the other to the good, if the latter cannot of himself return to the former state: for although the other consented by sinning, nevertheless the consent is not full because he did not consent to the deception and violence employed.

2. He who without an unjust means (by bad example, persuasion, prayers) induces to sin, does not sin against justice, but against charity alone, because injury is not done to one who knows and consents. Whence there is no obligation of restoring, unless someone from office is bound to draw him back from evil (for example, a superior), or induces him to sin against justice, because then he is unjust, not toward him whom he induces to consent, but toward the third party whom he affects with injury, since he cooperates with the sin.

3. If there is question of material sin to which by force or fraud someone induces another, it does not seem per se to be a sin against justice, although per accidens it can be, if it inflicts grave detriment, as if it causes a habit of sinning or infamy.

346. Special conclusion as to the religious state.

1. If someone by force or deceit impedes another from entrance into religion, or draws a novice out of religion, he is bound from justice to restitution, by removing the force and deceit, retracting what he falsely said, compensating the spiritual or temporal damages which have arisen; but once force or fraud has been removed, no obligation of justice exists.

2. But if by force or fraud he draws a professed person out of religion, he is bound to restitution also toward the religion itself.

3. Those who without any motive refuse profession to a novice sin against justice, because, by admission into the novitiate, the novice acquires a right to profession, from the implicit contract by which the religion obligates itself to admit him if he is found worthy and duly performs the required offices.

4. A novice who in bad faith, namely with the intention afterward of going away and not professing, enters religion, is bound when leaving to compensate the food which he received, the value of useful works which he furnished being deducted.

347. Danger for the use of reason and liberty, as also for morals, is apt to arise from hypnotism.

Its origin was animal magnetism, which first, in the year 1774, Dr. Mesmer (+ 1815), a Viennese physician, set forth doctrinally. He thought that he had found a marvelous means of healing in a subtle fluid which, similar to magnetic force, is supposed to flow from the bodies of animals, indeed to pervade absolutely all bodies, and to be able to be transmitted through suitable means, and that by it diseases are healed.

The effects are: a sweet heat, deeper sleep, general or partial insensibility, somnambulism. It is produced by gestures of the hands, magnetized substances, a simple nod of the will expressed by words. It gave rise to rotating tables, and gradually degenerated into diabolical superstitions by which women see, hear, speak, know hidden, distant, marvelous things which otherwise are unknown to them. Hence per se it is not illicit; but per accidens, as to preternatural phenomena or superstition (S. Off., 28 July 1847 and 4 Aug. 1856). Braid attributed the phenomena produced to suggestion, and thus hypnotism was born.^{1 2}

¹ [§347] Yet there is, as Prummer testifies, a difference: in magnetism the use of reason and liberty is never lost, which happens in hypnotism.

² [§347] Concerning hypnotism, among others, the following can be consulted: Mercier, Psychologie; Bernheim, De la suggestion et de ses applications a la therapeutique; Franco, L'hypnotisme revenu a la mode; Masoin and Lefebvre, Rapport et discussion sur l'hypnotisme a l'Academie de medecine de Belgique; Guibert, Essai sur l'hypnotisme; Moreau, L'Hypnotisme, etude scientifique et religieuse; Surbled, La morale dans ses rapports avec la medecine; Lescoeur, La science et les faits surnaturels contemporains; Meric, Le merveilleux et la science; Coconnier, L'Hypnotisme franc; Imbert, L'Hypnotisme et la Stigmatisation; Lapponi, Hypnotisme et Spiritisme; Castelein, Les phenomenes de l'hypnotisme et le surnaturel; Schneider, Der Hypnotismus (French trans.); Grasset, L'Hypnotisme et la Suggestion; Dr. Joire, Manuel d'Hypnotisme (German trans.); Van Velsen, Hypnotisme, suggestion, psychotherapie. Among theologians: Tanquerey, Th. M. fundamentalis, n. 133 sq. and 916.

Hypnotism is customarily defined: the induction of a peculiar state, analogous to sleep, which is called hypnosis, in which state a man constituted in it marvelously undergoes the suggestions of the hypnotizer. It is induced by most diverse means, which nevertheless probably are all reduced to one, namely, the suggestion of sleep; but it has several grades from simple drowsiness to perfect somnambulism.

To it are attributed effects of three kinds:

1. Phenomena proved by clear experience which are produced among persons either of healthy or hysterical condition: by suggestion arise paralysis and rigidity of members, and on the contrary ceaseless movement; insensibility, exaltation of the senses; illusions and hallucinations, both positive, by which they sense what is not, and negative, by which they do not perceive what is; defect of memory (partial or total) and pseudo-recollection of a fictitious event; and in subjects disposed before others: suggestions to be fulfilled after a long time and fulfilled with marvelous precision; the assumption of an alien, double, or multiple personality; blistering or exudation of a little blood.

2. Phenomena proper to hysterical persons, in whom the three states of lethargy, catalepsy, and somnambulism are produced successively and regularly, and certain other marvelous things, not indeed by suggestion but by physical means.

3. Phenomena altogether marvelous and extraordinary: clear vision of an object altogether hidden, transposition of the senses, instantaneous acquisition of an unknown science or language, reading of thoughts, knowledge of hidden and future things, etc. These are produced rather on the occasion than by force of customary hypnotism; whence they are more to be ascribed to magnetism, occultism, or spiritism.

Now it seems scientifically most probable and morally certain that phenomena of the first and second kind are natural, although learned men dispute about their interpretation; concerning effects of the third kind generally there is no certainty, and they are not customarily produced by men skilled in the hypnotic art; whence they are either fictitious, or produced by fraudulent arts, or finally, if sometimes they are real, they pertain to spiritism: in which case not all can be attributed to unknown forces, but some would have to be ascribed to the intervention of the demon.

348. Is the practice of hypnotism licit? - In the present matter we are not treating effects of the third kind (concerning which we shall speak where we treat superstition and spiritism), but customary and properly so-called hypnotism, which in itself is not superstitious. Its practice, however, will often be illicit for other reasons, namely whenever it is employed unjustly or without grave cause and great caution. For:

a) The one hypnotized is deprived of the ready use of reason (and of dominion over the lower powers), which ordinarily by his own powers he will recover with difficulty without the nod of the hypnotizer; he hands himself over to the will of the hypnotizer, by whom he can quite efficaciously and often invincibly be led to perpetrating illicit and unjust things, and ordinarily can be reduced into the same state even while resisting.³ Such privation of the use of reason, and abdication of liberty, involving of itself grave danger for morals, is prohibited whenever a proportionately grave cause and cautions for removing the danger are lacking.

³ [§348, p. 349] Yet Fr. Vermeersch notes (Th. M. I, n. 101) that this permanent dependence can be avoided by the suggestion of liberty or independence, added in the final command. Yet hypnotizers are not accustomed to act in this way.

b) Hypnotism, unless it is employed with great prudence, exposes the health of soul and body to grave harm; whence the removal of such danger is required, or at least a founded hope of obtaining a greater good.

c) But if someone through abuse of hypnotism subjects a non-consenting person to his commands, or exercises the art in circumstances in which it is harmful, he commits grave injury and from justice is bound by suitable means to render that person his own master and to repair all damages.

d) Finally other inconveniences can accede from the public exhibition of hypnotism (harmful excitation of the nerves in those looking on, and occasion given to common people of knowing hypnosis and abusing it for evils), from a dishonorable mode of inducing hypnosis, from an occasion of lust, etc. Whence deservedly the spectacle of hypnotism was prohibited by severe penalties in the Belgian law of 30 May 1892, and the exercise of hypnotism upon minors and the insane was circumscribed within certain limits.

A sufficient cause is not the cause of recreation or of gain alone, but sometimes the cause of scientific investigation (S. Off., 26 July 1899), provided that the expert selects a person to whom hypnosis appears not harmful but rather profitable; more often a cause of medical treatment, whether for quieting the senses in a surgical incision, or for curing a disease of the nerves or rheumatism;⁴ also a cause of removing or diminishing evil propensities (for example, to suicide, drunkenness, lust, theft, etc.) when in an extraordinary case⁵ they almost take away liberty or weaken the will. Then also caution will have to be employed: let no one be employed except a very skilled and prudent and entirely faithful physician, who uses only honorable and harmless suggestions and only for the intended end; let a faithful witness also be joined (who remains at least nearby) on account of the good of the hypnotizer himself, but especially of the one hypnotized.

⁴ [§348, p. 349] It should be noted that now the salutary effects of hypnotism are already being more restricted or called into doubt.

⁵ [§348, p. 350] For the ordinary means of formation, education, and dominion of oneself is the exercise of one's own reason and liberty. Besides, suggestions ordinarily weaken the will more than they strengthen it.