Question One: On Piety in Itself

S. Th. II-II, q. 101, a. 1 and 3.

816. Piety (filial piety; filial love and homage) is the virtue by which service and worship are given to parents and country. It is a virtue because it renders a debt. It is a special virtue because it has a special object: for just as we owe worship to God because He is for us the first principle of being and governing, so also to parents and country because they are the secondary principle of our being, education, and governance. But where there is a special account of debt, there is a special part of justice and a virtue. It is one virtue because it has one object: the secondary principle of our being, which belongs to parents and country, to whom piety first and principally extends;¹ it indeed honors blood-relatives, but insofar as the blood of the parents exists in them and therefore they represent them; also fellow-citizens and all friends of the country, because in them we behold the favor and helps of the country and therefore they represent it to us; it honors a spouse and children, insofar as they preserve the blood-relationship received from the parents; indeed even ourselves, insofar as we venerate in ourselves the image and blood of our parents, but piety reaches all these only secondarily.

¹ Although piety is owed more principally to parents than to country, because from the fact that we are born from parents, the country pertains to us (q. 122, a. 5, ad 2); nevertheless in the latter there is per se a title to piety, which demands our dependence, and not only on account of the sole relation to parents.

817. Object of piety. - The material object which it intends to exhibit is worship and service toward parents and country, namely, acts by which we render due honor to them and attest their excellence and our subjection.

The primary material object which principally, per se, and by reason of itself it intends to exhibit by service is the due equality between the honor exhibited and the right of parents to it, by which equality the honor is proportioned to the right which parents have to it.

The formal object by which, or proximate motive on account of which we exhibit worship to them, is the special honesty of the said equality.

818. Corollaries. - 1. The debt which piety attends to is a strict or legal debt, because parents have a true right that honor be exhibited to them. And nevertheless piety is not a species of justice properly so called: 1) because justice is toward another and is founded upon the personal distinction of one from another, while piety is founded upon the special conjunction of father and children: father and son as such are in some way one; 2) because piety does not render the whole debt, a) parents are for us the principle of being and have conferred on us the very faculty of honoring them, which we are not able to render back to them; b) besides, by ordinary services and in the same order of things, namely, of generation, education, and providence, we cannot render the debt to equality. But virtue regards that which is per se, and therefore piety falls short of strict justice and is only a potential part of it.

2. Legal justice is distinguished from piety. For piety regards the country according as it is the principle of our being; legal justice, according as it is the common good. Whence the preeminence above all human virtues which St. Thomas attributes to legal justice is not to be attributed to piety toward country.

3. God in a more excellent mode than parents is the principle of our being: for He is the primary and total principle, and is the cause of every created paternity, because no one can be a parent except through the force received from Him. Whence the virtue of piety does not order us to Him as Creator, but the virtue of religion, which is not formal but eminent piety. Besides, because God through grace has adopted us as sons, toward Him there is also formal piety: for from the virtue of piety there must be distinguished the gift of the Holy Spirit by which we venerate God as Father and other men as His sons (I Tim. IV, 8; q. 121, a. 1, ad 2).

4. Cajetan notes on a. 1: "The name of piety seems to have been extended to works of mercy (and to God) (on account of the likeness of the works). Namely, because works of mercy are similar to the works which from piety we exhibit to those joined by blood and to citizens and friends of the country, therefore works of mercy seem to have been called works of piety, and those who are occupied with them called pious. And hence it seems to have become usage that God is called pious, that divine piety does these and those things; since God most greatly exercises works of mercy. But, so far as the proposed matter is concerned, the offices of piety differ from the offices of mercy in this, that piety gives what it gives under the account of debt, while mercy does so under the account of gratuitous relief."