Prologue

Good manuals of moral theology are not lacking. Yet few in the past century have proceeded from the Thomistic school. And those which have their origin elsewhere generally fail in the method or doctrine of St. Thomas, or also in the accurate declaration and demonstration of notions and principles. Many of the moralists are more attentive to practical applications, or are content to recite the more or less probable opinions of others; and very many of their works, it has quite recently been said, by their slightness or by the very catechetical form of questions and answers, have seemed to profess a less mature age of the science.

The return to the doctrine and method of St. Thomas, which has had such salutary fruits in metaphysics and dogmatics, has not extended itself in the same degree to moral theology, because of the harmful and persistent divorce between speculative and practical theology.

Having considered these things, perhaps it will not be unwelcome to hear from the Thomistic school a voice which, more than may be in the wishes of some, sets forth doctrine scholastically and by principles, yet within the limits of a certain moral summa. But since again and again they affirmed that the lectures which we were delivering in the theological college of Louvain for the elementary course answered, however imperfectly and deficiently, the aforesaid end, we now intend to make these public. They are according to the mind of St. Thomas, the Common Doctor; and according to the norm of the New Law, canonical and civil.

Roman law has everywhere been abolished, and to expound it practically in this work would rather generate confusion in minds than scientific usefulness. Therefore we consider only present-day law, especially French law, which, having been worked out earlier and being partly in force in our own country, has in many things been the model of others, although certain very recent codes may seem capable of having been more aptly formed and more perfectly.

In like manner, leaving aside the Decretals and the Corpus Iuris, we consider only the Code of Canon Law promulgated by Benedict XV, without, however, choosing that its order should be followed, because, however much it may be congruent with the science of law, nevertheless in moral questions all things must be adapted and subordinated to the order of theology, the supreme science.

May God grant that, under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin, mediatrix of all graces, this work may be able to contribute to the instruction of the clergy and the usefulness of schools.

Rome, in the Angelicum College, on the feast day of the Sacred Heart, June 27, 1930.

The Author.