Article — Noldin, Summa of Moral Theology
Article Second. On Sins Crying to Heaven.
351. What they are. Sins crying to heaven are numbered as four: a. voluntary homicide; b. sodomy; c. oppression of the poor, widows, and orphans; d. defrauded wages of workers.1 These sins contain such abominable malice that before the rest they provoke divine vengeance.
a. The external reason on account of which they are designated by this name is this, that Sacred Scripture, commemorating those sins, adds that they cry to heaven.
a. Commemorating the fratricide of Cain, it says: The voice of thy brother's blood cries to me from the earth.2
b. Commemorating the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, it says: We will destroy this place, because their cry has grown before the Lord.3
c. It prohibits the injury of widows and orphans with these words: You shall not hurt a widow and an orphan. If you hurt them, they will cry out to me, and I will hear their cry;4 and commemorating the affliction of the people of God in Egypt, it says: I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt and I have heard its cry.5
d. Concerning defrauded wages it has these words: Thou shalt not deny the wages of thy needy and poor brother ... lest he cry against thee to the Lord and it be reputed to thee as sin.6 Behold, the wages of the workers who harvested your fields, which have been defrauded by you, cry, and their cry has entered into the ears of the Lord Sabaoth.7
b. Considered in their nature, the peculiar malice of these sins consists in this, that they are opposed to man's social inclination, which has been implanted in all by nature for constituting and preserving human society, and that through them laws are violated which tend to this, that the highest social goods be preserved; and therefore before the rest they demand divine vengeance.
Sodomy and homicide are opposed to the appetite which tends toward the preservation of the species and of the individual, and they injure the precepts looking to that; oppression of the poor and defrauding of wages are opposed to the appetite which tends toward the preservation of human society through individual ownership of goods, and they injure the precepts looking to that.
1 They are comprehended in this memorial verse: The voice of blood and of the Sodomites cries to heaven, the voice of the oppressed, the wages withheld from labors.
2 Gen. 4, 10.
3 Gen. 19, 13. Cf. Gen. 18, 20.
4 Ex. 22, 22 f.
5 Ex. 3, 7.
6 Deut. 24, 14 f.
7 Jas. 5, 4.