Article — Prümmer, Manuale Theologiae Moralis
Article I. On the Obligations of Children Toward Parents
580. Children are bound to show their parents love, reverence, and obedience. This obligation arises from a threefold prerogative of parents: for parents gave existence to their children, upon whom piety or love is thereby enjoined; parents are constituted in dignity, and therefore observance or reverence is owed to them; and finally parents are the governors of education, and therefore children must obey them. This threefold obligation is grave from its genus, so that a child violating either the love, or the reverence, or the obedience owed to parents sins mortally; very often, however, on account of slightness of matter or imperfection of the act, he sins only venially.
a) As regards love. The love owed to parents must be affective and effective.
Affective love requires that children sincerely desire for their parents all truly useful goods, and consequently pray for them to God, the Greatest and Best. Children sin against affective love if they hold their parents in hatred, whether the hatred is one of abomination or of detestation; if they rejoice in their adversities and are saddened at their prosperity; if they wish death upon them; if they do not pray for them over a long period; or if from depraved egoism they desire the paternal inheritance. Hence the following proposition (14) was condemned by Innocent XI: "It is lawful with an absolute desire to wish for the death of one's father, not indeed as an evil of the father, but as a good of the one desiring it, because a rich inheritance is thereby going to come to him."996
Effective love demands that children show their parents external signs of love by speaking to them charitably, living peaceably with them, or, if they are absent, visiting them frequently; that they assist them in necessities by providing, for example, food, clothing, and housing, and this obligation binds the children in solidum; and that, insofar as this is morally possible, they offer them consolation and assistance when they are suffering from old age, illness, or some other adversity. Children must especially assist their parents in spiritual necessities, and therefore procure that parents near death receive the sacraments and that the deceased have suffrages. Children therefore sin if they unduly afflict their parents externally; if they subject them to injuries, insulting words, curses, or blows. The injurious striking of parents is almost always a mortal sin, because it includes an enormous irreverence. Indeed, in some dioceses the injurious striking of parents is a reserved sin. A curse seriously pronounced against parents is also a mortal sin. Hence God Himself established: "He that curseth father or mother, dying let him die."997 Children likewise sin gravely if they do not assist parents who are in grave necessity. Hence children cannot enter religious life if their parents gravely need their assistance; indeed, if a son had already made religious profession and could not otherwise assist parents in extreme or quasi-extreme necessity, he would be bound to leave religious life. This matter is treated more fully elsewhere.998
996 Denzinger, n. 1164.
997 Ex. 21:17; Matt. 15:4.
998 In our Manual of Canon Law, q. 205; cf. also S. theol. 2, 2, q. 101, a. 4 ad 4, and Cod. iur. can. c. 542.
581. It is asked: Is a son bound to pay from his own goods the debts of a father incapable of paying them?
First, an obligation of justice must be distinguished from an obligation of piety. From justice a son is bound to pay his father's debts if he received paternal goods which still remain. For the debts incumbent upon the father must always be subtracted from paternal goods, whether received by a gift inter vivos or by testament. But a son is not bound to repay the expenses which his father made for his education, since he has the right to receive the education owed to him at his father's expense. From piety a son is sometimes bound to pay his father's debts even if this cannot be done from goods received from his father, namely, if otherwise his father's honor would be gravely injured. Nevertheless, this obligation is not usually grave, and therefore from piety alone a son is not bound to pay his father's debts with grave inconvenience to himself. It was said above, n. 402, how a son is bound to fulfill his father's real vows.
b) As regards reverence.
582. The fourth precept of the Decalogue is expressed in these words: "Honor thy father and thy mother."999 But to honor, as the Roman Catechism says,1000 "is to think honorably of someone and to esteem most highly all that belongs to him." Hence children must inwardly acknowledge the dignity of their parents and outwardly profess it by words, signs, and deeds.
Children therefore sin: 1. by words, if they address their parents with harsh, injurious, insulting, or cursing words, or speak of them in this manner; for example, if a son calls his father a stupid ass or a decrepit old man; 2. by signs, if they mock or despise them by gestures; 3. by deeds, if they strike them, cast them out of the house, or even raise a hand against them; 4. by omission, if they do not show the customary signs of reverence according to the usage of the country; for example, if they do not greet them, do not rise in their presence, or refuse to acknowledge them before others, unless, however, great harm to the child in goods of fortune or in honor would follow from the acknowledgment. For in that case the parents would not be reasonably unwilling if, in those circumstances, they did not exact acknowledgment from their children.1001 Nevertheless, the case in which true harm arises to a child from acknowledging his parents even before others and treating them honorably is exceedingly rare.
c) As regards obedience.
999 Ex. 20:12.
1000 Part 3, c. 5, q. 3.
1001 Cf. St. Alphonsus, Theol. mor. l. 5, n. 334.
583. Children are obliged to execute the commands of their parents in all lawful things pertaining to their care. Hence St. Paul1002 admonishes: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is just." "Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord." This obligation of obedience is grave of itself, namely, if the parents gravely and seriously command in grave matter. Hence St. Paul calls those disobedient to parents worthy of death.1003 But for a mortal sin to arise from such disobedience, it is required: a) that the parents seriously command, and not merely admonish or exhort; b) that grave matter be present. What matter is truly grave can scarcely be determined by a general rule. Yet in general it can be said that matter is grave when its omission causes grave harm either to the child or to the family. Hence, for example, a son sins gravely if he does not obey a father who severely prohibits continual drunkenness, fornications, very bad company in taverns, etc.
Note. The obedience owed to parents, even in lawful things, has two limitations:
1003 Cf. Rom. 1:32.
584. 1. As regards its duration. Children must render obedience to their parents for as long as they live under paternal power. But as soon as they have attained majority or have been emancipated, they are now sui iuris and are no longer bound to obey.
A son is ordinarily considered of age, or a major, upon completing his twenty-first year; but he can be emancipated before that time according to the diverse modern civil laws, as was said above, n. 26ff., in the tract on justice. If a son who is of age or emancipated freely remains in his father's house, he is not exempted from the obligation of obeying. A minor son cannot lawfully, against the wishes of his parents, seek his livelihood or live outside his father's house, unless this has been granted to him by legitimate authority. On the contrary, a son who is of age or emancipated can lawfully live outside his father's house, and then he is no longer bound to obey his parents. Nevertheless, a good son always endeavors, according to his ability, to comply with the will of his parents. Although the obligation of obedience sometimes ceases, the obligation of love and reverence toward parents never ceases and is equally incumbent upon children who are of age and those who are minors.
585. 2. As regards the choice of a state of life, children are free by natural law itself and are not bound to obey their parents.
The reason is that in those things which pertain to the preservation of the individual and of the species all men are equal,1004 and it is a great injustice to force one's neighbor into some state of life upon which his earthly and heavenly salvation not rarely depends. Two kinds of states of life are customarily distinguished: primary states, of which there are three, namely, the religious, clerical, and matrimonial states; and secondary states, which are offices rather than immutable states of life, for example, the state of a shoemaker, an advocate, a physician, etc. All theologians teach that a child is free in the choice of a primary state of life, and that parents sin if they force a child to embrace such a state. Hence St. Alphonsus1005 rightly says: "Parents sin gravely who force their children, even indirectly, and against their will to choose a state of life, whether clerical or conjugal; or, conversely, if they unjustly withdraw them, even without force or fraud, from the religious, clerical, or conjugal state, without just cause." On account of the grave necessity of parents, children are sometimes prohibited from entering the religious state, as was said above. But if the necessity is only light, or if a son is wholly incapable of relieving the necessity of his parents, he can freely enter religious life.
It is often not even expedient that a son who wishes to embrace the clerical or religious state ask the counsel of his parents, if they appear to lack sufficient knowledge of these matters and, especially, an unimpaired and untroubled power of judgment. But before a son, after serious deliberation, actually embraces the religious or clerical state, he ought to ask his parents' consent, which, if unduly denied, can be passed over. For then God calling must be obeyed more than parents resisting, since Christ says: "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me."1006 But if it is a question of contracting marriage with a particular person, then children are bound to seek the counsel and ordinarily also the assent of their parents, because both prudence and piety and reverence, at least commonly, so require. For children, blinded by a mad love, often wish to contract a marriage which will certainly tend toward their own ruin and the disgrace of the family. But if the parents unreasonably refuse to assent to the marriage to be contracted, the child is no longer bound to obey; indeed, the parents themselves easily sin gravely by unduly impeding or even delaying their child's marriage, since they are often the cause of many sins of incontinence and hatred, or even of despair.
As regards the choice of a secondary state of life, or of a profession, as they say, for example, the medical art, the shoemaker's art, etc., children must obey their parents to some extent. Hence children sin who, against the will of their parents, wish to embrace a profession full of dangers or unsuited to their condition; but, on the other hand, parents also sin who for insufficient motives force a child to practice some art which brings him weariness or to which his abilities are less suited.
1004 S. theol. 2, 2, q. 104, a. 5.
1005 L.c., n. 335.
1006 Matt. 10:37.
586. Scholion. On the obligation of an illegitimate child. A child born outside a legitimate bed, unless afterward legitimated, has neither the same rights nor the same obligations as a legitimate child. Modern civil laws are accustomed accurately to determine the rights and obligations both of the illegitimate child and of his parents. He must render love, reverence, and obedience to one or the other parent, namely, to the one who provides for his education. But he owes nothing to the other parent, who cares nothing for his education, because that parent inflicts upon him, in addition to the injury of an undue generation, also the injury of an education denied or neglected. For by natural law both parents of an illegitimate child are bound to provide for the education of the offspring begotten. What modern laws establish concerning the manner and expenses of the education of illegitimate offspring is sufficiently just and appears to bind in conscience, at least after the sentence of a judge. If, however, the father induced the woman to carnal intercourse by force or grave fraud, then he himself is the unjust damager and consequently is bound to repair all the damages which arose from his unjust action. Therefore he must not only bear the expenses of the education of the illegitimate offspring, but also indemnify the mother. Cf. what was said above, n. 147ff., concerning reparation for an injury arising from defloration or adultery.