Section — Prümmer, Manuale Theologiae Moralis
§ 1. On the Object
111. Preliminary Note. A human act is a certain motion proceeding from the deliberate will. But every motion from its nature tends toward something, and, when this is obtained, it is terminated. That toward which a human action from its nature tends, and by the obtaining of which it is terminated, is the intrinsic end of the work and is called the object of the act. Thus, for example, the act of seeing has for its object things to be seen, the act of understanding things to be understood, etc. But the object, insofar as it is a principle of morality, is not the physical object itself which the human act reaches, but the moral object, insofar as it falls under the norm of morality, concerning which there was discussion in the preceding article. Hence, for example, in the action of stealing, the moral object is not the very thing of another taken away considered in itself, but insofar as reason forbids it to be taken away when the owner is reasonably unwilling. Next, the moral object does not comprehend all those things which the human action intends and comprehends; for in this way circumstances and end are also reached. But that is called the moral object toward which the human action from its nature first and of itself tends, and which therefore is always the end of the work itself. For example, a thief takes away in a church one hundred francs in order to live luxuriously by using this money. The moral object of this act is the thing of another unjustly taken away; the circumstance is theft committed in a sacred place; but the end is lust to be satisfied. The moral object considered in itself is threefold, namely, 1. good, if it is consonant with reason and the eternal law, for example, to love God, to cultivate chastity, etc.; 2. evil, if, on the contrary, it is dissonant from those rules, for example, to hate God, to lie, etc.; 3. indifferent, if considered in itself and abstractly it neither agrees nor disagrees with those rules, for example, to put on a white or black garment.
Next it must be noted that this moral object can be regarded in two ways: a) materially, insofar as it is considered in itself with relation only to the remote rule of morals, namely, to the eternal law or to other laws justly derived from the eternal law; b) formally, insofar as its morality is perceived by the conscience of the acting man. This twofold consideration of the moral object often, but not always, coincides in the same agent. Thus, for example, a man committing fornication and knowing that this act is a grave sin chooses an object both materially evil (for it is against the remote rule of morals, namely, against the natural law, which is a participation of the eternal law) and formally evil, because he acts against his conscience, which is the proximate rule of morals. On the contrary, if the same man, invincibly ignorant of the malice of fornication, were to fornicate, he would choose a moral object which indeed is materially evil, since it is truly against the natural and eternal law, but he does not commit formal malice, because he labors under an invincibly erroneous conscience and does not act against the proximate rule of morals. From this twofold consideration of the moral object theologians are accustomed to distinguish material sins, which injure the remote but not the proximate rule of morals, and formal sins, which injure the proximate rule of morals, that is, the conscience of the agent, whether this conscience is right or erroneous.39
39 Cf. below in the treatise on conscience, n. 306 sqq.
112. Principle. The first and essential morality of a human act is taken from the object morally considered. Thus the very common opinion with St. Thomas.40
Proof. "The first and essential goodness or malice of an act is that which is conceived in it before every other, without which [the other morality of the act] cannot be conceived, and which remains invariable when the others are changed. But the goodness or malice which is in an act from the object is conceived to be in it before any other goodness or malice whatever from circumstances; without it no other can be conceived; and when the extrinsic circumstances and the end are changed, it is not changed: thus adultery, by the very fact that it is access to another's wife, is understood first and essentially as evil without order to other circumstances; without this malice it cannot be conceived; and when circumstance or end is changed it remains invariable. Therefore." Thus very well Billuart.41 - Nor should anyone object that the respect to the end is prior to the respect to the object, and therefore the first morality must be taken from the end. - For the end is either objective, or the end of the work,42 and then it is the same as the moral object; or it is the subjective end, or the end of the worker, and then it already presupposes morality from the object, and consequently does not give the first morality, but the second.
The morality which a human act takes from the moral object is called objective or substantial morality. But the moral object is either good or evil or indifferent, as is plain from what has been said above.
40 S. theol. I-II, q. 18, a. 2: "As a natural thing has its species from its form, so an action has its species from the object, as also motion from its term. And therefore, as the first goodness of a natural thing is considered from its form, which gives species to it, so also the first goodness of a moral act is considered from a fitting object.... And as in natural things the first evil is if the generated thing does not attain the specific form ... so the first evil in moral actions is that which is from the object."
41 De act. hum. diss. IV, a. 3, § 1. But this author speaks only of goodness and malice, not of the indifference of the object, because an indifferent object is always drawn by the end to good or evil morality.
42 Cf. above n. 16.
113. Scholion. On the perception and intention of morality. Subjective and formal morality cannot arise from the object (and the same holds concerning circumstances and end) unless it is in some way perceived by the agent. Wherefore, if the agent inculpably is ignorant of the goodness or malice of the object, formal morality is not present, but only material; or in other words: the human act is materially good or evil, but not formally, as has already been said. But it is not required that the agent explicitly intend this morality; it suffices that he implicitly will it. Hence, for example, he who commits grave theft or adultery, knowing this to be illicit, truly sins gravely, even if internally or externally he says that he does not wish to commit sin.