Case 9. Morality Not in the External Act

Titius and Caius, priests, sometimes converse about matters pertaining to morals. One day they enter into a conversation about the subject in which the morality of human acts resides. “I venerate,” says Caius, “the practice of the Church, for, as the Angelic Doctor says, ‘The custom of the Church has the greatest authority and is always to be emulated in all things, because even the doctrine of Catholic doctors has authority from the Church’ (II–II, question 10, article 12). Nevertheless, I have never been able to understand the necessity of confessing the external act of sin; rather, it seems to me that it ought to suffice to confess the internal act, because the malice of sin is from the will, and the species of the internal and external sin is the same: ‘Everyone who has looked at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’” Titius admits that he has the same difficulty, increased by the fact that, according to several doctors, the effect of a sin does not have to be confessed, although it would seem that the effect, as at least voluntary in its cause, should be confessed rather than the external act. It is asked:

1. Is the morality of human acts in the internal act or in the external act?

2. How do the effect of a sin and the external act of sin differ?

3. How are the difficulties of Caius and Titius to be answered?

1. Is the morality of human acts in the internal or in the external action?

The morality of human acts, or their goodness and badness, is there where freedom resides, for it is only because an action is freely produced by the agent that it is imputable to him. Freedom, however, is formally and strictly only in the will, and an external act is only called free inasmuch as it proceeds from a free will.

2. How do the effect of a sin and the external act of sin differ ?

Three stages may be distinguished in a bad action, as, for example, murder. First of all there is the deliberate purpose to commit the crime; then the blow is struck; finally, perhaps after an interval of some days or weeks, death ensues. The internal and the external act, or the purpose and the blow, form together one complete human action, of which the formal part is the purpose and the blow is the material. From this complete human act we must distinguish its effect which follows after some time, as we here suppose for the sake of clearness. The effect is due to a free exercise of will, and is therefore imputable to the agent, but it is not a human act; it is the consequence of a human act.

3. What is to be said in answer to the difficulties of Caius and Titius? Caius does not see the reason why the external act should be confessed if the malice of sin is in the internal act of the will. Caius confounds two different things — sin and the malice of sin. The malice of a purpose to commit murder is the same as that of actual murder, but a purpose is an internal act and actual murder is a complete human act made up of the internal and of the external act of execution of the purpose. They are, then, two different human acts, and therefore they are two different sins; for sin is a bad human act, and so one must not be confessed for the other.

Titius has the same difficulty, and in his case it is increased because many theologians allow that the effect of a sin need not be confessed, although it is voluntary in its cause. In answer to this it may be said that the effect of a sin is not itself sin, and only sins need be confessed. On the contrary, an inordinate external act is a sin, for sin is any word, deed, or desire against the law of God. The effect of an action may follow while he who put its cause is asleep, and a man can not commit sin while he is asleep. The effect might even follow after the death of the person who caused it, and certainly a man can not commit sin when he is dead.¹

1 Cf. Lugo, De Poenitentia, disp. 16, sec. 9.