Preface

Few, if any, of those for whom this book is intended will be disposed to deny the usefulness and necessity of Casuistry for the ecclesiastical student and the confessor. If the priest’s work in the cure of souls and in the confessional is to be done fruitfully and if disastrous mistakes are to be prevented as far as possible, previous and solid training is absolutely necessary. Mere speculative knowledge is not sufficient to fit the priest for his work. His duty is to guide souls according to the principles of the Catholic faith, and a merely speculative knowledge of those principles will not enable him to perform the task imposed upon him. Nobody supposes that book knowledge alone will fit the judge or the doctor for the practical work of the law courts and the sick-room. As little will a knowledge of speculative theology fit the priest for the work that he has to do. He is both a judge and a doctor. Only the cases that he has to decide are often more intricate than those which are heard in the law courts, and the diseases which he is called upon to heal are more difficult to diagnose accurately and to prescribe for than are those of the body. It adds to the difficulty that such practical training for their profession as the judge and the lawyer get is not possible in the case of the priest. The medical student walks the wards of the hospitals and observes how cases of bodily disease are treated by an expert. The judge usually has a long preparatory training in the practice of the law. No such practical training is possible for the young aspirant to the priesthood.

The next best thing to actual experience in the cure of souls is to provide him with books such as this, where the principles that he has already learned are applied to concrete cases. For many years past my official duties have laid on me the task of providing such practical cases for the students under my care. I have always striven to keep the end steadily in view. The moral principles were supposed to be already known. What was wanted was to train the young student so that he might be able to detect at once what principles were to be applied to a given concrete case, and to train his judgment so that he might apply those principles correctly. In this volume I have collected together the greater part of the cases that I have given on the general treatises of Moral Theology, the Commandments of God, and the Precepts of the Church. I reserve the others for a second volume. I think the experienced reader will acknowledge that the cases are practical and real, such as are met with in actual life. The questions put after each case are intended to indicate some of the chief principles which have to be applied in the case, and the practical solution is given at the end. I have not thought it necessary in this book to give full answers to the questions proposed. They are book questions, and the answers to them may be found for the most part in any of the text-books of Moral Theology. For convenience I have often given a reference to my “Manual of Moral Theology.” I thought it advisable to keep the cases in Latin as they were drawn up in that language, but as English is largely used in the conference cases of the clergy the answers to the questions and the solutions are almost wholly given in English.

THOMAS SLATER, S.J.

AUGUST 25, 1910.