Chapter — Slater, Cases I
Case 2. Lectio Librorum Romanticorum
Caia, a girl sixteen years of age, is accustomed to read romantic books which, although they are not bad, are nevertheless very diffuse in describing love affairs. While she reads, evil thoughts and even impure carnal movements are accustomed to arise, but for the most part she does not consent to them, although she continues to read because other girls read such books and she wishes to pass the time. Once or twice, however, she consented to the pleasure arising from the evil movements, and once she sinned by touching herself immodestly; she afterward confessed these sins by saying that two or three times she had procured immodest pleasure for herself, without adding anything else. Hence it is asked:
- Is venial sin from smallness of matter to be admitted in sexual matters?
- Is anyone bound to avoid the cause of evil movements?
- Are immodest touches and looks distinguished in species from one another and from consummated acts of lust?
- What is to be said of the case?
No, if sexual pleasure is directly sought or admitted, as was said above, p. 237.
- Is anyone bound to avoid the cause of evil movements?
It is supposed that consent is not given to those movements. If the cause produces evil movements accidentally and is useful and not dishonorable in itself, then there is no obligation to avoid such a cause. But if it is a cause lightly dishonorable in the genus of lust, it is to be avoided under pain of venial sin; if it is gravely dishonorable in the same genus, it is to be avoided under pain of grave sin, unless there is a just and proportionate honorable reason for positing that cause.
- Are immodest touches and looks distinguished in species from one another and from consummated acts of lust?
Those imperfect acts are certainly distinct from perfect and consummated acts, just as a building begun is distinguished from the same building completed. Whether those same imperfect acts are distinguished among themselves in the genus of lust is disputed. Several affirm it, because the objects of those acts are diverse and the acts themselves proceed from diverse faculties. Others, however, with St. Thomas, deny it, because those acts are not evil precisely in themselves, but by reason of the evil pleasure which arises from them. But the pleasure which arises from all those acts is the same. Hence the acts also, insofar as they are evil in the genus of lust, have the same specific malice.1
1 Bucceroni, Theol. Mor., vol. i, n. 783.
- What is to be said of the case?
The reading in which Caia indulges is not bad, nor by hypothesis is it a proximate occasion of sin; hence, although it is accustomed to produce evil thoughts and evil movements in Caia, she is not strictly bound under sin to avoid it. Nevertheless, by way of counsel, indulgence in such reading should be sparing, since there are very many other books which are more useful and not liable to the same danger, and more suitable for cultivating the mind. Caia, however, at least probably satisfied the obligation by the manner in which she confessed the non-consummated sins of lust, according to what was said above.