Chapter I. Sins of Thought

THERE are as many kinds of bad thoughts as there are different kinds of sin, but for the purpose of this chapter they are commonly reduced by theologians to two kinds: bad desires and morose pleasure in evil imaginations. Desire, therefore, is here understood in a wide sense and comprises a longing, a wish, purpose, or intention of doing something wrong. Morose pleasure is voluntary joy, delight, and satisfaction in an evil imagination, and what is said about it is also applicable to voluntary sadness and sorrow on account of something good, which should cause the opposite sentiments.

Desires are efficacious when there is the intention of taking the necessary means to obtain what is desired; they are inefficacious or conditional when this is not the case.

An efficacious desire of doing what is wrong is a sin of the same kind as the external action would be; it contracts the malice of the object and of all the circumstances of the object. The reason is plain. The external action in the concrete with all its circumstances is the object to which the will tends in forming an efficacious desire; and as an act is specified by its object, the evil desire belongs to the same species of sin to which the external act would belong when . performed in the circumstances contemplated.

The same must be said of inefficacious or conditional desires, unless the condition takes away all the malice of the act, as it frequently may do, ‘There is no harm, for example, in saying, “‘ I should like to eat meat on a Friday, unless the Church forbade it’’; and the same is true generally whenever the condition, “if it were lawful,” is annexed to a merely positive prohibition. If this condition is annexed to a desire against the natural law, as ‘1 should like to steal if it were lawful,” or ‘‘ I should like to commit fornication if it were not forbidden,” the condition does not remove all the malice of the vicious will, for the very tendency of the will toward such objects is against right reason. Such conditional desires, then, are sinful, unless they indicate a mere propensity towards such sins without any voluntary affection of the will. In any case, however, they are dangerous, and should not be indulged or expressed,

Morose pleasure in the imagination of what is evil is what ordinary Catholics mean by a bad thought in the restricted sense, It is sinful when voluntary, for it is an approbation, a satisfaction in what is wrong; it is an act of the will which is specified by a bad object, and so it derives its special character and malice from the object. To take pleasure, then, in the thought of revenge, is a different sin from taking pleasure in the thought of adultery.

There is a difference, however, between the source of the malice of evil desires and of morose pleasures. We have seen that evil desires contract all the malice of the object and of its circumstances. Morose pleasure, too, contracts the malice of its object and of any circumstance which is a motive of the pleasure, but not of other circumstances which may belong to the object in the concrete. For the will in morose pleasure tends to the object not as it exists in the concrete with all its circumstances, but as it is represented in the imagination, and precisely in so far as the object thus represented allures the appetite. Morose pleasure, then, takes its malice from the object, but not from all the circumstances of the object.

Taking pleasure in an evil imagination must be distinguished from taking pleasure in the thought of sin. It is not sinful to take pleasure in thinking about pride, for example, and trying to penetrate its malice. Knowledge naturally gives pleasure and in itself is not sinful. But it is dangerous to think about some sins, about sins of lust or revenge, for example, and on account of the danger it is wrong to think about sins of the flesh without good reason. Thinking about such sins with good and sufficient reason is not sinful, for the danger of sin is not sin, and it may be neglected for sufficient cause; if there is not sufficient reason and the danger of consent is small, it will be a venial sin; if the danger of consent be proximate and the matter grave, the sin will be mortal.

Morose pleasure in certain definite sins of one’s past life has for its object the sins as they were actually committed with all their circumstances, and so it will be infected with all the malice of the circumstances. Morose pleasure in past sins is thus similar in its malice to evil desires, and on this account obtains the special name of “joy” in theology. A penitent who has been guilty of this sin should say what sins they were whose remembrance gave him pleasure.

Those who are not yet married and those who have been married may not take pleasure in the thought of what is allowed to married people, for in practice such pleasure cannot be confined to the intellect; it also excites the sensua appetite and this causes temptation and sin.

It is not sinful to take pleasure in a good result which followed from some evil, as, for example, in the good results of a war or of a revolution. We may lawfully rejoice in the death of someone who was causing great harm to public morality, or to the public good in general, not precisely because he is dead, but for the reason that the cause of public harm is removed. We prefer the public good to the good of the individual, especially if he is doing harm. In this connection mention may be made of certain propositions condemned by Innocent XI, of which the following is a specimen: “It is lawful for a son to rejoice that he killed his father in a drunken fit on account of the great wealth to which he has thereby succeeded.”’ It is obvious that such joy is morally wrong, for the act of parricide was at any rate materially wrong even when committed while drunk, and joy on account of what was, and is, wrong is unlawful; nor does succession to the father’s wealth, a good of a lower order than human life, especially a father’s life, furnish a just cause for such unfilial rejoicing.

As it is unlawful to take pleasure in evil, so it is sinful to entertain voluntary sadness on account of good. To be sorry, therefore, for what is good and matter of precept is a mortal or a venial sin according as the precept binds under mortal or venial sin; and so a reprobate sins grievously who laments the years that he spent in leading a virtuous life. Even though the good be not matter of precept, as, for example, the vows of religion, it is irrational and at least venially sinful to be sorry for having taken them; it will be grievously sinful if it leads to the danger of transgressing them.

On the questioning of penitents concerning bad thoughts, see Genicot, I, n. 175.