Article I. Common Notions of All Imperfect Lust

351. - The notion and division.

1. Lust can be imperfect either because it is completed by no exterior act but is retained in some manner in the mind or will, or because an exterior act is not brought to its natural terminus.

We call lust imperfect in the latter sense any non-full satisfaction of the venereal appetite sought or admitted outside matrimony; or any venereal movement, not satiating of itself, effected or accepted by the will.

Above, no. 28, we described a venereal movement as a pleasurable exterior change of the sexual parts, and we warned that it must not be urged too strongly that the pleasure be felt in the sexual organs themselves; wherefore, one who suffers an erection from an obscene phantasm experiences a venereal movement, although the erection in itself seems to him to contain no pleasure.

2. Moreover, venereal satisfaction can be sought or voluntary, which the will has chosen or intended;

admitted or accepted, which, having arisen from elsewhere, the will embraces by its assent;

merely permitted, which arises neither chosen nor intended and to which the will does not positively adhere, although it does not impede or avoid it.

For permission can be passive or active: passive, indeed, when we allow it to flow from other extraneous causes; active, when we foresee that it will follow from our own action, apart, however, from our choice and intention, as an effect either certain or likely, and we do not therefore abstain from the action.

Connected with permission is the question of indirect lust, which must be treated in its proper place.

3. The division of an act according to and against nature, at least if there is question of an exterior act, recurs here. For the affection can comply with nature or oppose it; but an imperfect exterior act says neither of itself; rather, this will have to be estimated from the end of the agent, from the perfect act to which it is referred. Cf. Van Roey, Quaestio specialis, p. 17, at the end.

352. - The intrinsic malice of venereal pleasure directly sought or admitted outside matrimony is not disputed among Catholics: every venereal affection, every venereal movement directly sought or admitted, is lustful, that is, vicious or outside the mean of chastity.

But the celebrated question concerning its perpetual gravity has been raised; concerning it three opinions chiefly have arisen.

The first opinion, whose defenders belong rather to an earlier age, thinks that some venereal movements are grave, others light, according to the lesser or greater distance by which they are separated from perfect satisfaction. Thus Sanctius ¹, Cardenas ², and several others. In order to explain this opinion more closely, a certain author judged that a pleasure which did not attain an eighth part of the perfect pleasure was slight. St. Antoninus himself has certain words ³ because of which Thomas Sanchez judges that he was not alien to this opinion. Moreover, Sanchez admits that at one time the same opinion did not displease him. But, as he himself says: "The matter having been well considered and the reasons weighed, we judge it to be held as most certain that no slightness of matter is found in venereal pleasure ⁴."

¹ Selectae disputationes, disputation 21, no. 19, at the end.

² Crisis theologica, tract 5, De castitate, disputation 45, chapter 7.

³ Third Part, title 16, chapter 1, section 10, Notable 1.

⁴ De matrimonio, book 9, disputation 46, nos. 6 and 9. The retraction, however, first appeared in the Lyon edition in the year 1654. But since Sanchez died in 1610, this retraction was made by another hand. What is read in In Decalogum, book 5, chapter 6, no. 12, is not proved to have been spontaneous.

The second opinion, therefore, teaches that venereal pleasures are grave from their entire genus. Thus Sanchez ⁵, the Most Illustrious Dr. Waffelaert ⁶, and most moderns.

⁵ In Decalogum, book 5, chapter 6, no. 12.

⁶ De virtutibus cardinalibus, no. 191.

De Moya ⁷, section 9, renders and defends the third opinion in these words: "In venereal matters slightness of matter is not granted morally and practically, but, speaking physically and speculatively, it cannot be denied."

⁷ Tract 6, Miscellanea, disputation 2, De peccatis, question 2, section 3.

According to the testimony of the Most Illustrious Dr. Waffelaert, the first opinion has not yet been condemned by the Holy See or rejected as improbable.

Proposition 40 does indeed exist, proscribed by Alexander VII on March 18, 1666 "at least as scandalous": "The opinion is probable which says that a kiss given on account of the carnal and sensible pleasure which arises from the kiss is only venial, the danger of further consent and of pollution being excluded." But it could already have been proscribed because it made no distinction either between a momentary and a prolonged kiss, a single and a repeated kiss, or between a slight and a notable pleasure. Wherefore the force of this proposition, which, moreover, is rejected merely as scandalous, is easily escaped. Furthermore, in it there is speech only of sought pleasure. Merely admitted pleasure is not touched upon.

In the year 1612, Father Aquaviva, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, prohibited the religious of the Society of Jesus from admitting as tolerable, much less as true or probable, the opinion which asserts that, outside matrimony, light matter can be present in venereal pleasure deliberately sought. By decree 24 of the Ninth General Congregation, this precept was extended to deliberately admitted pleasure.

Nevertheless, afterward, on January 15, 1659, the Roman Revisers of the Society of Jesus answered the Gallo-Belgian province: "A learned man who accuses himself of venereal matters as sins which in his opinion, which he does not wish to abandon, are only venial because of slightness of matter, notwithstanding the cited decree, can and ought to be absolved by a confessor of the Society."

They answered thus because they could not then deny the extrinsic probability of the more benign opinion.

But from that time the opinion which admits no slightness of matter, at least in direct lust, has prevailed to such a degree that "that extrinsic probability which the opinion defending slightness of matter in venereal matters formerly had can plainly no longer exercise its force ⁸."

⁸ Lehmkuhl, I, 1028.

But the third opinion incurs no censure.

Come, then, the opinions having been heard, certain things must be noted concerning their arguments.

The more benign opinion, as is evident of itself, uses this easy rationale: there are small beginnings even of a gravely evil action which, willed in themselves, are customarily held to be venial. Thus anger is reproved by the Lord Himself as the beginning of homicide. Yet no one will contend that all anger must be avoided under grave sin.

For proving the more severe opinion, they are accustomed chiefly to use a twofold way.

Some adduce this argument, which they judge to be fortified by the authority of St. Thomas ⁹: Acts of imperfect lust are mortal because they contain consent to the pleasure of intercourse or of perfect lust.

⁹ II-II, question 154, article 4.

But if, with Lessius ¹⁰, you object that these acts, for example kisses, can be done from the intention of a lesser pleasure, they respond, with Cajetan ¹¹, that the force and efficacy of that intention are destroyed by the nature of the work, which of itself is the beginning of the perfect act. But one beginning can be remote, another proximate, another notable, another slight or small. By what right do you transfer the grave guilt of the consummated act to every beginning of it, even one remote and light?

¹⁰ Book 4, chapter 3, no. 57.

¹¹ On II-II, question 154, article 4.

The argument of Cajetan can also be proposed in this form. It is intrinsically and gravely evil to will, for example, kisses insofar as they are a part of unlawful intercourse. But one who outside wedlock seeks or admits venereal pleasure in kisses wills them insofar as they are a part of intercourse. For the venereal pleasure which they bring prepares for and surrounds intercourse. Everything there coheres; but a perspicuous proof of the major proposition is wanting.

Others, therefore, entering upon another way, think that speculative and abstract consideration must be abandoned, so that from concrete and practical observation they may elicit the gravity of all direct lust.

That argument can be proposed thus: "In direct lust, we cannot define the degree of future excitation, nor, after it has arisen, contain it within certain limits. Therefore, all direct lust entails the permission of a grave movement, and this without any just cause. But this is grave. Then, because of our greatest frailty and the vehemence of concupiscence, the will which deliberately embraces a lustful pleasure of a lesser degree goes as though down a slope toward seeking complete pleasure through an imperfect but grave act.

"If the Author of nature permitted this to be done without grave guilt, that weak moral sanction would of itself allure the will toward consummated sin, far from restraining it. But the immense danger of delusion prevents that law from being circumscribed by particular exceptions."

Lehmkuhl ¹², with not a few others, uses this genus of argument when he writes: "Every venereal pleasure is a certain beginning of the commotion and effusion of human semen, or at least bears with it the proximate danger of effusion; because, once excitation has occurred, it is not so within the power of man to stop and repel further progress; wherefore it participates in its malice."

¹² In the cited place, I, 1028, where, consistent with himself, he formally names the effusion and commotion of semen.

We admit that this rationale also is difficult. Do not the same writers, when they are not occupied by concern for the present question, for example when they treat of the mutual intimacy of spouses, spontaneously distinguish acts which introduce a grave or proximate danger of pollution from acts which introduce only a light and remote danger?

And, even if that connection is granted for sought lust, with what appearance of truth can the same be asserted of merely admitted lust, by which someone consents to a slight pleasure which has already arisen, without any effort to increase it? In their demonstration they are accustomed to pass over merely admitted imperfect pleasure in silence.

We do not, however, allege the difficulties which we experience in grasping these reasonings in order to weaken the force of the conclusion. On the contrary. These attempts were made to establish it upon invincible arguments; the ease with which arguments limping more or less have been accepted by the best minds, and this concordant opinion of Catholics - which is so great that already in his own age Sporer ¹³ suspected that no disagreement of consequence existed, and that Catholic doctors differed only in words or in the manner of speaking - bear luminous witness to that common perception of conscience by which all feel that nothing can be taken away from severity in venereal matters without so great a common harm arising that the error of the concession is detected in its very effect.

¹³ Theologia sacramentalis, p. 43, section 5, c.

This assuredly ought to be sufficient for persuasion.

Nevertheless, that we may weigh the matter intrinsically, let this be our conclusion:

353. - Every venereal pleasure deliberately sought or admitted outside matrimony is intrinsically and gravely evil.

We demonstrate it thus. As all admit, every venereal movement, as such, has an essential order to conjugal intercourse or to the legitimate perfect act, and indeed one defined by the venereal faculty itself: it is its natural beginning and preparation.

But by every venereal pleasure deliberately sought or admitted outside matrimony, this order of the faculty is taken away; and the use of venereal things is sought or accepted for an individual good alone, contrary to the relation to the species.

The order of the faculty itself is taken away, I say, since this faculty exists entirely and immediately for the sake of the species, and can legitimately be useful to the individual good only when the order toward the species has been preserved.

Therefore, that twofold inversion of order which was already noted twice above, nos. 306 and 324, is again found here.

But every act against order induces grave guilt when that order is essential and is substantially violated. - Therefore, grave guilt is induced by every venereal pleasure deliberately sought or admitted outside matrimony.

And we can demonstrate directly in this manner that consideration of quantity must be neglected here.

Consideration of quantity is useful when, because of a slight quantity or intensity, the very quality of the action is so changed that an action which would have been against the substance of the order is now only against its integrity, or violates the essential order only accidentally. For example, slight violations of duty allow the order of piety, charity, or justice to remain substantially intact, since neither can a parent reasonably bear them gravely, nor can an injured person reasonably be gravely unwilling.

But in every use of venereal things outside matrimony there is contained that inversion of the essential order by which the act of the species is exercised as though it were the work of an individual man, and reason is swept away by passion to violate the subordination to the species under which man, as a part of the species, is constituted.

Observe, therefore, that, in order to cut off the difficulty from the beginning, the gravity or lightness of an imperfect act is in no way derived from its proximity to the perfect act, but is drawn from this, that the act, considered in itself, cannot be deprived of its relation to the species. Certainly, because it is a preparation for the perfect act, it is referred to the species, but it is not sanctioned formally insofar as it is a preparation, which would then have to be distinguished as proximate and remote. But just as when disorder is demonstrated to be generically venial, that veniality is preserved in the entire species and becomes grave through no quantity, so, while the specific and substantial privation of order is preserved, no apparent slightness of the matter can make a grave sin light.

Moreover, the demonstration is common equally to admitted and to voluntary pleasure, just as the force of consent explained above proves, by which the act is psychologically changed and is raised from the order of vegetative or animal life to the supreme or rational order, where it is a mortal sin. Cf. above, nos. 322 and 324.

We shall then be able to confirm the rationale already made by the argument which other writers are accustomed to borrow from the slippery character of this genus of matter, in the manner which we explained.

354. - Our demonstration itself seems to us to have prepared the way for understanding better that passage of St. Thomas ¹⁴ by which many, as we said above, were led to construct an argument which, in our opinion, must be called inefficacious. "Consent to the pleasure of a mortal sin is a mortal sin, and not only consent to the act; and therefore, since fornication is a mortal sin, and much more the other species of lust, it follows that consent to the pleasure of such a sin is a mortal sin, and not only consent to the act. And therefore, since kisses and embraces of this kind are done on account of pleasure of this kind, it follows that they are mortal sins, and thus only are they called lustful. Whence things of this kind, insofar as they are lustful, are mortal sins."

¹⁴ II-II, question 154, article 4.

St. Thomas has been interpreted in diverse manners: by some, as though he judged kisses given without an affection toward intercourse to be venial, although they were sought on account of carnal pleasure; by others, as though every lustful kiss were vitiated by an affection toward intercourse or toward the complete act. Both seem to us to err. The Holy Doctor certainly was not ignorant of kisses sought on account of a lesser pleasure, nor did he excuse them from mortal sin, since he pronounces that whatsoever things are lustful are mortal sins. How could he have been ignorant of the everyday fact of kisses given without the intention of intercourse and yet for the sake of lust? Indeed, did he not himself formally hand down a diversity of degrees in internal sin, I-II, question 72, article 7, reply to objection 1, distinguishing sin of the heart through three degrees, which degrees, in the first objection, are thus reported from Augustine ¹⁵: The first is "when the carnal sense presents a certain enticement," which is a sin of thought; the second degree is "when someone is content with the pleasure of thought alone"; the third degree is "when it is determined through consent that it is to be done."

¹⁵ De Trinitate, book 12, chapter 12 (Migne, vol. 42, cols. 1007-1008).

But he gave this to be grasped by one who understands: Since every venereal pleasure is of the same species, every lustful kiss entails consent to pleasure specifically the same; this pleasure is therefore joined to an act which, just like the perfect act itself, is essentially referred to the species, and cannot, without mortal sin, be deprived of this relation.

St. Thomas, therefore, intimated our argument there in a few words and in question XV, article 4, De Veritate: "Whatever a man does from consent to such pleasure, the pleasure of fornication, in order to nourish or retain a pleasure of this kind, the whole is a mortal sin."

355. - The rationale made does not touch upon more general sensible pleasure (cf. no. 24). For this pleasure, insofar as it is more general, is not proper to a venereal act, and therefore does not express an essential order to the species.

Wherefore, without a cause or when related excessively to one's own good, it disturbs the order of man within himself only accidentally, so that it contains only venial guilt, if the affection toward the venereal movement which easily accompanies it is prudently excluded. Therefore, St. Thomas ¹⁶ rightly opposed to honorable kisses as mortal sins only those which were done on account of venereal pleasure.

¹⁶ II-II, question 154, article 4, reply to objection 2.