Article I. Notions and General Rules

387. - In their treatises on the sixth and ninth commandments, theologians are accustomed to inscribe a certain chapter, On Immodesties, where they note various acts not akin to lust in their very exterior species as nevertheless blameworthy either lightly or gravely, yet in such a way that the genuine rationale of the reprehension is often not given by them except confusedly. Hence they seem to found their opinion, true though it is, more upon the agreement of approved doctors than upon intrinsic arguments; hence not a few began to doubt the truth itself of the opinions, especially today, when less confidence is placed in authority and men are accustomed to inquire and question more boldly concerning intrinsic rationales.

Wherefore, that provision may be made for good and holy morals, it is expedient to hand down these rationales perspicuously. But two things are combined in these responses: the necessity of fleeing the proximate occa- sion of depraved or lustful assent, and the obligation of avoiding all direct lust, although hidden and disguised or masked.

Thus we have explained the reason why we write this chapter, which we think is of the greatest usefulness for the prudent direction of souls.

388. - Therefore, we call masked lust acts truly proceeding from lust and hence directly lustful, but disguised under a certain more honorable appearance, so that the sinner himself may easily be deceived by an erroneous conscience.

And indeed, in this slippery matter, in which it cannot be said where lust will not rush headlong, blindness of conscience, weakness of will, and the frailty of one's neighbor sufficiently warn us that we ought carefully to guard ourselves from delusion, from the danger of consent, and from scandal of our neighbor.

And modesty must be held at a great price, which, while it guards this province, protects and promotes essential chastity itself.

But men are accustomed to be led away by some sensual love and other pretexts toward suspicious, imprudent, and evil demonstrations in which they deceive themselves.

389. - The pretexts are generally: scientific study, some work of mercy, whether of caring for the body, of consoling, indeed, of helping a soul spiritually, or of dispelling ignorance, timidity, or scruples. They are therefore rationales which in certain circumstances could be true and good, but when they are alleged, they cloak less right intentions with their own color. They are especially accustomed to be employed by those who are drawn by sensual love.

Therefore, a man zealous for virtue must conceive from the beginning a firm resolution of intimate sincerity, by which no place is prepared for these pretexts. But if a doubt arises concerning an unusual manner of acting to be employed or maintained, let the counsel of a prudent confessor be sought.

390. - Sensual love, which is founded upon a certain bodily sympathy, is so dangerous, and descends so easily to carnal love, that, unless its very vehemence is diminished by imposed moderation or precautions employed, those who deliberately foster such a love can be treated as persons constituted in the proximate and

voluntary occasion of grave sin. Cf. St. Alphonsus, Praxis confessarii, no. 65.

These loves are most frequent:

1. Between young persons of different sexes, who flirt: then they not rarely end in the bitter and harmful deception of the girl. The girl hopes for an undying flame and marriage; the young man wished only to play. From an intimacy of this kind the maiden departs as though morally deflowered: the heart of a person truly and fully loves only once.

2. Among adolescents of the same college or boarding school, or of a conservatory for girls. Here, however, a twofold genus must be distinguished. There are those who, merely from a certain wantonness or vanity, as though by way of a certain game, wish to imitate love; this, although it ought to be disapproved, must be judged less grave of itself; while others truly burn with lustful love.

Each genus must be firmly attacked by confessors; but those who are affected in the latter manner are to be judged more strictly to be in the proximate occasion of grave sin. This is especially true of the older ones who take the active parts in these matters. For affection is often absent in the younger person who, sometimes enticed by the promise of a temporal advantage, permits himself to be loved.

But these friendships, or rather sensual loves, are to be detested most of all:

1. Between a priest or religious and a person of the other sex or a young person committed to their care, because of scandal. From the moment that a sensual affection is deliberately admitted, spiritual action becomes sterile. Wherefore it must first of all be procured that the relationship of spiritual direction, if there was one, be broken off. And the very lower estimation in which the priestly or religious order is consequently held, especially if, as happens too frequently, certain indecorous things are done, must already be held as grave scandal.

2. Between either spouse and an extraneous person to whom he seems to give his heart, while he leaves his body to his spouse. These platonic loves cannot be tolerated: they are infected by the note of spiritual adultery. They are very dangerous to the lovers; but to the spouse thus abandoned they are of themselves a cause of grave and just sorrow; they are contrary to the duties of piety which follow from matri- mony and to the good education of the offspring. Wherefore, although manuals of moral theology pass over this genus of infidelity in silence, we judge it to be objectively grave.

391. - Norms of theologians. - 1. The object. Catholic theologians, sufficiently concordant among themselves, use the norms of which we now treat in order to estimate morally actions which, unless carnal concupiscence raged, would be indifferent, but are now called immodest insofar as they express some, at least material, departure from modesty.

These actions, as flattering and pleasing, deceive men; as provocative, they corrupt men; as signs of a less right affection, they scandalize men; for which rationales they are prohibited under grave or light sin.

Moreover, this must be well noted. Acts which are condemned as mortal are at the same time, when they are done from lust, judged to be grave in the rationale of an exterior act. This must be attended to in mutual acts which entail complicity, where there is question of the absolution of an accomplice.

2. Principles of right estimation. a) It is lawful to proceed from this beginning. The more the exterior act itself displays the species of a lustful demonstration, or appears near to direct and open lust, the more error of mind, assent to a carnal movement which will arise, and the seduction of another are to be feared. But when the force of lust has been increased, the temptation is also increased at the same time.

Nevertheless, it must be observed here that men are moved unequally by the same acts. Cf. no. 274 and what was said above concerning acts of an intermediate rationale, no. 374, 1.

On the contrary, the more a just and honorable cause has explained our rationale of acting, the more easily we shall be safe from fraud, deception or delusion, guilt, and scandal.

Moreover, the less an action departs from ordinary and customary things, the more easily it will have an honorable explanation.

b) For making a just estimation, theologians have been accustomed to distinguish honorable, less honorable, and dishonorable parts of the body. The formal rationale of the distinction appears to be this: honorable parts are those which, in the region of which there is question, are shown to all without offense to modesty; among us, such are the hands, face, and feet; less honorable parts are those which, from accepted usage and just custom, are accustomed to be covered: the breast, back, legs, and arms, at least in part; dishonor- able, finally, are those which everywhere, from natural modesty, are covered by garments: the genital parts and those nearest to them.

The notion is therefore somewhat relative.

c) Moreover, the rules can be proposed summarily thus: One who, without an adequate cause, effects that from which, of itself or as though directly, he experiences either pollution or pleasure sufficiently proximate to pollution is judged in practice and of itself to sin gravely, because of the true motive of acting concerning which he is deluded, or because of the proximate danger of consent to the pleasure.

Nevertheless, this does not prevent one who has not yet been admonished from having been able to be excused from grave sin by a certain good faith.

But such efficacy toward a grave carnal movement is judged especially to be present, partly relatively or varying in diverse persons, in a truly immodest thing and in the morose manner in which it is looked upon, touched, handled, or approached.

d) The force and wise use of the norms can be handed down thus: These norms of theologians contain presumptions, according to which, as a rule, we shall regulate our judgments and our acts, unless a prudent consideration of particular cases should demand greater or lesser severity.

392. - The norms are established for healthy persons. But how are they to be transferred to those who suffer from sexual paresthesia? (Cf. nos. 35-38.)

I. - In the first place, we must ask to what extent their depraved acts are to be imputed to them.

In the first place, we cannot insist sufficiently upon the circumspection with which one ought to read, and much more to bring into use, works which, generally written by anthropologists under an aspect diverse from ours, propose scientifically questions concerning imputability. By the rash use of books of this kind, not a few errors have been committed in administering the sacrament of penance.

Certainly, some perversions of appetite are to be attributed to one's own vices or sins, others to heredity, so that they are congenital; and not rarely both causes concur, so that guilt has completed what nature began.

But, this distinction having been made, we have indeed been instructed concerning the origin of the perverse propensity, and perhaps concerning the ease or difficulty of correcting it; nevertheless, not yet every question concerning the imputability of the acts which the sick perform has been resolved.

"But since," Antonelli opportunely observes when speaking of masturbation ¹, "some of these diseases or infirmities do not wholly remove the will, while, on the contrary, some of them disturb the will to such an extent that the patients become incapable of acting freely, it is evident that in the first case it cannot easily be known how much voluntariness there is in the base acts committed." Therefore, the perversion itself can exist in such a degree that it does not remove liberty. The temptation has changed its object; for example, it desires one's own sex rather than the other; yet it does not possess insuperable force. But if it occurs, this irregular temptation can and must be resisted in the same manner as a "normal" temptation.

¹ Medicina pastoralis, vol. 2, no. 253.

Moreover, even when the impulses have been invincible in these or those circumstances, are the sick then drawn by any necessity to those circumstances, and are they compelled by that same necessity to approach or undergo them?

Finally, imputability can be diminished in various degrees, nor does every diminution suppress the liberty sufficient for sinning even gravely. This happens when the higher faculties themselves are not impeded, but the obstacle resides in the sense. Thus concupiscence is said to diminish freedom, although it generally allows the capacity for sin to remain.

Therefore, we readily understand that in the external forum, where an offense requires the complete integrity of one's powers, as many as are shown to be affected by a congenital defect are absolved from penalties ²; but in the internal forum, where matters can and must be considered not only in their complex and through general definitions, but with their individuating notes, the obligations which even those morbidly affected had and recognized are not to be passed over. Moreover, they are forbidden deliberately to approach the occasions by which they are impelled to evil acts; indeed, they must also avoid those same occasions without excessive inconvenience.

² The question being reserved of the manner in which society may be able to protect itself from dangerous men of this kind.

Let how difficult discernment is in these matters be confirmed by these facts.

To a most experienced professor of medicine, who by reason of his office is engaged in weighing imputability, we proposed three cases in which we very much doubted the sufficient free will of the agent. Concerning none of them did this prudent man dare to affirm that the agent had lacked liberty. Another professor of medicine, however, twice sent to us a man whom he testified to be agitated by too great a libido to be able to live chastely. Yet both were afterward proved to be troubled by no excessive difficulty.

Certainly, nothing of this kind escapes the Reverend Dr. Gemelli. Nevertheless, he has words which, whenever there is question of infirmity of organic constitution, seem to deny imputability too absolutely, and thus furnish an occasion of error, as though all "fetishists" and "masochists" ought to be pronounced immune from venereal faults. Cf., for example, what he has on pp. 234, 237, 238.

Let us therefore hold this well: even acts arising from a perversion or inversion of the sexual instinct can of themselves be imputable.

II. In order now to speak of the obligations of those who in an unusual manner are either carnally moved or, on the contrary, remain frigid:

1. Venereal pleasures can no more be sought or intended by unmarried persons through unusual means than through usual means. And the proximate occasion of sinning is to be fled by all.

2. These infirm persons will be helped by the distinction between strictly venereal pleasure and sensible carnal pleasure, so that they may weigh the quality of the subjective affection and the gravity of the obligation. Sensible pleasure is not yet grave in itself.

3. Must these persons, because of their special readiness for commotion, abstain from an action which is lawful for others or at least is not gravely prohibited? Certainly, they are greatly to be exhorted to procure this without anxiety. We say this at least of itself. For the inconveniences of avoidance must also be weighed. And, the danger of delusion and consent being excluded, it does not seem possible to command this under grave obligation, both because a precept of positively avoiding carnal movements has not been demonstrated, and because it is already hard to abstain from a thing which is lawful for others.

4. If certain things which move others leave them in a condition of perfect frigidity, they will have to abstain from these only insofar as the rationale of scandal or a positive law requires it. These, therefore, will be the privileges of that state.

393. - In reading, hearing, or treating, even for a just cause, lascivious matters, men are accustomed to experience a certain avidity, which can indeed be explained partly by the novelty or rarity of the matter and the excitation of curiosity arising therefrom, but which at the same time manifests the sexual instinct and the present infirmity of man. Wherefore it cannot be welcomed by a prudent man, although he ought not on its account to abstain from a useful action.

Concerning this satisfaction, Ballerini wisely says these things ³: "It is an indication that the sensitive or lower appetite has some nourishment in these things, and therefore that the infirmity of man inclines toward it; but it is not a certain indication that for this reason one is deliberately pleased, or that there is therefore deliberate pleasure and consequently sin.

³ Ballerini-Palmieri, vol. 1, treatise 4, no. 541.

"For this pleasure of the lower part, which arises from the thing itself that solicits and entices the sensitive appetite, does not exclude pleasure flowing from another cause; and the approval of the will... can concern the latter pleasure, with the former rejected; this, however, does not prevent infirm nature from being inclined more toward treating matters of this kind than others."

The same must be said of the mental or phantastic obsession with which many are accustomed to be filled when, in this genus of matters, they have something to do or exhibit. This obsession is to be treated almost as an obsession with an impure image. Nothing is to be conceded to it formally and deliberately; not every partial concession is to be held as grave; it is not required that, after it has once or twice been repudiated by the will, this avidity or affection be restrained by a constant and frequently repeated positive repulse; it will be opportune for the mind to endeavor to turn toward other useful and agreeable things, and not to bear anxious solicitude concerning the matter.