Article I. Principles

373. - The defective rationale by which not a few endeavor to demonstrate the grave malice of pollution seems also to have effected this: that, the distinction between partial and complete pollutions having been neglected (cf. no. 322), many gratuitously devised a positive duty to impede pollution, even one not psychological. This was then extended to other involuntary rebellions of the flesh and filled the doctrinal proposition concerning indirect lust with wondrous ambiguity and confusion.

Moreover, indirect lust is that which, being in itself neither voluntary nor willed, or neither sought nor positively admitted, is imputed in its cause, from which it was foreseen that it would arise without our will.

Concerning this lust, after the explanations and demonstrations made, we judge that we can conclude the argument in this manner by a brief and clear assertion.

374. - Pollution which occurs apart from intention and without consent is gravely imputed only to one who foresaw it as sufficiently proximately connected with his sin of imperfect lust, or who did not impede it when it was then imminent by ceasing from lust.

Another carnal movement is never gravely imputed in its cause.

Foreknowledge of the proximate danger of pollution can have existed from the beginning, the very act of lust to which indulgence was given having been considered; or it can arise in the act itself, the commotion which in very fact was excited through that act having been considered. For often the commotion excited exceeds in degree the first foreknowledge. We affirm in each case the same obligation of impeding pollution; but, in the former case, the act will have to be omitted because of the danger already known, while, in the latter, one must cease from the act begun because of the arising danger. Hence we thus terminate the former sentence of the conclusion: "or who did not impede it when it was then imminent by ceasing from lust."

The other words need no explanation.

But it appears sufficiently clearly that the force of the conclusion is this: that a man, sincerely and truly doing something else, ought to avoid nothing under grave obligation because of the effect of pollution which will follow, except a carnal movement gravely blameworthy, with which the effect of pollution appears sufficiently proximately connected.

This conclusion also applies to spouses, for whom incomplete carnal movements are not lust, at least grave lust; but concerning the acts between spouses discussed above, we used the name which they necessarily have for the unmarried, that is, we called them by the name of imperfect lust. Cf., moreover, no. 375.

The demonstration, moreover, is of this kind.

1. On pollution. As long as no direct lust is committed, the mind does not serve the flesh; and the pollution which will arise will be merely bodily, which is incidental to the sin, or lower psychological pollution, the tolerance of which will be merely venial.

Therefore, a proximate danger of consent being excluded, this involuntary pollution cannot be gravely imputed. For, having considered the abundance in which it is produced, the very loss of semen, as we saw, is of no moment.

But when through an incomplete sin you have violated in the same genus the essential order by which sense is subordinated to the mind and the individual man to the species, and have thus given a blameworthy beginning to pollution, the virtue of chastity, because of the very terminus foreseen, consequently prohibits that beginning, so that foreseen pollution is to be assimilated to psychological pollutions, which are gravely prohibited.

But one who, during a lustful act, notices imminent pollution has certain foreknowledge of pollution from his own lustful act. And therefore the case and obligation just indicated here recur. Cf. Sanchez, De matrimonio, book 9, disputation 45, no. 22.

The same can be proposed in this other form. The perpetual rule is: because of a proportionate cause, an evil effect which can be neither intended nor chosen is legitimately permitted. Therefore it must be examined what positive duty of religion, justice, piety, or charity stands against permission; or what positive care of avoiding the effect is imposed. But when there is question of the effect of pollution which is harmful to no one, no grave obligation of positive care is proved, no grave duty exists besides the duty of chastity itself. But this duty is rather negative, namely, that you preserve the mind sincerely turned away from lust. Positively it imposes this one thing to be avoided: that you not expose yourself to a proximate occasion of sinning. Therefore, only when derogation is made from this duty through a sin of lust can the effect of foreseen pollution be imputed as grave guilt.

Moreover, foreknowledge of pollution and a sufficiently proximate connection are required as general conditions of imputability in the cause. Cf. Sanchez, De matrimonio, book 9, disputation 45, nos. 18-20.

In this matter, besides causes which are definitely light and causes which are judged grave by all, there are others of a middle genus, in which the subjective dispositions of the agent must especially be attended to. Lehmkuhl ¹ gives these examples: reading which is not merely slightly base; a deliberately continued sight of a naked person of the same sex; a touch made upon or repeated upon one's own body.

¹ Theologia moralis, I, 1031.

2. On other carnal movements. A movement short of pollution, if it results from imperfect lust, will be only one sin with that lust: both in species, since all incomplete lust is of the same species, and in number, since it proceeds from one and the same will.

A graver movement which is merely permitted and a less grave movement which alone, in the case, was intended or chosen can indeed be distinguished subtly. The permission of an evil thing is certainly a lesser guilt than intention. But this circumstance, although it diminishes the guilt, changes neither the species nor the number.

But if a movement short of pollution has a cause diverse from lust, it cannot be gravely imputed: for then, consent being excluded, it does not pertain to higher psychology. And it is repugnant to common sense that you should speak more severely about an inferior movement than about pollution, which is gravely imputed only because of imperfect lust.

The doctrine handed down is confirmed by the authority of St. Alphonsus ², who writes: "The common and more probable opinion teaches that pollution is not mortal unless it proceeds from a cause mortal of itself in the genus of lust.... Since pollution is not willed in itself but only in its cause, it will be evil in the degree in which the cause itself is evil."

² Book 3, no. 484, IV.

These words clearly express our opinion and preserve their proper force. Cf., moreover, the same matter written more clearly by Sporer: "When the cause posited of foreseen pollution, or the act from which it is foreseen that pollution will follow, is a mortal sin in the genus of lust, as being of itself and by its nature ordered to a venereal matter, even pollution indirectly willed in that cause will be a mortal sin... he is convicted of willing pollution implicitly and indirectly... if the cause is venial in the genus of lust, the pollution will be venial ³." Cf. also Ballerini-Palmieri ⁴.

³ Sporer, Theologia sacramentalis, part 4, chapter 3, section 15, nos. 646, 648.

⁴ Opus theologicum, vol. I, no. 579 ff.

Sanchez ⁵ is somewhat more severe; and so also is Rev. Dr. Van Roey, who derives formal guilt from the notable influence itself upon pollution, having first established a positive obligation, light, however, he says, of impeding pollution ⁶. Consequently, he himself must then, with others, extend indirect lust beyond the effect of pollution.

⁵ De matrimonio, book 9, disputation 45, no. 15.

⁶ Concerning this matter cf. Sanchez, In Decalogum, book 1, chapter 2, no. 13; Ballerini, Opus theologicum, vol. I, no. 598.

But if the obligation of impeding pollution is only light, how will an act which is not in itself lustful become a grave sin because of the unintended effect of pollution? We do not grasp this with the mind.

For observe that a sin of imperfect lust is committed directly, not only when it is sought by express intention, but also when, without another immediate cause, acts are exercised, for example certain touches which, in moral estimation, directly excite the flesh: then you are judged to effect a venereal movement. And also other acts, for example certain looks, unless they are explained otherwise by a serious rationale, betray a lustful affection or introduce a proximate danger of consent, so that they are gravely prohibited in the genus of lust. Cf. what is to be said concerning masked lust. Whatever acts are there condemned under grave obligation are, as such, also prohibited as a cause of pollution, yet in such a way that, when they are excused for the same rationales, this causality and the acts themselves are excused in themselves from grave sin.

375. - Acts which for the unmarried are imperfect lust are either permitted or not gravely prohibited for spouses. Yet because they are venereal and express an order to the complete act, pollution which is foreseen as about to follow from them, or because of which, if it is imminent, there is no cessation from those acts, is imputed in its cause as was said in nos. 274 and 276, unless a grave excuse is present. For the virtue which prohibits the terminus also prohibits its formal beginning as such.