IV. Connected Scholia; Especially the Specific Varieties of Pollution

334. - I. 1. The rationale of the demonstration. Those extrinsic rationales of harm, the danger of delusion, etc., by which today not a few attempt to demonstrate the intrinsic and grave malice of every pollution, were alleged by us in the proof in order to strengthen the conclusion and to confirm that confidence by which we are persuaded that the order sanctioned by God is of the greatest importance to the common good and that of individuals. And because by those considerations we merely confirm the thesis, it is not required that they strictly effect the whole matter, but it is sufficient that, from the light cast upon it, they demonstrate that there is reasonably no room to doubt the truth of the complete harmony between the established order and the demands of the common good.

2. Moreover, when we speak of the necessity of an efficacious sanction, we do not understand that efficacy by which sins are in fact impeded: for it is evident that at present very many sins of lust of every genus are committed; but we posit an efficacious sanction which is such that the choice of sin appears most foolish and for that reason is avoided even by many men, so that the Author of nature may in no respect appear to connive at sin because of some slightness of the sanction.

335. - Specific variations of pollution. 1. From the acting subject, or the circumstance of who, the pollution of an unmarried person, the pollution of a person bound by a vow, and the pollution of a married person differ in species. For pollution is also injurious to matrimony, although less so than adultery. The confessor, therefore, must know these qualities.

336. - 2. From voluntariness, pollution directly voluntary or sought differs in species from casual pollution to which consent is given, because in casual pollution the exterior act need not be disclosed. Except if someone has willed to increase a pollution which has arisen, for then he becomes guilty of voluntary pollution. Lehmkuhl, I, 1039, 1.

337. - 3. According to the various affection, various internal malices accrue to a similar exterior act.

Hence there must be distinguished:

Simple pollution, from a general, not definite appetite for venereal pleasure, or even without an express appetite of this kind, as if someone, in order to quiet a prolonged excitation, and while repudiating the pleasure itself, were to excite pollution. That repudiation does not prevent pollution from being imputed; yet it will be simple, indeed less grave, in the same species, than pollution because of pleasure sought. Say the same concerning pollution which, from a true or false estimation, is procured for the sake of health.

Pollution with a fornicatory affection toward the other sex, either in general or toward a definite person of the other sex.

Pollution with a sodomitical affection, which again can regard either the same sex in general or a determinate person.

Pollution with a bestial affection, by which perverse lust recedes from the human species itself.

Pollution with another perverse affection, for example toward a dead person as such, necrophilia.

Pollution with an inefficacious desire for copulation or another sin.

The special malice of the affection is accustomed to be betrayed in the accompanying phantasmatic image.

If the affection was a simple complacency, the act is infected only by those evil notes in which the voluntary complacency was placed.

But if it was a desire, the malices which the quality of sacred, related, etc., persons brings are necessarily added, unless they are excluded from that affection by a conditioned desire.

Most sinners are ignorant of these specifications; yet they can usefully be questioned or admonished concerning them if there is hope that they will consequently become more alienated from the sin.

338. - 4. Pollution procured by touches will, as such, have to be accused because of scandal and the complicity of the other person. But one who pollutes himself by touching an unconscious person, for example one sleeping or mingled in a crowd, will of itself have committed simple pollution ¹.

¹ St. Alphonsus, book 3, no. 467.

Touches sought or admitted, for example of a boy or girl, moreover easily betray various depraved affections; or, according to the quality of the persons and the office which they discharge, contain other malices against piety or another virtue.

339. - 5. Contrary to what had to be said before the Code, voluntary pollution no longer violates a church. Cf. canon 1172. Therefore, in order that it constitute grave local sacrilege - for a light local sacrilege is inherent in every grave external sin - it is necessary that it be demonstrated to be specially repugnant of itself to the sanctity of the place ²: specially, that is, more than other grave sins. The more common opinion affirms that this is present ³. Yet its truth escapes us. Lust of itself is referred to one's own body and not to the place where it occurs. Wherefore, unless from the public rationale by which it occurs, or from the cooperation of another, as in fornication, it savors of formal contempt of the sacred place and impiety, we judge that the grave malice of local sacrilege is absent from that act, and much more from imperfect acts. In our opinion, secret blasphemy is more repugnant to the sanctity of a place than secret pollution: for blasphemy is directly opposed to the worship to which the place is dedicated. Vasquez ⁴ and de Lugo ⁵, unless we are mistaken, would speak with us, since they derive from the disposition of the law by which those acts polluted a sacred place the grave local sacrilege which was then present in the complete use of the venereal faculty.

² Bucceroni, Institutiones theologiae moralis, vol. 1, no. 495.

³ Cf. Ballerini, Opus theologicum, vol. 2, nos. 397-413.

⁴ On I-II, disputation 90, chapter 3, no. 6.

⁵ De Paenitentia, disputation 16, no. 464.

340. - 6. The manner by which pollution is completed does not of itself change the species.

Therefore pollutions which are mental, or procured by obscene phantasms, and pollutions which are sought by the hand, by compressing the thighs, by contact with a physical thing, by the agency of an animal, indeed by contact with a living person who is unaware of the matter, as not rarely occurs in a dense crowd, will be of the same species.

Nocturnal pollution sought during the day by a suitable means will also be of the same species as diurnal pollution. If an inept or uncertain means is employed, the sin will be by affection rather than by effect.

But attention must be given to the affection which is often manifested by the manner employed.

341. - 7. Nor is it necessary to distinguish the place of the body whose excitation induced pollution. And so, whether the masturbation of the woman was clitoral, vaginal, uterine, or mammillary, it will be of the same rationale.

342. - It remains finally that we estimate the gravity of complete pollution.

1. If we attend merely to the genus of lust, since the person who

pollutes himself recedes farther from the order of nature by his exterior act, pollution exceeds fornication in gravity.

2. Yet it must be said to have a guilt simply less. For in fornication there accrue the danger of disordered generation, the guilt of another's sin because of complicity, audacity, and a greater obstinacy of the will, which contemns shame in order to disclose a shameful design, and which overcomes difficulties in order to find an accomplice.

But an affection against nature is often absent from pollution; indeed, not rarely an affection according to nature is preserved in that sin, as when, in the absence of an occasion of fornication, the sin of pollution is committed. But the disposition of the will supplies the principal element of the sin.

N.B. Concerning indirect pollution, or pollution imputable in its cause, cf. the place where indirect lust is treated.