Article II. Supplements to the Doctrine

136. Concerning illegal injustice, or that which is contrary to the virtue of legal justice, several things occur which must be observed.

a) SOURCES OF SIN. Guilt for that injustice can arise both from a human law binding in conscience and from the necessary connection which an action or omission has of itself with the common good. This clearly follows from what was said in the thesis concerning legal justice.

b) SPECIFICATION. Moreover, this guilt can be opposed to the virtue of legal justice by a merely generic opposition or also by a special opposition. For this to become manifest, it is necessary to recall that this virtue is indeed special in essence, but general in matter, so that it commands the acts of all the virtues and makes them necessary. This being posited:

α) If someone, while offending against a certain law, merely adverts that he is violating a prescription made for the sake of the common good, his sin will derive its specifying rationale from the order of the particular virtue whose act was commanded. If, for example, he has omitted Mass on Sunday, the sin is opposed to religion; if he has neglected to render to his father those things which the law commanded, he is to be accused of impiety. But the contrariety by which this sin is opposed to legal justice is only generic, and is distinctly explained when the species which we have just declared is accused. For this malice is not “as though parallel” and placed alongside the malice against the particular virtue of religion or piety, but as a genus it is contained in this species itself. In truth, the omission of Mass, etc., is a sin for this reason and for no other: because it is a certain manner of breaking through a prescription made for the sake of the common good. Therefore, he who says, “I omitted Mass on a feast day,” expresses both of these things at once: “I violated a command made for the sake of the common good,” and, “in such a manner.” But if, after accusing himself of the omission of Mass, someone should wish in addition to accuse the malice by which it is repugnant to legal justice, he would twice accuse one and the same malice, almost as, by saying “oak” (a tree of such a species) and “tree” (the genus), you would twice make mention of a tree.

And this, unless we are mistaken, is the true reason why, according to the common judgment of authors, once a sin against a particular virtue has been declared, the violation of legal justice can remain unmentioned in the sacrament of Penance. Cf. Lessius, chap. 7, no. 2; C. de Lugo, disp. 1, no. 65; and Billuart, De Iure et Iustitia [On Right and Justice], diss. 6, art. 1. Molina’s manner of speaking, tract 1, disp. 9, is less approved by us.

Nor for any other cause does St. Thomas¹ appear to establish that a sin of this kind is only materially contrary to legal justice. For in its composition with the specific difference, the genus is had as matter.

¹ II-II, q. 79, art. 2, corpus and reply to obj. 1.

N.B. Certain other malices inhere in every sin as common rationales pertaining to its essence. Thus “through any species of mortal sin a man transgresses some divine precept,”² and gravely violates charity toward God.

² II-II, q. 79, art. 2.

The same thing must be said of these malices as of the generic contrariety to legal justice.

β) If neglect of a human law, on account of peculiar circumstances, brings grave detriment upon the common good, it inflicts another and grave offense against a special virtue, which has its origin from legal justice and is not understood to have been declared by the former transgression. For, every human precept being set aside, we are forbidden to harm the common good. That moral necessity cannot be set aside without injury to another special virtue, such as charity.³

³ Understand charity in the broader usage, in which it embraces every honorable love.

γ) Finally, if someone is moved to sin by contempt of the common good, or violates the law for the very reason that he may act against the commonwealth, then he will have sinned formally against legal justice. Then the act or sin, in addition to generic opposition to the common good, contains a special opposition, which is clothed with this opposition as with its form. St. Thomas⁴ aptly says: “Just as it pertains to the proper rationale of legal justice to attend to what is owed ... so it pertains to the proper rationale of transgression to attend to contempt”; and earlier: “Illegal injustice according to its essence is a special vice, insofar as it regards a special object, namely the common good which it contemns.”

⁴ Ibid. and q. 59, art. 1.

c) GENERALITY. But because from contempt of the common good a man is led to all sins, illegal injustice is called general according to intention. St. Thomas, ibid.

d) WHAT IF YOU ACT AGAINST THE COMMON GOOD OF A PRIVATE COMMUNITY? What C. de Lugo, disp. 1, no. 66, asserts is less pleasing to us: there he introduces a sin against a certain legal justice less properly so called, which is committed by acting against the common good of some special and private community of which you are a member. But, as it appears to us, either the whole matter is terminated by private relations and special virtues, or, just as public power, if any flourishes in that community, is communicated by a perfect society (the Church or the State), in like manner sins against this common good are against legal justice properly so called, taken materially or formally. Rev. D. Pottier, op. cit., diss. 3, no. 37, agrees with us.

137. Concerning respect of persons.

The vice repugnant to distributive justice is called respect of persons. It consists in this: that, in the distribution of common goods, someone attends to irrelevant conditions of persons and not merely to those which, according to the nature of the matter, make someone worthy or unworthy. But when there is question of offices which are to be discharged for the public good, the prince (or magistrate), by reason of his office, is bound by commutative justice toward the commonwealth to entrust them at least to worthy men. Toward the worthier men who are passed over, distributive justice is per se injured, unless, however, the offices are ordered solely to the common good,⁵ while most offices, indeed secondarily, are conferred for the benefit of those to whom they fall. Most Illustrious D. Waffelaert⁶ judges ecclesiastical offices and benefices to be of the former rationale, and our civil offices to be of the latter rationale.

⁵ Cf. C. de Lugo, vol. 2, disp. 34, no. 16.

⁶ De Iustitia [On Justice], vol. 2, no. 406.

Indeed, a distributor can be bound by commutative justice toward the worthier person who has been passed over: a) If, under an onerous condition—for example, a competition—the selection of the best has been promised to the candidates; b) If the supreme distributor has bound the inferior distributors by commutative justice toward the candidates to select the best. (Rev. Fr. Lehmkuhl, vol. 1, no. 971.) That a strict obligation of justice cannot be proved as soon as a competition is present, however, is shown by the controversy set forth by Rev. Fr. Lehmkuhl.⁷

⁷ Theologia Moralis [Moral Theology], vol. 1, no. 972. The matter comes down to this. A competition can be announced in such a way that a contract is entered into between the conferrer of the prize and the competitors concerning conferring the prize upon him who has won; the contest can also be established for this end: that those who are worthy be given the opportunity to prove their merit. The competitors are then content with the hope which they have in the good faith and equity of the prelate or prince of obtaining the office if they have won, provided that no peculiar reason should stand in the way.

138. There is also a broader acceptation of injustice, by which the deprivation of sanctifying grace is called injustice; but every culpable transgression of the law, every sin, is called iniquity.

139. Confirmation from a passage of the Apostle. Lest perhaps you wonder that the gravity of a sin against justice is derived from an offense against charity, the Apostle himself appears to have used a similar argument when he says in the Epistle to the Romans 13:9: “For: Thou shalt not commit adultery: Thou shalt not kill: Thou shalt not steal: Thou shalt not bear false witness: Thou shalt not covet: and if there be any other commandment, it is comprised in this word: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”