§ 1. On Ignorance

Ignorance is the privation of knowledge in some way owed; and thus it differs from nescience, which is the simple negation of knowledge. But error is a false judgment. A layman is nescient; a confessor is ignorant of moral theology. Both err when they hold fornication to be a venial sin. Inadvertence, finally, is actual inconsideration or oblivion of habitual knowledge.

Ignorance is divided with respect to the ignorant subject and his circumstances; with respect to the object ignored; and with respect to the act of the will to which it is referred or which it affects.

1. With respect to the subject, ignorance is invincible which could not be dispelled by any diligence whatever, or at least not by moral diligence. Moral diligence does not require that all means be employed, but denotes a human mode of diligence, accommodated to our condition, which, varying according to the varied gravity of the matter, prudent persons are accustomed to employ in their own affairs and to require from others. Therefore not only perfect ignorance, which excludes suspicion of the truth, can be invincible, but also imperfect ignorance, which is compatible with a doubt that has been judged contemptible.

Ignorance is vincible which could have been removed by moral diligence. Again this ignorance is of negligence, when someone is turned away from the study of knowing by various other reasons; it is affected when someone directly wishes to be ignorant. And the name affected ignorance has customarily been reserved for ignorance which is blameworthy. Yet a certain will of being ignorant can also be praiseworthy. For although knowledge per se is good and advantageous, in the present condition of our infirmity certain things are happily unknown, for example, for the greater guardianship of chastity, for the easier exercise of charity toward one's neighbor.

According to the degree of negligence, ignorance is crass or supine, which has not seized even an easy occasion of knowing; it is simply vincible, which has omitted only sufficient application. The theologian who in no way applies himself to acquiring the science is crassly ignorant of it; he who is not sufficiently diligent is simply ignorant of it. He is deceived by crass ignorance who, needing to know whether midnight has passed or not, does not even consult the clock which lies near him; he labors under simply vincible ignorance who neglects to rise from bed and take a few steps to consult the clock.

2. With respect to the object, law, fact, and penalty can be ignored.

Ignorance of law is had in two ways: more strictly, when that which is contained in the law is unknown; less strictly, yet properly, when the very existence of the law is not known. This law can be natural, positive divine, or positive human: either ecclesiastical or civil.

Ignorance is of fact when the conditions required for the application of the law are unknown to be present.

Ignorance of penalty is that ignorance of law by which it comes about that you do not know that a special penalty has been annexed to some delict.

He labors under ignorance of law who does not know that postulants can and ought to be received within the enclosure of nuns (c. 540, § 3), or that a law of pontifical enclosure exists for nuns; under ignorance of fact, he who does not know that such a religious house is a monastery of nuns; under ignorance of penalty, he who does not know that violation of that enclosure has been sanctioned with excommunication.

3. With respect to the act of the will, ignorance can antecede or follow the act of the will, according as it has a voluntary cause or not; it can be a cause [removing the prohibiting thing ¹] of an act which without ignorance would not have been done, or exercise no account of causality, or merely accompany an act which, with attention to the disposition of the will, would not be prohibited by knowledge of the law or fact.

Therefore there is a twofold respect: in the former, the origin of ignorance is considered; in the other, its effect; whence we would have a twice two-membered division. Yet by received usage one three-membered division is substituted for the two two-membered divisions in this way: antecedent is said of ignorance which is invincible or involuntary and at the same time a cause of willing; concomitant, that which is not a cause of willing; consequent, that which is directly or indirectly voluntary and at the same time is a cause of willing.

¹ Since ignorance is a non-being, it effects nothing positive, but removes the obstacle which knowledge would oppose. Therefore it is called removing the prohibiting thing.

That positive laws can be invincibly unknown is outside controversy and is clear per se. That there are remote conclusions of natural law which can be invincibly unknown is no less manifest. For there are many questions, for example, concerning the obligation of restoring in this or that case; concerning the origin of such an impediment of marriage (for example, consanguinity in the first degree of the collateral line), about which learned men themselves have disputed with one another for centuries and do not agree. On the contrary, that certain first principles and almost immediate conclusions, for example, that good must be done, that evil must be fled; that homicide and adultery generally are not lawful ¹, are known by all men of sound mind, is also not doubted. There then remain several principles or corollaries not so proximate and not so remote, whose ignorance is judged more severely by some than by others. And today we rather incline to the more benign side. Thus almost no one now doubts that the malice of pollution can be unknown for a long time by an adolescent or young man. Nor are there lacking those who think that certain onanistic abuses between spouses, at least in certain circumstances, can be excused in good faith.

¹ Indeed adultery is never permitted by natural law; but some can now be ignorant of that absolute universality of the prohibition: wherefore we have excluded invincible ignorance only from its general prohibition.

What habit effects. A habit for the most part does not remove sufficient knowledge of a good or evil act ². Nevertheless "it can happen that someone having a vicious habit sometimes acts not from habit, but from a passion rising up or even from ignorance." (St. Thomas, 1, 2, q. 78, art. 2.) This happens more easily to those who wish to correct the habit and yet, impatient or distracted, pour out certain blasphemous or even scurrilous words, or perform brief touches on themselves. Concerning this matter, this too seems to be observed: the knowledge which is enough for a good act remains more easily with a good act than, with an evil habit, is preserved the knowledge which is necessary for an act at least gravely evil: both because an upright man wishes more formally to use his habit, so that he would be said by St. Thomas, l.c., to "operate from the habit itself"; and because less perfect deliberation is required for a good act than for an act gravely evil.

"Some obvious circumstance of malice, which the agent habitually knows, can scarcely ever be handed over to oblivion or inadvertence in such a way that there is not sufficient knowledge for contracting malice. Thus, for example, who would not laugh at a priest or religious who, after sinning against chastity, said that he had in no way attended to the vow or to the sacred state?" (Lehmkuhl, Theol. mor., I, 77, 3.)

² Cf. St. Alphonsus, De actibus humanis, XIV; Theol. mor., l. 8, n. 127; l. 6, n. 4, § tertio.

1. The gravity of that guilt must be judged from the conscious degree of negligence. Moreover, that negligence can be the omission of actual consideration, whose necessity, nevertheless, someone notices, whether this flows from habitual and conscious inconsideration or not; and it can be habitual ignorance of things which, whether by a common obligation or by a special obligation of state, one must know according to every time. (St. Thomas, De malo, q. 3, art. 8.)

Therefore he can be blameworthy who is accustomed to act precipitately and does not apply himself to his own amendment, and he who, through his own sloth, does not acquire the knowledge required by his office.

How many sins there are in number, in the latter case, is not so easily defined. For as often as someone wished to be ignorant, or formally or virtually neglected an occasion of learning, so often will he sin on account of ignorance.

Moreover, as often as an ignorant person has committed himself to a probable danger of inflicting harm, for example by exercising an office, so often also will he sin unless he is excused by necessity. Wherefore he ought to abstain from exercising the office until he can exercise it without probable danger. Cf. Ballerini-Palmieri, Op. th., I, Tr. 1, c. 3, n. 55.

As to the species of the sin, either there is had a special precept of knowing, and then from the nature of that precept its violation has its species. Wherefore blameworthy ignorance of the articles of faith will be opposed to faith itself, although the ignorant person does not sin by formal heresy, unless he is so disposed in act that he would not adhere even to a known definition of the Church ¹.

Or that precept does not exist; and then the sin of ignorance receives its species from the transgressions which are foreseen in confused fashion as going to follow. For every law which commands or forbids a work, implicitly, in order to that work, imposes knowledge of itself. Cf. Bucceroni, Institutiones theol. mor., I, 52.

¹ Cf. Lugo, De fide, d. 20, n. 182, 191.

Effect of ignorance on the voluntary. 1. Antecedent ignorance causes the good or evil act which has been produced by the ignorant person to be involuntary simply. For it is not voluntary in itself, and it denotes such a disposition of the agent that, had he known, he would have acted otherwise.

2. Concomitant ignorance, as such, renders the act non-voluntary, although not involuntary ². For involuntary, strictly, is what is repugnant to the will. But what is done with concomitant ignorance would be done even knowingly.

3. Consequent ignorance, as such, makes the act voluntary in the cause, yet in itself involuntary, since, with knowledge present, it would be omitted.

But what if it is affected, or directly voluntary in itself? That ignorance, if it concerns the morality of the thing, is in itself a sin which, according to the thing in question, can be grave or light. That it renders the act more voluntary than simply vincible ignorance is manifest per se. Moreover, it is a sign of great propensity to that thing for the sake of which someone wishes to be ignorant: for example, to reading a book about which he wishes not to know whether it is prohibited; and in this respect it is said, rather improperly, to increase the voluntary. But with respect to the very violation of the prohibiting law to which the ignorant person exposes himself, it betrays a greater or lesser affection than if he sinned knowingly, according to the motive by which he is led. If from contempt of authority as such, it will be a sign of worse affection; if, on the contrary, he wishes to be ignorant lest, being conscious of the matter, he should in some way be delayed from sin, the affection can be less than that of one sinning knowingly. Cf. Ball.-Palm., I, tr. 1, n. 51; Lehmkuhl, I, 76.

Even in good acts directly voluntary ignorance demonstrates a great affection for a praiseworthy action. Thus he betrays a very beneficent mind who wishes to be ignorant of the habits of a beggar lest, perhaps some malice of his being detected, he should give alms less promptly.

Finally, by a universal account, an act done with ignorance is less voluntary than one which is done knowingly. Yet except ignorance directly chosen for this reason, that the note unknown is utterly disregarded. For he wills a good action more, for example, who refuses to consider its danger because he intends to assist the sick or devote himself for his country with every danger; he wills more to transgress a precept who, from contempt of the precept, affects ignorance of it.

² St. Thomas, 1, 2, q. 6, art. 8.

Effect of ignorance on merit and sin. Because the condition of merit and sin is voluntariety, ignorance, other things being equal, removes, diminishes, or increases merit or sin by precisely the same account by which it removes, diminishes, or increases the voluntary. Wherefore invincible ignorance, whether of law or fact, whether antecedent or concomitant, necessarily removes sin.

Whence Augustine: "So far is sin a voluntary evil, that in no way is it sin if it is not voluntary. And this indeed is so manifest that no fewness of the learned, no multitude of the unlearned, dissents from it" ¹. Yet Baius denied this concerning infidelity, prop. 67: "Purely negative infidelity in those among whom Christ has not been preached is a sin"; which St. Pius V, by the Bull Ex omnibus afflictionibus, 1 Oct. 1567, condemned among those proscribed as "heretical, offensive to pious ears." (Denz., n. 1068.) But the Baians and Jansenists denied the same thing concerning all natural law, prop. 2, from the 31 which were proscribed by Alexander VIII, decree of 7 Dec. 1690, "as rash... and heretical," and it sounded thus: "Although invincible ignorance of natural law be granted, this, in the state of fallen nature, does not excuse one operating from it from formal sin" (Denz., n. 1292).

Yet do not for this reason think that the unknown law of nature is violated without detriment. For not only is the ignorant person deprived of the merit and also of the connatural influence of a good action, but also, since every act materially but intrinsically evil is unnatural or contrary to nature, through a certain trace which every action leaves in man, it is opposed to the good and happiness of the agent. Therefore they err who rejoice over a sin committed ignorantly, or who grieve that they do not live among less cultivated nations, where they could do several things ignorantly against the law of nature. Ignorance of the natural law can never be apprehended as good.

And in a similar way an act materially good is not useless to the ignorant person, although unknown goodness does not produce merit.

But simply vincible ignorance diminishes merit or sin. That is, he who proposes to do something which he suspects to be good or which he fears may be evil, by this intention either merits or sins, yet less than if he had perceived the goodness or malice; nor does it pertain to merit or sin whether the act is in truth materially good or evil. For the true object of the will is the act as it is apprehended by the intellect.

Finally, directly voluntary ignorance for the most part diminishes, sometimes increases, merit or sin, as was explained above concerning the voluntary.

¹ De vera religione, c. 14, n. 27 (P.L. 34, 133).

Effect of ignorance on the penalties of the external forum. Modern civil laws are not accustomed to establish any mitigation of penalty on account of ignorance of the law or of the penalty.

Among them ignorance of law is said to harm. From this, however, in pronouncing a penalty, the judge is not prohibited from admitting some excuse of ignorance; also in fiscal matters, friendly settlements are admitted on account of ignorance of an illicit act.

But in the canonical forum, far greater account is had of ignorance, at least if this can be sufficiently proved, for "ignorance or error concerning the law or the penalty is generally not presumed" (c. 16, § 2).

Moreover these principles are laid down. C. 2199: "All causes which increase, diminish, or remove fraud or fault, by that very fact increase, diminish, or remove the imputability of the delict."

C. 2201, § 1: "The violation of an unknown law is not imputed at all, if the ignorance was inculpable; otherwise imputability is diminished more or less according to the culpability of the ignorance itself."

C. 2218, § 2: "Not only those things which excuse from all imputability, but also those which excuse from grave imputability, likewise excuse from any penalty, whether latae or ferendae sententiae, even in the external forum, if the excuse is proved for the external forum."

Concerning penalties latae sententiae, moreover, these things are established: 1. Affected ignorance, whether of the law or only of the penalty, excuses from none. 2. "If the law has the words: he shall have presumed, he shall have dared, knowingly, studiously, rashly, with deliberation he shall have acted, or other similar words which require full knowledge and deliberation, any lessening of imputability, whether on the part of the intellect or on the part of the will, exempts from penalties latae sententiae." 3. If it does not have those words: crass or supine ignorance exempts from none; ignorance not crass or supine, whether of the law or only of the penalty, excuses from medicinal penalties, but not from vindicative ones. Cf. c. 2229.

What those penalties are will be said later. Let us only observe that excommunication is always a medicinal penalty.

Effect of ignorance on the value of certain acts.

Insofar as voluntariety is required for value, so far, and neither more nor less, ignorance will be able to obstruct the value of an act. Thus he satisfies the precept of hearing Mass who hears Mass, not knowing that it is Sunday: because the intention of fulfilling the precept is not itself prescribed; he validly baptizes who does not know that baptism is a sacrament, provided that, by performing the essential rite, he wills to do what the Church does: because nothing more ought to be voluntary; baptized persons marrying validly confer upon themselves the sacrament who do not know that matrimony is a sacrament, because they will the contract which is the sacrament; but those contract matrimony invalidly who have been ignorant that matrimony is a permanent society between a man and a woman for procreating children (c. 1082, § 1), because the substance of the contract must have been admitted voluntarily; one half-asleep makes a vow invalidly, because perfect deliberation is required for a vow.

Whatever we have said about habitual ignorance is valid for inadvertence; indeed, ignorance has no effects except insofar as it begets inadvertence.