§ 5. On Deceit

I. Notion. Deceit is not any lie whatsoever, but denotes lying arts employed for deceiving another. Deceit per se begets error; hence its efficacy upon the voluntary is to be estimated. It happens, however, that beyond the connatural force of error an act is made weaker by positive law.

In penal law deceit is the deliberate will of violating the law (c. 2200); and also in the civil forum harms inflicted by the will of harming are judged to have proceeded from deceit; this deceit is thus distinguished from simply blameworthy negligence.

The Code of Canon Law, c. 103, § 2, establishes concerning deceit the same thing as concerning grave fear unjustly inflicted: acts done from deceit are valid unless something else is provided by law, but they give place to an action for rescission. Yet they are invalidly admitted to the novitiate who, induced by deceit, enter religion, or whom the Superior, induced in the same manner, receives (c. 542, 1°); for the validity of any religious profession it is required that it be emitted without deceit (c. 572, § 1); the renunciation of an office or benefice, made by deceit, is void by the law itself (c. 185).

¹ For instance, blasphemy (v. 2323).

² If, in order to mock the faith, someone is commanded to dine, drink wine, and then celebrate Mass.

³ If a priest is commanded to violate an interdict in order to empty out the authority of the bishop.

⁴ In certain circumstances it will not be licit to flee persecution, if the flock would thereby lose courage.

I. Man's free choice is finite; and even within its own limits it is suppressed or diminished by impediments.

For healthy men, of whom we speak first, there are common impediments and accidental impediments.

II. On account of common impediments, the following lack liberty: a child, one sleeping, one perfectly drunk. A semi-wakeful person uses diminished liberty, which makes glorious the victory of one then overcoming temptation, but is not sufficient for sinning mortally.

III. As to the ends within which free choice is enclosed: the motions of lower concupiscence, and also motions of the will itself which are called first-first motions, anticipate deliberation. Second-first motions give place only to imperfect deliberation.

IV. Accidental impediments. 1. Ignorance,. or the privation of knowledge, differs from simple nescience and from actual forgetfulness or inadvertence.

a) In the subject, ignorance is distinguished as invincible and vincible, according as it could not or could be driven away by at least moral diligence. Vincible ignorance is attributed either to negligence, which can be crass, supine, or simple, according as an easy occasion of knowing, or merely sufficient diligence, has been omitted; or to the direct will: then it is called affected. The existence or sense of a law can be unknown: ignorance of law; or the condition of application: ignorance of fact.

It can antecede or follow an act of the will; be a cause, removing what prohibits, or have no causality. Antecedent ignorance is called that which is at once involuntary and a cause of willing; concomitant, that which is not a cause of willing; consequent, that which is at once vincible and a cause of willing.

b) Positive laws can be invincibly unknown, and also conclusions not so remote from the natural law, if you except a few too near to the first principle: good is to be done, evil is to be avoided.

The habit itself can produce inadvertence; nevertheless it is not presumed to do this.

c) The gravity of vincible ignorance is estimated from the conscious degree of negligence or of evil will. He who carries culpable habitual ignorance sins as often as he wills to be ignorant and as often as he exposes himself to the danger of harmful error. But the sin is opposed either to a special precept of knowing, or takes its species from the transgressions which are foreseen to follow.

d) Antecedent ignorance makes involuntary; concomitant ignorance makes non-voluntary; consequent ignorance makes voluntary in the cause, but not in itself. Affected ignorance is a sign of a great propensity to the thing for the sake of which someone wills to be ignorant; yet it diminishes or increases the voluntary according to the motive by which the will of being ignorant is determined. Note that affected ignorance can also be praiseworthy, like the reason of every ignorance. In general, ignorance at least diminishes the voluntary.

e) What it effects in the voluntary it effects also in merit or demerit.

f) Canonical penalties, though for the most part not likewise civil penalties, are diminished or even taken away on account of ignorance of law. Affected ignorance excuses from no penalty; all non-affected ignorance excuses if the law has the words "shall have presumed," etc., or similar words; simple ignorance, but not crass ignorance, excuses from medicinal penalties latae sententiae.

g) Insofar as voluntariness is required for validity, for the same reason ignorance will be able to obstruct the validity of an act.

h) What has been said about habitual ignorance holds also concerning inadvertence.

2. Concupiscence,. or the motion of the sensible appetite, is at once and per se a help to us; but per accidens it is an impediment.

a) It is antecedent or consequent, according as it precedes or follows an act of the will. Consequent concupiscence can be so by mere resultance or by direct excitation. An affection thus excited is by no means fictitious.

b) Concupiscence can take away deliberation. Per se, however, it allows liberty to be intact; but an act conformable to it is less voluntary and free if the concupiscence was antecedent. Consequent concupiscence by resultance is a sign of an intense will; by direct will, however, it increases the voluntary. By the same reason it diminishes or increases merit or sin. Yet by consenting to resultant concupiscence, then we increase merit or sin.

A good act contrary to concupiscence will be of itself more voluntary and meritorious; but it is not an effect of concupiscence itself.

c) By custom there are produced forgetfulnesses and also propensities which can create a moral impossibility to be healed gradually.

d) On account of present infirmity, we need medicinal grace for overcoming grave temptations.

e) Passive tolerance of a sensible motion, but not likewise of an indeliberate motion of the will, cannot in itself be a grave sin. Nevertheless there remains the obligation of avoiding the proximate occasion which the tolerated concupiscence itself can bring on. Resistance to temptations is sometimes to be counseled as positive, sometimes as negative. Let it always be commended as quiet, not anxious.

3. Coercion. is a motion whose principle is outside, while he who suffers resists to the contrary.

a) The will cannot be coerced; the sensible faculties and exterior acts can be coerced.

b) Absolute force is distinguished, which effects the involuntary; and force according to something, which by greater resistance can in some measure be overcome.

c) The omission of resistance can be blameworthy or praiseworthy. Absolutely to be denied is every participation in an intrinsically evil action, unless, when the question is of exterior goods, the malice itself of the participation could cease because of the primary destination of goods. One can abstain from useless resistance, provided scandal and danger of consent be avoided.

4. a) Fear, or a trepidation of mind arising from the apprehension of danger, can take away every voluntary element by disturbing reason. But if reason is not disturbed, it is distinguished as grave or light, and this absolutely, or relatively to the person who fears. Reverential fear is per se light, but easily, on account of circumstances, is converted into grave fear.

b) Fear per se leaves sufficient place for deliberation, so that the act is voluntary and juridically valid. Yet fear which has been absolutely or relatively grave, if it has been inflicted by a free cause - which fear is called fear from without - provides the law with a reason why several acts are rendered null or rescindable. Cf. cc. 185, 642, 572, § 1; 1087, § 1; 1307, § 3.

Considered in itself, however, an act done from fear is simply voluntary and for the most part, but not always, involuntary according to something. Fear also can, as an impulsive cause, operate beyond its own power, if powers for a nobler act are at hand, as when an act of charity is commanded by fear.

c) An evil act placed from fear diminishes sin, yet not so that from mortal it becomes venial. It also diminishes canonical imputation; indeed, when there is question of merely ecclesiastical laws, for the most part it takes away the delict.

d) Phobias are to be healed diligently; but better are they to be prevented by wise education.

5. a) Deceit, or lying arts employed for deceiving another, impede the voluntary, insofar as they beget error. By positive canonical law deceit is assimilated to fear and invalidates, by the law itself, religious profession and renunciation of office or benefice.

b) In penal law, deceit is the deliberate will of violating the law; in the civil forum, when there is question of repairing harms, deceit is called the will of harming, and is distinguished, as a cause of harms, from negligence.