Article II: Various Opinions or Moral Systems

— The ineluctable necessity of a moral system. When, after a congruent investigation, the conclusion concerning the honesty of a future action or omission remains uncertain (we are solicitous in moral theology about this respect alone), by an ineluctable necessity the question is imposed upon us to be solved: by what certain practical judgment will our action be ruled? By a judgment, I say, practically certain, since a practically doubtful conscience cannot rule a human action, as we have seen, n. 346.

In vain would we try to decline that necessity. As vainly as if we wished to obtain for ourselves direct certainty concerning every matter.

Moreover practical certainty, which directly is lacking, will not be able to be obtained except indirectly, by appealing to some universal principle as the major of a syllogism, and by composing it with the speculatively doubtful judgment of conscience, and finally by collecting the syllogistic conclusion: Therefore I shall have to abstain from that action, or I can safely do it.

Let us suppose the principle of tutiorism, today to be deserted by all: The safer opinion must always be chosen. With this major let this minor proposition be joined: But the honesty of such an action is only probable, and therefore the opinion forbidding it is safer; this conclusion will follow: Therefore I must certainly abstain from this action.

In this way, where direct certainty was lacking, we obtain for ourselves reflex certainty, on account of which the very principles by which it is obtained are called reflex principles. But which principles are to be so called has come into controversy. And moral systems are called the diverse ways proposed in order that we may arrive from a speculatively doubtful judgment at a certain dictate concerning the honesty of an action. The name was perhaps given from this, that those opinions dominate the whole discipline of morals.

— Various moral systems. I. Rigorists, or antiprobabilists, or tutiorists, condemned every action unless its honesty was demonstrated to be at least most probable. Thus the milder ones opined, such as Fagnani and Habert, who wrote after Alexander VIII, on 7 Dec. 1690, among the propositions condemned and prohibited respectively as rash, scandalous, ill-sounding, injurious, proximate to heresy, savoring of heresy, erroneous, schismatic, and heretical, reproved this third proposition of the Baianists and Jansenists: "It is not permitted to follow a (probable) opinion, or among probable opinions the most probable" (Denz. n. 1293). Before, the stricter ones required an action certainly licit according to itself. The reason of the system was taken from the moral obligation, which they imagined, of avoiding every danger even of material transgression of the law. That system now has no Catholic defenders ¹.

II. Probabiliorists contend that the safer opinion must be followed, unless the speculative liceity of the action is manifestly and solidly more probable. They too argue from the necessity of avoiding the danger of violation of law even when not conscious. Yet they temper this principle of rigorism by this other reason: that an opinion certainly more probable is morally certain, because contrary probabilities mutually destroy one another, so that only the excess remains as a positive motive for deciding. They also call upon this reason: that it is consonant with the law of our intellect that, when evidence is lacking, we embrace that which is more like the truth. Billuart ² and the more recent school of the Friars Preachers defend probabiliorism; nevertheless several of our contemporaries of the same Order recede from it.

III. Equiprobabilists, who sometimes call themselves moderate probabilists, besides the use of a certainly more probable opinion, which they always concede, also allow, where the question is not about the cessation of a law or obligation but about its first existence or about the beginning of the obligation, the use of an equally probable opinion ³. They themselves rely upon the mutual destruction of contrary probabilities; but, when the probabilities are morally equal so that no positive reason, according to them, remains, then they say that the principle of possession must be used, so that you answer for the law or for liberty according as the law or liberty possesses. But the law is in possession when there is question of the cessation of the law, and by no means when there is question of its beginning. They add also that it is consonant with natural equity that, with equal balance, sometimes answer be made for law, sometimes for liberty ¹. The Fathers of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, Simar, C. d'Annibale, and some Fathers of the Order of Preachers defend equiprobabilism.

IV. The system of compensation or of sufficient reason, whose origin is ascribed by C. d'Annibale ² to Father Potton ³, O. Pr., does not permit the use of the principle, A doubtful law does not oblige, simply, but only then when a cause excusing from the obligation of the law is proportioned to the gravity and probability of the law: the more probable and the graver the law is, the greater cause is required in order that you may permit the danger of material transgression; that danger is an evil which can be permitted on account of a proportionate good effect, but not otherwise. Or otherwise: to a certain law corresponds a perfect obligation, but to an uncertain law an imperfect obligation, which is ended or terminated by the gravity of the motive for acting. Many in France adhere to this more recent system; R. P. Prummer, O. Pr., Manuale Theologiae moralis, I, nn. 351. 352, also favors it.

V. Pure or absolute probabilists affirm that an action is practically safe whose liceity, all things weighed, is demonstrated as solidly probable speculatively. By adversaries they are sometimes called broad, laxer, and more recently "minus-probabilists." Thus the Order of Friars Minor, thus formerly many Friars Preachers, thus now writers of the Society of Jesus.

There were those who, moved by excessive benignity or rashness, proposed opinions doubtfully, slenderly probable as practically safe. These have the name of laxists.

Yet no one professes laxism; but the Holy See, by proscribing these two propositions, proved herself alien from sayings which provide an occasion of laxity. They are: prop. 27, condemned (at minimum as scandalous) by Alexander VII, 24 Sept. 1665: "If the book is of some younger and modern author, the opinion must be judged probable, so long as it is not established that it has been rejected by the Apostolic See as improbable" (Denz. n. 1127); prop. 3, by Innocent XI, 2 March 1679: "Generally, while relying on probability whether intrinsic or extrinsic, however slight, provided one does not go beyond the limits of probability, we always act prudently" (Denz. n. 1153).

Today most writers or professors in Belgium, France, Spain, and Italy teach simple probabilism, which Harnack in his Dogmengeschichte ¹ attacks sharply but ineptly: ineptly, I say, because the learned man did not even grasp the signification of the words in this matter.

The Friars Preachers have not formally deserted probabiliorism. But since, after the solemn approvals of the Holy See given to St. Alphonsus, that cause can be called desperate, they began to favor the equiprobabilists sufficiently, as is clear from the essays which appeared in the Revue Thomiste. Indeed, in his work La phil. morale de S. Thomas, R. P. Sertillanges simply rejects probabiliorism, and in c. XVI concludes in these words: "Equiprobabilism well understood can therefore pass by good right for a Thomistic solution."

We shall not discuss the very mind of St. Alphonsus. Several writers of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, v.g., Aertnys, though not all, admit that he, after he had used probabiliorist teachers, through part of his life gave his vote to pure probabilism; and indeed, at the very mature age of 53 and 59 years (1749 and 1755), he wrote two dissertations in which he very openly and with many arguments defended simple probabilism. Then there were those difficulties of the times which seemed to advise verbal changes of the system, less clear formulas; but the Holy Doctor himself was of such humility that by the very attacks he could have been led to temper or soften his opinion.

Wherefore C. d'Annibale, I, n. 263, note 10, seems to us to have better followed the mind of the Holy Doctor, where he writes that moderate probabilism, such as Suarez, Lessius, Laymann, Bonacina... de Lugo defended, whose doctrine for the Holy Doctor (§ 4, n. II) "how great it is, is perfect from every side," was never attacked by St. Alphonsus. "And the things which afterward he wrote and discussed for defending equiprobabilism, from the years 1748 and 1755 (V. § 11) up to the end of his life, those were written chiefly to defend moderate probabilism against broad probabilism"; - and likewise R. P. Aertnys, C.SS.R., De Conscientia, n. 94: "In his first dissertations St. Alphonsus strenuously defended against the Probabiliorists the thesis of Probabilism, 'It is permitted to follow a probable opinion for liberty, the more probable for law having been left aside.' From this opinion the Holy Doctor never receded; but, to avert from probabilism the danger of laxity, afterward he judged that this moderation should be added as part of his system: 'It is not permitted to follow the benign opinion, when the opinion for law is certainly and notably more probable,' because an opinion of this sort is already, as we have declared, morally certain, and the other is not truly and solidly probable but only doubtful or slight... That the distinction between an opinion a little more probable and much more probable must be ascribed to that motive which we brought forward above, St. Alphonsus clearly sets forth in his Apologia of the year 1765 in these words: 'I have never contended nor do I now contend to establish new systems; I know well that no Probabilist of solid doctrine holds as licit the use of an opinion slenderly or doubtfully probable. But because many Probabilists indiscriminately say that it is permitted to follow the less probable opinion when it has some foundation from reason or from authority, therefore I wished to distinguish, saying that it is illicit to follow the less safe opinion when there is much and certain preponderance on the side of the safer opinion; ... because then the less safe opinion cannot be called certainly probable' ¹. Therefore he distinguished with this counsel, that he might define the limits of certain probability and of moral certainty, and in that way preclude the use of opinions which are not true and solidly probable... From all these things I infer that Probabilism thus moderated, rather than accepted in the laxer sense, must be called common." Cf. more in d'Ales, Dictionnaire d'Apologetique, word Probabilisme, where a historical inquiry will be found, written by Fr. de Blic, S.J.

Finally this must be observed: approved writers of various schools today disagree less materially than formally. Thus C. d'Annibale proclaims safe in conscience the use of pure probabilism. Thus, from the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, Aertnys (l.c. n. 94. 95) professes that practically he thinks with several writers of the Society; but Marc, of the same Congregation, declares himself by no means hostile to the moderate probabilists of the Society (he calls such Suarez, Vasquez, Lessius, Laymann, Lugo) ¹. And R. P. Sertillanges, of the Friars Preachers, while he recently wrote these things: "Supported by this, that action cannot attain evidence; that prudence is preserved at a lesser price; that the criterion of the obscure is the probable; and that Providence, having cast us into the probable, must be content with it on our part, arguing thus, explicitly or implicitly, the mind finds it good to adhere to the opinion called prudent; the will follows, and finally determines adhesion" (2); while, I say, he was writing these things, what was he doing except repeating that celebrated saying of the probabilists, "He who acts probably acts prudently"? But they added that it suffices for honesty that we act prudently.

On their own part, however, the Wirceburgenses were already writing, De actibus humanis, n. 240: "Scarcely any prudent theologian will affirm his opinion to be manifestly and notably more probable, as long as he recognizes the opposite as truly and theologically probable; but if it ceases to be such, the question also ceases." Hence, although theoretically, or in the abstract, it is true that the solid probability of one part is not excluded by the greater probability, even in a notable degree, of the opposite part, nevertheless, psychologically, perhaps these two things will not be affirmed at the same time.

Wherefore we think that today, among approved theologians, scarcely anyone is found who would oppose this formula of conclusion: Whenever the question is immediately about the liceity of our action alone, he acts safely who embraces a solidly probable opinion. If in this way we practically agree, then also more easily, according to sound principles of philosophy, the concord of theologians, which Jansenism destroyed, now that this plague has been routed, will be restored.

¹ He finds a non-Catholic one in Habsack; cf. below here. Some in France and Germany (v.g., those who taught at the University of Tubingen), having repudiated any moral system, proposed to solve all cases by direct reason. These then either must be rigorists, or, for one moral system, invent as many systems as there are diverse ways by which they think they can arrive at certain moral conclusions.

² Dissertation VI, De actibus humanis.

³ I probably recited the breviary, probably not: since I was certainly obliged, I am still bound by recitation. Midnight has probably passed; probably not. If between Thursday and Friday, I can eat meat, because the doubt is about the beginning of the obligation; I cannot, if the doubt arises between Friday and Saturday, since the matter is about the cessation of the obligation. One doubting concerning his age of 21 years is not bound to fast; one doubting concerning the age of 60 years is bound.

¹ Thus d'Annib. I, 201. - (2) Cf. d'Annib. I, 263, note 1.

³ De Theoria Probabilitatis, Paris, 1874.

¹ Tom. III, 1910, pp. 748-756.

¹ Vindiciae Alphonsianae, I, 60.

¹ Institutiones morales I, 864.

² La philosophie morale de S. Thomas, c. 16, III, p. 549.