Article VI: Order of Treatment

All moral theology admits this first division, by which the more general, or fundamental, part is distinguished from the special part.

What general theology of morals contains is easily gathered from the very definition of moral theology. For fundamental theology can be called a certain explanation of that definition.

For we shall have to treat in as many treatises:

1. On man elevated and repaired, or on the subject for whom moral theology is written;

2. On his human acts, which we have said are the remote object of moral theology;

3. and 4. On the rules by which those acts are to be ordered. For a regulative science ought to know and apply those rules. And from the articles of faith themselves we are taught that human acts are to be ordered according to a twofold rule: the remote rule, such as law is, and the proximate rule, such as conscience is;

5. Our deficient liberty has evil acts, which demand a treatise on sins;

6. For doing good acts we are helped by various actual and habitual aids, concerning which there will be the sixth treatise.

Special theology embraces two great parts. One is on the exercise of virtues and the connected duties; the other on the right use of the sacraments. For it pleased the divine munificence to open to us, from the merits of Christ, fountains of graces in the sacraments, and by sacramental actions to help, confirm, and perfect our human actions.

To these parts there is usually added, by way of a kind of appendix, a treatise on the canonical matter of ecclesiastical penalties, since those penalties are to be avoided by our human action, and they affect not a little the right use of the sacraments.

But the treatise on laws, on the sacraments, and on penalties claims for itself a place not secondary in canon law, although the respect is different. Wherefore we have prepared a separate canonical-moral volume on the positive obligations of Christians, on the sacraments, and on penalties, so that it can be useful to each school.

Indeed, the same plan could have been taken concerning Laws in general, concerning which the same reason held. Nevertheless, notions concerning laws are so necessary before the most weighty treatise on justice, and in the whole of moral theology they find such frequent applications - since everywhere natural law is mixed with positive law, whether divine or human - that we have not dared to separate that treatise from moral theology.

Besides, there could be uncertainty concerning the place in which the treatise on Chastity and the opposed vices might more suitably be proposed. Since the right use of the generative faculty is reserved to the conjugal state, its norms are not well grasped before sufficient knowledge of the matrimonial state has been acquired. Wherefore several approach that delicate argument twice: in the treatise on virtues they treat only of carnal vice; what use of the faculty is honorable and praiseworthy they explain in the treatise on matrimony. This division of one argument, this interposition of vice among the virtues, are strange and not without inconveniences. Yet again, a treatise which is wholly moral is not well placed among parts that are rather canonical. Therefore, all things having been weighed, we have preferred to devote a separate little book to that treatment.

The part of theological science which is called moral seeks and proposes practical dictates by which, in the present order of elevated and repaired nature, according to faith and reason, human acts are to be regulated.

II. It differs from dogmatic theology by its material object, that is, human acts, and those to be regulated, while dogmatic theology is occupied with the truths themselves of faith, as such, to be proposed systematically to the intellect; from canon law, by the justice which it pursues, which is justice in the internal forum or before God, while canon law makes a citizen just in the external forum of the Church; from ascetical, mystical, and pastoral science, by the greater extension of the object, which is every honorable thing and not only the better good, and by a more speculative proposition, while ascetical and mystical science, concerned with perfection, and pastoral theology, at the same time inquire into the ways of attaining their objects. It transcends all human sciences, even Ethics itself, by its formal object, which it finds in the articles of faith.

Although the science of law and the science of morals must be distinguished, nevertheless they must not be so separated that the expert in law can abstract from moral truth. Those who preach such a separation spread an anti-natural error harmful to society.

Below dogmatic theology, moral theology subordinates to itself ascetical science, to which it ministers fundamental principles, although by its end ascetical science is superior to it in degree.

III. The sources of moral theology are the sources common to all theology: the Word of God, the Magisterium of the Church, human authorities, and reason. Although, because of its material object, moral theology ought more often than dogmatic theology to appeal to reason.

Among authorities St. Thomas and St. Alphonsus stand out; nevertheless their individual opinions are by no means imposed as to be followed; their commendation dispenses theologians from no personal investigation.

Authorities, moreover, at the same time attest the accepted doctrine of the Church and by their own labor enrich the science.

IV. The method, which can be scholastic or casuistic, will rather be scholastic, insofar as we shall devote labor to seeking the intrinsic reasons of conclusions. Nevertheless our treatment will be brief, because we shall send a fuller exposition and polemical disputations to the special treatises joined with this work of ours.

V. Historical notes. Already in the sacred letters themselves of the New Testament there are many moral parts in which we read principles, precepts, counsels, reproofs, and definitions of authority. The Fathers of the Apostolic age are exhorters; in the second and third century they are exhorters and apologists; then, in the golden period which runs from the fourth century to the middle of the fifth century, they hand down to us the doctrine of morals drawn from the revealed sources, and at the same time they struggle against invading pagan morals. In the subsequent period, the Fathers rather preserve and collect things said before, which then the Fathers less properly so called (from the middle of the seventh century in the West, the eighth in the East) order more methodically, while in abbatial and episcopal schools the age of the Scholastics of the Middle Ages is prepared (from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth). Then, by the cultivation of dialectic (even excessive) and the philosophy of Aristotle, minds perfected moral doctrine by the aids of human reason. The Scholastics of the modern age, who flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, adorned this doctrine, already thus expounded, with a fuller exposition and a more careful application to facts, so that that age can be called the golden age of moral theology. Then, already from the middle of the seventeenth century, because of excessively subtle lucubrations and the Jansenist plague, there succeeded an age which we can name from civil wars, when Catholic writers themselves contended so sharply among themselves concerning probabilism and the administration of the sacrament of penance. The prudent science and labor of St. Alphonsus recalled minds to concord, while at the same time inaugurating an age more practical than doctrinal. It is now permitted to hope for a new golden age, in which, with St. Thomas and St. Alphonsus as leaders, modern erudition may be joined with a greater penetration of principles, souls may be more confidently stirred up to pursuing the positive parts of Christian justice, and the very examination of applications may be completed by psychological observation.

Nevertheless controversies have never been lacking: there has been dispute concerning the value of the baptism of heretics, concerning penance, concerning virginity and widowhood, concerning simoniacal ordination, concerning voluntary poverty, concerning mysticism, concerning usury, concerning probabilism. Present-day questions are concerning "active" virtues with Americanism, concerning the ascetical method, concerning the liturgical informing of piety, concerning matrimony and the duties of spouses, concerning cooperation with modern liberties.

After, in the twelfth century, canon law was separated from moral discipline, nevertheless each science evolved in a sufficiently parallel manner: not rarely the same men were moralists who were outstanding canonists. The Decretum of Gratian came to light with the books of the Sentences; the Decretals of Gregory IX with the Summa of St. Thomas; and now the recently promulgated Code of Canon Law increases the hope conceived concerning moral theology.

Historical facts also demonstrate this: dissensions of Catholics harm solid moral science less than heresies to be attacked; the forgetting of sound philosophy harms it more than exterior calamities.

Moral theology needs both the documents of faith and the labor of reason; applications to concrete cases must be connected with principles.

Today it is necessary with great care to demonstrate Catholic conclusions; to join solicitude concerning perfection with responses concerning things strictly necessary; and not to consider only individual persons, but to attend more to social respects.

VI. This will be the natural order of general theology: that successively we treat of the subject for whom moral theology exists, or of man elevated and repaired; of his human acts; of the remote and proximate rule of those acts, or of laws and conscience; finally, of sins, and of the aids for the right use of our free will.

To forestall fallacies and errors, we have warned beforehand that prudent use must be made of rules of law, lest they be appealed to beyond what the reason on which they rest permits, or where there is no place for them. We demonstrated this concerning these three sayings: In doubt one must stand for the validity of the act; Charity does not oblige with excessive inconvenience, or with grave and proportionate inconvenience; In an equal cause, the condition of the possessor is better.

We also spoke of the right use of the very celebrated distinction between per se and per accidens, which can be referred either to the plurality of cases or to causality itself, observing that no excuse arises if a condition of honesty has accidentally been lacking, but indeed there is an excuse if the consequent effect has accidentally been impeded; and that an evil effect which must be attributed to a concurrent cause is not imputed to him who avoided that evil effect as much as he was bound by a positive duty to take care of it.

Finally, lest we be deceived in alleging condemned propositions, we said that the various notes by which propositions are branded must be observed, and the strict meaning itself of the thesis which is disapproved.

Thus we have prepared the approach to the more general or fundamental theology itself.