Preface

The proper character and usefulness of our Moral Theology seem to us to be manifested, or at least intimated, by the very title with which it is inscribed.

For we promise Principles, Responses, and Counsels.

Principles cannot be handed down without an intrinsic examination of causes.

By Responses, cases are to be solved clearly, for the necessary and prudent instruction of practice.

Finally, Counsels are given concerning the better good. Wherefore our solicitude will not be only about weighing sins which are to be avoided; but it will also extend itself to the positive part of Christian justice, to be explained and recommended.

Written wholly after the Code, the book will more easily be accommodated to the present norms of law than treatises which have merely been revised after the Code. That it may serve use the more, it seemed good to set down the usefulness of the argument before chapters or titles; moreover summaries will be subjoined to the individual chapters, which will present a brief repetition of the chapter.

With the kindly work of friends expert in these matters having been brought in, in treatises which must be completed by the ordinances of civil laws, we shall be able, and shall not neglect, briefly to sketch not only Latin law but also American, English, and German law; in liturgical and disciplinary institutes, the historical beginnings of the present discipline and its successive preparations.

The public apostasy of the nations corrupts not only the intellect, but also the morals of men. From the flood of neo-paganism those must be preserved whose light, as the Lord admonishes ¹, ought so to shine before men that from their good works the heavenly Father may be glorified.

May it be possible, with the help of God's grace, that this work of ours, such as it is, contribute something to the sublime end of the divine glory!

Rome, on the sacred day of Pentecost, June 4, 1922.

¹ Gospel of St. Matthew, 5, 16.

I. Fundamental Theology.

II. On the Duties of the Virtues.

III. (Canonical-liturgical and moral) On the Precepts of the Church and the Sacraments.

IV. Special Treatise on Chastity and the Opposed Vices.