Title III: Impediments and Limits of Free Choice

Usefulness. It is of no small moment, and often of no small difficulty, that a moral theologian, for example in the sacrament of penance, be able prudently to discern guilt, and to judge concerning the value of promises and of obligations undertaken. To this end the present title has been written.

Account and division of impediments. 1. Although we speak of impediments of the intellect and will, nevertheless the spiritual faculties cannot properly either fall sick or be affected by an intrinsic impediment. Therefore all impediments cohere with our present necessity of using the body and material powers even for the noblest acts. And so by the same bonds by which the senses, whether interior or exterior, are bound, the intellect itself is externally bound. Now we distinguish the impediments and limits of free choice in a healthy man, and the impediments which must be ascribed to a morbid state. The former are either common to all, insofar as all men per se experience those states in which the higher faculty, impeded in its act, can make no free act, at least not perfectly; and accidental impediments, such as ignorance, which bring it about that, not indeed per se but per accidens, a faculty, even when unimpeded for its own acts, nevertheless does certain things involuntarily.