Article IV. On Habit

I. Notion. Habit is here understood as a certain disposition acquired from multiplied similar acts, by which someone easily proceeds to similar acts. It is also called an acquired habit. It is good or bad according as it disposes toward good or bad acts.

II. Division. A bad habit, of which there is chiefly discussion here, is distinguished into voluntary and non-voluntary. It is voluntary when someone does not try, according to his powers, to uproot the habit, whether it was contracted advertently or inadvertently.¹ If someone tries to do this according to his powers, it is called non-voluntary.

¹ If someone has advertently contracted a habit and does not try to uproot it, it can be called voluntary under a twofold heading.

III. Influence on the free. Habit, or acquired habit, removes or lessens the free insofar as it removes or lessens the deliberation of the intellect. Yet it increases the voluntary as such, insofar as it causes someone to be borne into the act with greater inclination. Besides, a habit, say, of blaspheming, etc., generally leaves some advertence or deliberation, indeed for the most part such deliberation as suffices for the perfectly voluntary.

"Although," as St. Alphonsus observes, "sinners entangled in depraved habits have a less ready cognition than others, nevertheless they always have some cognition of their crimes sufficient to render their acts deliberate and mortal. For since they themselves make little of sin, there is not made in their souls that sensible and memorable impression which is made in another who has a less depraved conscience; and hence it happens that in their memory there does not remain a trace of that actual cognition which they sufficiently had before concerning the sin, or the trace is so slight that, when questioned, they easily answer that they did not advert; but a cautious confessor ought not to give credence to them" (St. Alphonsus, V, 4).

But with respect to those who have retracted the habit and fight it as they can, Reuter rightly notes: "It happens not rarely that a man who before was accustomed to sins in venereal matter, or whose imagination has been infected by venereal images from long-lasting temptations, is immediately carried off into venereal delight and thinks that he consents, but soon retracts himself and shudders, fearing lest he has consented. But let him not judge that he has consented. For although the sensitive appetite has conceived delight, and some connatural complacency of the will also has followed, this was not free. For old habits connaturally operate the first motion, and man cannot repress it before it is present.... From the same reason authors note that it often happens that a man who has begun to be seriously converted dwells for a long time on a thought and yet does not consent, because acquired habits are operating, and a man occupied with other things cannot so quickly turn his mind to resisting. The common opinion of many is also that reason, through troublesome incidents, often even comes into delight, and this for a sufficiently long delay before it becomes fully master of itself through mature deliberation; and in such a matter men ought not to fear mortal sin. If persons of this kind afterward examine themselves, and at first seem to themselves not to have consented, or only doubt or fear about consent, let them presume that they did not consent, and let them not depart from this resolution."¹

¹ Neo-Confessarius, nn. 261-268.

How greatly it matters that a man be clothed with good habits from tender age can be hidden from no one. For without habits he is wavering toward every good, inconstant, and liable to every assault of temptation; nor, in a doubt about consent, will presumption favor him. But with habits rightly rooted, by which he puts on, as it were, another nature over himself, he will stably do good; nor, in a doubt, is he easily to be believed to have yielded to sin. Therefore parents, teachers, and confessors should try with all force to uproot bad habits as they arise; and with watchful diligence, exhortation, praise, and reward, let them foster the beginnings of good habits.