Chapter II. On Rash Judgment, Opinion, and Doubt

I. Notions. Judgment or certitude, opinion, and doubt respectively involve firm assent, weak assent, and suspension of assent concerning the truth of some proposition. Suspicion is reduced to doubt (n. 215). They are called rash here if they are made without sufficient foundation and regard the evil of the neighbor (St. Alphonsus, III, 962).

II. Morality. 1. Judgment, opinion, and doubt, rashly conceived, are sins, and indeed against justice. This is clear both from Sacred Scripture, which at least teaches that they are sins,¹ and from the fact that he inflicts injury on the neighbor who holds him to be evil without sufficient reason.

2. With respect to the gravity of the sin, receive these things:

a) A rash judgment is a grave sin if the conditions to be explained are present; if any of these is lacking, there is only a slight sin. The conditions are:

alpha) That judgment is truly present, or that the assent is firm or quasi-firm; in other words, it is required that the matter be held as certain or morally certain (St. Thomas, II-II, q. 60, a. 3; St. Alphonsus, III, 962).

beta) That the judgment is about grave matter, i.e. about matter which, if it were revealed, would contain grave detraction (St. Alphonsus, loc. cit.).

gamma) That the judgment rests on reasons which do not suffice for conceiving an opinion. If they suffice for opinion, there is no grave sin, even if the judgment is wholly firm (St. Alphonsus, III, loc. cit.).

delta) That the judgment is about a determinate and known person. Therefore grave sin is absent if you rashly judge that in some place some crime has been committed by someone indeterminate; or if you judge the same thing about a man who meets you, but is unknown to you (St. Alphonsus, loc. cit.).

Now, when these conditions have been fulfilled, there is grave sin, because there is grave injury; otherwise, if any of them is lacking.

b) Rash opinion, suspicion, and doubt ordinarily are only slight sins, because the injury, and consequently the sin, is only slight (St. Alphonsus, III, 963). Many make an exception if someone, on account of the slightest reason, should suspect or hold as probable that a grave and honorable person is guilty of an enormous crime: "as it would be, to suspect about a pious religious that he is a heretic, or that he has committed incest with his mother; or about a man commonly held as Catholic, that he is a Jew or an atheist. The reason is that perhaps a greater injury is inflicted on them by suspecting such things than if a certain judgment were had about them concerning ordinary grave offenses" (St. Alphonsus, III, 964; St. Thomas, II-II, q. 60, a. 3).

c) It is disputed whether or not detraction and rash judgment differ in species. Some deny it, because by detraction reputation is injured before others, by rash judgment before ourselves; which difference seems merely material. Others affirm it, because by detraction there is taken away before others the knowledge which they have of someone's goodness; by rash judgment I do not take away from myself the knowledge of someone's goodness, but I deny the assent of the intellect due to the knowledge had; which difference seems formal to the patrons of this opinion.

Corollary I. Since rash judgment, etc., are opposed to justice, they oblige to a certain species of restitution, namely that one lay aside the aforesaid judgment, etc., and judge better about someone.

Corollary II. Doubts about the uprightness of the neighbor are to be interpreted in the better part, unless someone prefers to abstain from judging. It can indeed "happen that he who interprets in the better part is more often deceived; but it is better that someone more frequently be deceived, having a good opinion about some bad man, than that he be deceived more rarely, having a bad opinion about some good man; because from the latter injury is done to another, but not from the former" (St. Thomas, II-II, q. 60, a. 4, ad 1).

Yet these things do not prevent someone, if there is question of avoiding damage, from conducting himself as if the other were harmful; for prudence advises this.

¹ Luke VI, 37; Matt. VII, 1-2; Rom. XIV, 4; 1 Cor. XIII, 5.