§ IV. On Placing a Cause Exempting from Subjection

A cause exempting is said to be one which withdraws someone from the domain of the law, as if someone goes out from the territory of the law, or renounces the community for which the law was made. Now it is licit to place, or not to remove, a cause exempting from the law, and this even directly, that is, with the intention that the obligation be escaped. For a law generally does not command that someone remain a subject, but only that, as long as he is a subject, he fulfill the law (St. Alphonsus, I, 152, 157).¹ I said generally,² because civil law forbids soldiers, and indeed deservedly by right, to desert the standards.

¹ c. 49, 53, X, V, 39.

² As we shall note in its own place, the ecclesiastical discipline has now been changed which formerly, in some matters, forbade one to betake himself into another region so that the obligation of the law might be escaped.