Bodily Injury

Bodily Injuries.-Injustice is done not only by destroying the life of a human being, but also by harming him in his rights to bodily integrity or well-being. The chief bodily injuries are the following:

(a) mutilation, which deprives a person of limbs or members, without inflicting death;

(b) wounding, which by an act of violence (such as a stab or blow) breaks the continuity of the body, or impairs its strength or beauty;

(c) enfeeblement, which impairs or destroys the health, strength, or comfort of the body in unlawful ways (e.g., by deprivation of necessary food, sleep, fresh air, by communication of infection, by beating, hazing, etc.);

(d) restraint, which hinders the lawful exercise of the bodily powers (e.g., by holding a person against his will, by chaining him to a post, by locking him in a room).

Mutilation. In general, any kind of act which injures or impairs bodily integrity is called mutilation. In the strict sense, mutilation is any cutting off, or some equivalent action, through which an organic function or a distinct use of a member is suppressed or directly diminished. Accordingly, three distinct types of mutilation are possible: (a) when a part of the body with a distinct function is excised; (b) when a distinct organic function is totally suppressed, without excision of the organ; (c) when the function is directly lessened or partially suppressed.

Morality. (a) Liceity. The basic principle governing the morality of mutilation is: Man is not the master of his own life, but only the custodian. Accordingly, neither is he master of his own body. Thus, Pope Pius XII, speaking of the “Surgeon’s Noble Vocation” (The Catholic Mind, Aug. 1948, pp. 490 ff.), declared: “God alone is Lord of the life and integrity of man, Lord of his members, his organs, his potencies, particularly of those which make him an associate in the work of creation. Neither parents, nor spouse, nor the individual in question may dispose of them at will.”

As steward, man has duties toward his body, its health and welfare, according to the norms of reason and the divine law, so that it may be a means of his attaining life with God. Acting in accord with these norms and the end of life, it may become necessary and licit for man to mutilate his body in order to safeguard health or to save his life. The principle expressing the morality of mutilation, known as the principle of totality (Pius XII, Nous vous saluons, AAS 45-674), may be formulated: Man may licitly mutilate his body only insofar as this is expedient for the good of the whole. In fact, such mutilation is often obligatory, since one must use ordinary means to protect his life and health, and since the part is for the whole. Thus, one would be bound to undergo an operation for appendicitis in order to save one’s life.

Although an organ be not diseased, it may under certain circumstances be removed. Thus, a surgeon operating for hernia may remove a healthy appendix, should the danger of adhesions be foreseen that would require a later operation. Nor is it necessary that there be a “present” danger. The words of Pope Pius XII, that mutilations are permissible when required “to avoid ... serious and lasting damage” (AAS 44-782), are suggestive of the liceity of prophylactic operations. (See medical-ethics texts for special cases, such as lobotomy, thalamotomy, experimentation, etc.)

The problem of mutilation involved in organic transplantation for the benefit of a neighbor is highly controverted at the present time, Pope Pius XII discussed the legality of corneal transplants from the dead to the living (The Pope Speaks, Autumn, 1956, pp. 198 ff.), but he did not touch the matter of transplants from living bodies. In this controversial matter, the following principles seem to be clear:

1. Mutilation for the good of the neighbor cannot be justified by the principle of totality, for the subordination implied in the principle is characteristic of a physical, not a moral, not even the Mystical, body.

2. Minor mutilations, such as skin grafts or blood transfusions, are certainly permissible. The speculative basis is still a matter of dispute.

3. It is solidly probable extrinsically that organic transplantations may be permitted, possibly out of charity and for a proportionate reason. Some contend, however, that the act of mutilation involved is intrinsically evil and can not be justified by the extrinsic motive of charity.

Mutilation is lawful by public authority in punishment of a criminal; for if the state has the right to inflict death for serious crime, much more has it the right to indict the lesser punishment of mutilation. The expediency, however, of exercising the right must be judged in terms not only of punishment, but also of prevention of crime. Mutilation has no necessary connection (apart from special circumstances) with deterring criminals from further crime.

(b) In other cases mutilation is unlawful; for just as man is not the master of his life, neither is he the master of his limbs, and he commits a wrong against God, society, and the individual if he destroys parts of his body when neither public good nor private safety demands that this can be done. Thus, mutilation of a criminal performed by private authority is unlawful. Hence, a husband may not mutilate a man who has broken up his home.

Mutilation of an innocent person that it not necessary for his bodily safety is unlawful. Even spiritual good is not a sufficient reason; for example, one may not castrate oneself in order to escape temptation, for this operation does not take away passion, and, moreover, there are spiritual means which suffice against temptation. When Our Lord says that one should cut off a hand or foot that causes scandal (Matt., xviii. 8), He is speaking metaphorically of the avoidance of the occasions of sin. Much less is temporal good a sufficient reason for mutilation. Hence, a youth may not have his teeth pulled in order to escape military service; a pauper may not have his arm amputated in order to get larger alms; a boy may not be castrated in order to give him a better singing voice; a woman may not have the hysterectomy or other similar operations performed merely to prevent conception; a man may not have the operation of vasectomy performed on him in order to prevent generation.

Morality of Sterilization. Mutilations which frustrate the power of procreation in men and women are called sterilization. Two kinds are distinguished; indirect, to remove diseased organs; direct, to prevent conception.

(a) Indirect sterilization (also called by many therapeutic) is lawful when it is necessary to save life or health. The ethical principle involved is the indirect voluntary or the principle of double effect. Hence, vasectomy may be used to prevent idiocy or death, or to remove or allay physiological abnormalities that bring on certain sexual perversities or disturbances, if it is likely that these evils are imminent or present and that the operation will be beneficial.

(b) Direct sterilization by public authority includes both punitive and eugenical sterilization. The latter was condemned by Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii. In context the Holy Father was dealing with the false claims made in the name of eugenics that the State might legitimately sterilize those who by reason of hereditary defect might be considered likely to generate defective offspring. This position is vehemently rejected: “Public magistrates have no direct power over the bodies of their subjects. Therefore where no crime has taken place and there is no cause present for grave punishment, they can never directly harm or tamper with the integrity of the body, either for the reasons of eugenics or for any other reason. St. Thomas teaches this when, inquiring whether human judges for the sake of preventing future evils can inflict punishment, he admits that the power indeed exists as regards certain other forms of punishment, but justly and properly denies it as regards the maiming of the body.”

In the same context, punitive sterilization, whether as punishment for crime or as deterrent, was also declared to be unlawful. However, fasciole 14 of the AAS for 1930 emended the text and seems to have withdrawn the formal condemnation of punitive sterilization. a subject of theological discussion at the time. The matter had not been closed and the emendation had the force of reopening the question.

Theological opinion is still divided as to the liceity of punitive sterilization. Some still maintain that since the state can inflict the superior penalty of death for serious crime, a fortiori also the lesser punishment of sterilization. Others deny the liceity, for sterilization does not achieve the essential purposes of punishment; it is not corrective, preventive, retributive, or emendatory. Accordingly punitive sterilization is unreasonable and inconvenient. This latter view prevails among most modern moral theologians. Confirmation for the view is sought in the response of the Holy Office (AAS 32-73) that direct sterilization is prohibited by the law of nature. Since punitive sterilization has as its immediate effect, whether as an end or as a means, sterility of the generative potency, it may well fall under the category of direct and hence also under condemnation of the Holy Office.

Other Bodily Punishments.—Other bodily harms (wounds, blows, restraint) may not be inflicted except under the following conditions:

(a) there must be sufficient authority. The State, being a perfect society, has greater coercive power, and may inflict penalties that are of a permanent character, such as death or mutilation or wounds (e.g., by branding); and it may impose restraint, not only from unlawful, but also from lawful acts. The family, being an imperfect society, has a limited coercive power, and hence the father, or those who hold his place (e.g., teachers), may administer corporal chastisements that are not of an irreparable kind to his children (such as beatings, whippings). Other persons may punish or restrain only in case of urgent necessity (e.g., one may hold a stranger who is about to commit murder; one may chastize a neighboring boy who cannot be kept from depredations on one’s property in any other way). It is not wrong, however, to inflict moderate bodily hurts, if the other person is not unwilling and there is a reasonable purpose, such as exercise, training in the art of boxing or wrestling, recreation, or mortification;

(b) there must be a sufficient reason for the harm done. The good of the public is a sufficient reason; for example, when a criminal is incorrigible and it is dangerous for him to be at large, it is not unreasonable to give him a life sentence. The good of the individual is also sufficient; for example, when a surgeon has to wound in order to cure, when a father has to use the rod in order to improve the child or to uphold discipline (Prov., xiii. 24, xxiii. 13);

(c) there must be moderation in the harm or pain inflicted. Thus, while children should not be spoiled, nor prisoners pampered, the other extreme of maltreatment or torture must be avoided. It is cruel to box children soundly on the ears, or to push them roughly about, or to tie them up in the dark, as they may suffer permanent injury from such methods. Likewise, it is barbarous to send convicts to a place or prison so horrible that they lose their minds or fall victims to lingering disease, or to inflict excruciating punishments by rack, thumb-screw, prolonged scourgings, etc.

Injury to Health.—Harm unjustly done to the health of others is sinful, and, if the harm is great, the sin is mortal. Examples: (a) Harm to health is done negatively by omission of duty, as when a medical man or physical director does not use sufficient care and a patient thereby suffers detriment to health, or an employer does not see that his factory or place of business is sanitary, or that the work is not too exhausting with the result that employees lose their vigor. (b) Harm to health is done positively by acts or objects that tend to deprive another of the means to physical well-being (e.g., annoyances, noises that prevent sleep, adulterated food, maintenance of a nuisance which creates suffocating smells or harmful vapors, etc.), or that bring to another the infection of disease (e.g., when a well person is made to live or room with one who has tuberculosis).

2. Mutilating another or injuring his health is sinful if done against his reasonable will. To this class of forbidden acts belong corporeal maltreatment, the infliction of unnecessary pain by beating or wounding, overburdening with work, cruel treatment, handing out insufficient or adulterated and consequently injurious food, etc. Strong emotions, too, such as, for instance, fear, anger, and even excessive joy, can injure the human organism and imperil its existence, nay, destroy it, by causing paralysis of the heart, or psychoses and serious derangements of the nervous system, such as epileptiform or hysterical convulsions, and so forth.⁷

⁷ Cfr. Maschka, Handbuch der gerichtlichen Medizin, Vol. I, pp. 809 sqq.

Any injury unjustly done to the health or members of another against his reasonable will is a violation of justice and a mortal sin, unless passion, previously suffered injury or smallness of matter (parvitas materiae) diminish the guilt. Mutilations which entail the loss of the procreative faculty (castratio, emasculatio) are inspired by greater malice and are therefore more severely punished by the civil law.

S. Th. II-II, q. 65.

369. A threefold harm can be inflicted upon the members of the body; for in the goods of the body three things are considered in order:

1° the integrity of the bodily substance, to which detriment is brought, apart from killing, by mutilation, that is, the cutting off of a member, or an operation which suppresses its use or organic function; to this wounding closely approaches, which is the infliction of a wound or lesion in a member;

2° the delight or rest of sense, to which beating or striking is opposed, and everything which affects sense with pain;

3° the motion and use of the members, which is impeded by binding, incarceration, and any detention whatever.

370. Mutilation (and wounding) of oneself and of one's neighbor, even direct, is licit

1. if it is necessary for the bodily health of the whole, when otherwise the whole cannot be aided, namely, when the member is harmful to the whole body (whether from within, because it is putrid, or from without, as if someone would be burned or killed unless the member were amputated); and then it is licit for a private person to amputate it for himself or for another with his permission, indeed without his permission if he is not master of himself, but care for his health belongs to another and the amputation is an ordinary and prescribed means;

2. if someone has merited it on account of fault, and then it is licit for public authority, just as the killing of a malefactor also is licit for it.

The reason is because the part is for the sake of the whole, the member for the sake of the whole body, and the individual for the good of the whole community; and therefore the good of the part or of the private person yields to the good of the whole body or community.

Outside these cases direct mutilation is illicit, even for the good of the spiritual life, or for avoiding sin, because members from their nature are not ordered immediately except to the good of the body, not to the good of the soul, and because this can be aided otherwise; and therefore this is not judged to have been conceded by God.

This principle, as Catholic doctrine and at the same time as rationally certain, is solemnly confirmed in the recent encyclical Casti connubii, on Christian marriage, issued by Pius XI on 31 Dec. 1930:

"That private men themselves have no dominion over the members of their own body other than that which pertains to their natural ends, and cannot destroy or mutilate them or in another way render themselves inept for natural functions, unless when the good of the whole body cannot otherwise be provided for, this Christian doctrine establishes and it is altogether established from the very light of human reason."

Hence practical cases are understood:

a) Surgical operations are licit if they are truly useful for health; but if they are dangerous they must be very useful, and for knowing this it is expedient to take the counsel not of one only, but of two or more, since some, more than is fair, favor these operations for the sake of experiment or gain.

b) It is certainly illicit to mutilate oneself in order to obtain some gain or advantage for oneself, for example, to flee the burden of military service, to obtain more abundant alms, to preserve the voice by castration and obtain gain from singing: these things are not necessary for the health of the whole body, nor are they a proportionate reason.

c) Eviration or vasectomy is illicit for preserving chastity: for evils are not to be done so that goods may come about, and especially if it is not necessary; "but spiritual health can always be aided otherwise than by cutting off a member, because sin is subject to the will. And therefore in no case is it licit to cut off a member on account of avoiding any sin whatever" (St. Thomas, q. 65, a. 1, ad 3).

d) Likewise vasectomy is illicit, as also oophorectomy, for impeding generation. Each is a notable and grave mutilation; for this must be weighed not only by reason of danger or of the dimension of the member, but also by reason of the function, if it deprives one of a power or function of great moment, such as the generative function. And the same is to be said of the use of X-rays for procuring sterility, by directing them more intensely upon the ovaries or testicles. Such operations are licit in this case alone, when those organs are infected, and therefore would be necessary for the life or health of the whole body.¹

¹ The Holy Office declared generally on 24 Feb. 1940: direct sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary, whether of a man or of a woman, is not licit and is prohibited by natural law.

e) Likewise it is illicit for public authority to impose vasectomy or atrophy of organs serving generation for the public good, whether for impeding the generation of infected or weaker offspring, because society does not have direct dominion over the life, liberty, and members of innocent subjects, and because other means are not lacking for obviating this. This is now altogether certain from the mentioned encyclical of Pius XI, according to which public magistrates have no direct power over the members of subjects, nor for preventing future evils is there a right for them to lesion of the body (as St. Thomas says, q. 108, a. 4, ad 2), but only for punishing the crimes of the guilty, or also for preventing new crimes of recidivism in those who are already guilty.

f) Indeed, for punishing certain crimes, however much the power of punishing them by the infliction of vasectomy or sterilization could belong to public authority, - which point is expressly reserved by the Supreme Pontiff in the encyclical, - nevertheless generally it does not seem fitting, because it is not an apt punishment, as being little painful, much repugnant to the moral sense, and rather desired by many so that they may be able with impunity to be free for lust.

g) Illicit mutilation is a grave sin, yet it admits lightness of matter, as if someone uselessly removed one tooth from himself.

h) Indirect mutilation is not licit except on account of a proportionately grave cause.

i) Hence it is a sin not only positively to mutilate the body, but also negatively not to have sufficient care for it. The body is the instrument of the soul, which must be apt to serve the operations of the soul. And therefore for obtaining health and a good disposition of the body there is an office of employing ordinary means; and it is a sin by excesses in food and drink or by immoderate labors, vigils, austerities, gravely to harm health, notably to shorten life, or to render the body unequal to serving the soul. Moderate austerities, however, are licit for taming sensual inclinations and reducing the body into the service of the soul (I Cor. IX, 27), even if life is shortened somewhat; moreover, to avoid all causes of a certain shortening is impossible for man.

371. Beating or moderate striking without mutilation, for the cause of correction, discipline, and punishment:

1. is licit for each one with respect to himself, and for another with his permission;

2. without permission is licit, not for private persons (who do not have governing or coercive power over others), but for public authority; and also for private authority, namely, for a father with respect to a son, for a master with respect to a slave, or for those to whom they commit this, for example, for teachers with respect to students, because they exercise paternal power; - but not for a master with respect to a servant who is freely hired, nor generally for a husband with respect to a wife, who is a companion, not a slave, nor for an elder brother with respect to the others unless the father himself has mandated it.

For just as, for coercing and punishing by irreparable penalties, perfect power of coercing is required, which is in public authority, so also an imperfect power of punishing by lighter reparable penalties is in those who have imperfect private authority.

372. Incarceration simply so called, for a long time or for the whole of life, is illicit, unless it is done a) by public power, which alone disposes universally concerning the acts and life of another; b) according to the order of justice, as a penalty or safeguard against sin. Namely, the man who abuses the power given to him merits losing it, and therefore incarceration is fitting for him who by sinning has abused the free use of his members.

Nevertheless 1) particular superiors, such as parents and teachers, can for some time detain or shut up children in their own house, for the sake of correction (cf. Belgian law, 15 May 1912, a. 16, 22, 30); 2) indeed every private person can detain someone for an hour from immediately perpetrating an illicit work, as when someone detains another lest he throw himself down or strike another.

373. Corollary. - He who inflicts the aforesaid injuries upon a person joined to certain others, as to a father of a family, or to a king, sins more gravely, other things being equal, than if he inflicted them upon a person joined to no one, because such an injury redounds upon several. Yet it can happen that according to some circumstances that which is done against a person joined to no one is a graver sin, either on account of the dignity of the person, or on account of the magnitude of the harm.

374. Remark. Since animals lack reason and personality and therefore are not their own nor a subject of right, but are totally for the sake of man, who is their lord as of other terrestrial things, man has no obligation toward them, and consequently does not commit an injury if he uses them by killing or in any other way, for example, by vivisection for promoting physiological science or medical art. From this, however, it does not follow that man always kills, tortures, or vexes them licitly, even apart from an honorable end or without sufficient reason, or more than is fitting: for to act without sufficient reason or not on account of an honorable end is never licit.

But if nevertheless he does this, he does not sin by a sin of injustice toward animals or toward God; but he sins toward himself, since he uses his own thing badly, and this sin of itself does not exceed venial sin (q. 64, a. 1).

That it is not licit to imprison someone by private authority, the Saintly Doctor teaches in speculo animae, cap. 5. The reason is that this is to inflict harm as regards the movement of the limbs, as S. Bonav. loco cit. hints, and D. Thom. Yet it would be licit for someone having charge to imprison, e.g. a son, or a slave, to avoid some grave damage; but more licit is it for the judge, for custody or punishment, as all teach.

As to blows: it is licit for a father to beat his son, and a master his slave.

Yet S. Bonavent. in speculo animae admonishes that it not be done with cruelty. For cruelty is harshness of soul in exacting punishments for sin, just as faecitas¹ when one rages against one's neighbor without his fault; in which, if the excess is grave, the Saintly Doctor says it is mortal. ¹ N. Editor's note: the print/OCR reads 'faecitas', not a Latin word (perhaps 'feritas', savagery); the raw OCR of the print is equally garbled here; rendered as 'savagery' from context.

2. Is it lawful to mutilate a man?

No; except in so far as it is necessary to preserve the man’s life, or unless it is commanded by competent authority in punishment of crime, according to the law of the country. Otherwise as man is not the owner of his life or limbs, but the ownership of them belongs to God, man can not dispose of life or limb, because he can not dispose of what does not belong to him.