Moral Species of Lewdness

The Moral Species of Lewdness.—(a) Theoretically, it is more probable that the imperfect sins of impurity do not differ from the perfect sins to which they tend; for the natural circumstances or antecedents of an act have really the same morality as the act itself (see 2486). In the physical order, the fetus, the infant, and the child do not differ essentially from the full-grown man; and likewise, in the moral order, the thought, the purpose and the external beginning do not differ essentially from completed murder, even though for some reason the act be not finished. Hence, immodest words, reading, looks and touches belong to fornication, or adultery, or incest, or sodomy, according to their tendency (e.g., to read an immodest love story with another man’s wife and to kiss her is incipient adultery, and, if the guilty person has a vow of chastity, it is also sacrilege). But the species is taken only from the object, not from the purely accidental circumstances, such as the elicitive faculty (e.g., an immodest look at another does not differ essentially from an immodest touch) or the intensity (e.g., incomplete pleasure in touches by one who has not attained puberty does not differ essentially, according to some, from the completed pleasure of which he is capable). Moreover, it seems that, in regard to looks if not as regards touch, abstraction (see 2506) is easily made by the guilty person from various circumstances; for example, one who looks immodestly on a person consecrated to God, may be thinking only of his unlawful love for a person of the other sex, and so may be guilty of incipient fornication, but not of sacrilege, or he may be thinking, without any affection for the other person, only of his own pleasure, and so may perhaps be guilty only of incipient pollution. A less probable opinion makes lewdness a species of sin distinct from pollution and the other consummated sins.

(b) Practically, penitents should confess that their sin was indecent and not completed lust (such as pollution), and they should also confess whether the lewdness was committed by speech, reading, looks, kisses, embraces, or touches; and also the object of the sin, whether male or female, whether married or single, relative or non-relative, etc. Otherwise, since few penitents know how to distinguish the moral species of sins, there will be great danger of incomplete confessions; and, moreover, the additional sins usually committed in cases of lewdness (e.g., scandals, injustices, and bad company keeping) will not be disclosed. If a consummated sin of fornication, pollution, etc., followed the indecency, this consummated sin should be confessed distinctly. Similarly, those who expose, incite or tempt others to impure thoughts or to lewdness in word, reading, looks, kisses or touches, should confess the kind of sin they intended (see 1497), even though their purpose failed, whether it was incipient fornication, sacrilege, sodomy, etc. But some authors admit a generic confession (in which the penitent merely states that he sinned mortally or venially, as the case was, by indecency), if the lewdness was solitary, or was committed with another but certainly without scandal or lustful desire of the other person.