Sins Crying to Heaven

351. What they are. Sins crying to heaven are numbered as four: a. voluntary homicide; b. sodomy; c. oppression of the poor, widows, and orphans; d. defrauded wages of workers.¹ These sins contain such abominable malice that before the rest they provoke divine vengeance.

a. The external reason on account of which they are designated by this name is this, that Sacred Scripture, commemorating those sins, adds that they cry to heaven.

a. Commemorating the fratricide of Cain, it says: The voice of thy brother's blood cries to me from the earth.²

b. Commemorating the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, it says: We will destroy this place, because their cry has grown before the Lord.³

c. It prohibits the injury of widows and orphans with these words: You shall not hurt a widow and an orphan. If you hurt them, they will cry out to me, and I will hear their cry;⁴ and commemorating the affliction of the people of God in Egypt, it says: I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt and I have heard its cry.⁵

d. Concerning defrauded wages it has these words: Thou shalt not deny the wages of thy needy and poor brother ... lest he cry against thee to the Lord and it be reputed to thee as sin.⁶ Behold, the wages of the workers who harvested your fields, which have been defrauded by you, cry, and their cry has entered into the ears of the Lord Sabaoth.⁷

b. Considered in their nature, the peculiar malice of these sins consists in this, that they are opposed to man's social inclination, which has been implanted in all by nature for constituting and preserving human society, and that through them laws are violated which tend to this, that the highest social goods be preserved; and therefore before the rest they demand divine vengeance.

Sodomy and homicide are opposed to the appetite which tends toward the preservation of the species and of the individual, and they injure the precepts looking to that; oppression of the poor and defrauding of wages are opposed to the appetite which tends toward the preservation of human society through individual ownership of goods, and they injure the precepts looking to that.

¹ They are comprehended in this memorial verse: The voice of blood and of the Sodomites cries to heaven, the voice of the oppressed, the wages withheld from labors.

² Gen. 4, 10.

³ Gen. 19, 13. Cf. Gen. 18, 20.

⁴ Ex. 22, 22 f.

⁵ Ex. 3, 7.

⁶ Deut. 24, 14 f.

⁷ Jas. 5, 4.

There are four sins that are said to cry to heaven for vengeance, viz.: (i) Wilful murder; (2) Sodomy; (3) Oppression of the poor; (4) Defrauding laborers of their hire.

The Schoolmen enumerate these sins in the following distich:

To heaven cry the voice of blood and the voice of the Sodomites, the voice of the oppressed, and the withheld wages of laborers.

This classification is based upon Scripture. Gen. IV, 10: “The Lord said to Cain: ... What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the earth." Gen. XVIII, 20 sq.: "The Lord said: The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is multiplied, and their sin is become exceedingly grievous." Gen. XIX, 13 the angels tell Lot that they will destroy Sodom, "because their cry is grown loud before the Lord, who hath sent us to destroy them." Ex. III, 7 Jehovah says to Moses: "I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of the rigor of them that are over the works." According to Ex. XXII, 22 sq. the Mosaic law prescribed: "You shall not hurt a widow or an orphan," adding: "If you hurt them they will cry out to me, and I will hear their cry." Deut. XXIV, 14 sq.: "Thou shalt not refuse the hire of the needy and the poor . . .; but thou shalt pay him the price of his labor the same day, before the going down of the sun, because he is poor, and with it maintaineth his life: lest he cry against thee to the Lord, and it be reputed to thee for a sin." James V, 4: "Behold the hire of the laborers, who have reaped down your fields, which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth: and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth."

If we study the nature of the sins thus characterized as crying to Heaven for vengeance, we find that they form a category separate and distinct from the capital sins. For whereas the latter spring from an inordinate craving of the natural appetites, and are sinful only when they involve a lack of rational self-control, the distinguishing note of the so-called peccata clamantia is violent suppression of certain natural instincts and conscious frustration of their ends and objects. In other words, besides a transgression of the moral order, they entail a violation of the laws of nature, thus provoking divine wrath in a special manner. This fact is well expressed in the phrase, "sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance."

It goes without saying that every sin of this kind is by its very nature mortal because it involves the transgression of an important law with full advertence and knowledge.

The sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance violate or suppress (1) the instinct of self-preservation, which tends to conserve individual life; (2) the sexual instinct, which was instituted for the perpetuation of the race; and (3) the social instinct, which tends to the protection of private property. a) MURDER is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. This sin may be direct or indirect, it may be committed against oneself (suicide) or against another, even the unborn (procuratio abortus, malicious destruction of the embryo or fetus).¹ The term murder includes every species of unnatural cruelty, such as exposing a child to the danger of death, maltreating prisoners and slaves, engaging in piracy, waging war without sufficient reason, and killing another in the intellectual or moral sense, i. e., robbing him of his good name by slander or calumny.

¹ Cfr. Codex Iuris Can., can. 2350, § 1.

The unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought is a terrible crime because it interferes with the sovereignty of God, who is the Master of life and death and has created man as His own image and property,¹ and because it undermines the foundation of society and brings upon its victim the greatest temporal misfortune and sometimes even causes his eternal damnation. Justly, therefore, is cold-blooded murder punished by death (capital punishment).

¹ Gen. I, 26 sq.; IX, 6; Deut. XXXII, 39.

Murder is often committed for petty motives, such as revenge, jealousy, or avarice. The gravity of this crime may be judged by the fact that murderers often become their own accusers. b) SODOMY is the sin for which Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God. The term includes all kinds of unnatural copulation, particularly when committed between persons of the same sex, and all practices aiming at the prevention of conception.² Sodomy is closely related to murder. Both crimes are directed against the preservation of the human race, and, moreover, cruelty and lust, heartlessness and debauchery, bloodthirst and unchastity (Sadism, Masochism) usually go hand in hand.³

² Cfr. Gen. XIX, 5; XXXVIII, 9; Lev. XVIII, 22; XX, 13; Judges XIX, 22 sqq.; Rom. I, 26 sq.; 1 Tim. I, 10.

³ Cfr. Ez. XVI, 49; Am. II, 7.— H. Rau, Die Grausamkeit mit besonderer Bezugnahme auf sexuelle Faktoren. Berlin 1903. —On Sadism (crudelitas activa) and Masochism (crudelitas passiva) cfr. Familler, Pastoralpsychiatrie, Freiburg 1898, pp. 157 sq.; Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, 13th ed., pp. 158 sqq.; A. Eulenburg, Sadismus und Masochismus, Wiesbaden 1902; O'Malley and Walsh, Essays in Pastoral Medicine, New York 1906, pp. 338 sq. — F. a Barbens, Intr. Pat hoi. ad Stud. Theol. Mor., pp. 255 sqq.

Holy Scripture condemns the conduct of Onan, not only because he had a wicked intention, but "because he did a detestable thing."⁴ c) OPPRESSION OF THE POOR, especially of widows and orphans, is a dastardly crime because it violates the natural law and runs counter to a sentiment deeply ingrained in the human heart. This crime is committed in various ways, by dishonestly administering an estate, by fraud in drawing up a man's last will, by unjust appropriation of that which belongs to the poor, by the employment of trickery in lawsuits, bribing judges and other officials, etc.⁵ d) To DEFRAUD A LABORER OF His JUST WAGE is a crime against the fundamental right of private property. It is the sin of oppression of the poor in an aggravated form, for it injures those who are compelled to make a living in the sweat of their brow. This sin is perhaps more often committed indirectly than directly, e. g., by carelessly incurring bankruptcy, by reducing wages without necessity, by cooperating in the establishment of monopolies or trusts, by adulterating food or raising its price without necessity ("profiteering"), by practicing usury,⁶ by defrauding workingmen of their earnings, by compelling them to purchase their supplies at exorbitant prices in company stores (truck system), and in many other ways.

⁴ Gen. XXXVIII, 7 sqq.; 1 Paralip. II, 3.

⁵ Is. X, 1-2; Matth. XXIII, 15; Mark XII, 40.—Cfr. St. Jerome, In Beech., V, c. 16: "That rich man clothed in purple in the Gospel is related to have had no other crime than that, proud in wealth and riches, he had broken forth into such arrogance that he would not extend his hand to the needy and poor man, and had so forgotten his own condition that he would not give the wretched man even what was to be thrown away." (Migne, P. L., XXV, 154).

⁶ Cfr. C. Elliot, Usury Millersburg, O., 1902; P. Cleary, The Church and Usury, Dublin, 1914.

We shall have more to say of these sins in later volumes.

READINGS. —F. X. Linsenmann, Lehrbuch der Moraltheologie, pp. 180 sqq. —J. A. Ryan, A Minimum Wage, New York 1906. —IDEM, Distributive Justice, New York 1916.—Th. Slater, S.J., Questions of Moral Theology, New York 1915, pp. 78 sqq.; 176 sqq.—H. Noldin, S.J., Summa Theol. Mor., Vol. I, pp. 391 sqq.

— Origin of the opinion. Various places of Sacred Scripture, where a peculiar vengeance is announced as either taken by God or to be feared from Him, led theologians to distinguish four sins as "crying to heaven." From the time of Canisius they are contained in these verses:

The voice of blood and of the Sodomites cries aloud to heaven,

The voice of the oppressed, the wage of labors detained.

And so they are enormities against the individual neighbor: homicide; against the human race: sodomy; against the social good: oppression of the poor, widows, and orphans; the defrauded wage of workers.

⁴ Gen. 4, 10; 18, 20 ff.; Exod. 22, 23; Eccli. 35, 18 ff.; Deut. 24, 14 ff.; St. Jas. 5, 4.

— I. Capital sins are vices not necessarily graver than others or mortal, because of which man is led to several other sins.

Two vices are as it were the heads of all sins: cupidity, whether you take it for the appetite of riches or for the pursuit of one's own good as such; and pride which, if it is perfect, denotes the repudiation of all subjection.

But other sins which are called capital have the nature of proximate origin with respect to several sins; these, by the custom of today, are numbered seven.

1. Pride, or rather vainglory, insofar as it denotes an inordinate excessive mode of pursuing one's own excellence. It is of itself venial; it begets presumption (an appetite of undertaking something beyond one's powers), ambition, and vain glory. The contrary defect is pusillanimity; the middle is the virtue of magnanimity.

2. Avarice, or the inordinate appetite of temporal things, venial from its own kind, begets hardness of heart, gives birth to violence, fallacies, frauds, and betrayal. To this is opposed the vice of prodigality. The middle is liberality.

3. Luxury, or the inordinate appetite of venereal pleasure, concerning which elsewhere. It begets in the intellect blindness of mind, the precipitation of one acting without counsel, the inconsideration of one doing things that are disgraceful, and inconstancy in good purposes. In the will false love of self grows, hatred of God is prepared, affection for the present age is fostered.

4. Envy, or sadness concerning another's good, insofar as that is diminutive of one's own excellence: the increase of another's excellence is apprehended as if one's own evil. It gives birth to hatred, detraction, joy concerning the neighbor's evil, and whispering. Charity is opposed to it.

5. Gluttony, in general, is the inordinate appetite of food and drink. Excess is called crapula. Abstinence is opposed to it. From its own kind it is a venial vice. Besides bodily effects, it begets in the soul dullness of mind, foolish gladness, loquacity, buffoonery.

It is repugnant to piety that someone without a just cause should feed on human flesh or blood.

Drunkenness in the special sense, if it is perfect, denotes the voluntary induction of a state in which someone is immediately deprived of the use of reason with proximate incapacity of recovering that use. Since reason is our directive faculty, drunkenness of itself makes a reparable mutilation, which, illicit according to itself, can licitly be intended or chosen for the good of the whole person or body, or permitted for a just and reasonable cause, such as recovering health and the soothing of bitter pains supply. These excluded, that perversion of order, by which the principle of order is withdrawn, is grave in its kind; nevertheless it admits smallness of matter, from the shortness of time and the absence of danger of material sin. For the cutting off of the mere anxieties of agony it is not licit to deprive a dying man, for example by the aid of morphine, of sense and reason, at least when no particular pains are to be put to sleep.

As a means of just defense, another's involuntary drunkenness can be induced; indeed, according to several, even that culpable to the neighbor, if he is determined toward a greater evil.

Imperfect drunkenness is of itself venial. As long as someone continues to discern between evil and good, he is not yet perfectly drunk.

Subjectively, quite many are excused from grave sin, because they did not fully notice the danger of drunkenness. Evils committed in drunkenness are imputed if, as sufficiently connected, they were foreseen and remained evils, that is, material sins. Societies called temperance societies are usefully established for healing drunken persons. For many the sole medicine is complete abstinence from intoxicating drink.

6. Anger is an inordinate appetite of revenge: inordinate on the part of the mode, and this is venial; or on the part of the object, and this is grave in its kind. It begets indignation, swelling of mind, clamors, blasphemies, insults, maledictions, and quarrels. An ordered appetite of revenge is called anger through zeal. Neither such anger nor severity which is inflexible concerning punishments when right reason demands it is opposed to meekness or clemency.

7. Sloth, or weariness of soul, as a capital vice, is not taken for every relaxation of soul in cultivating virtue, but for sadness and weariness concerning divine friendship: then it is mortal from its whole kind. It gives birth to aversion from spiritual goods, pusillanimity and despair concerning salvation, rancor, torpor, and wanderings of mind in spiritual exercises.

A proper and direct precept of laboring is not demonstrated.

II. By the name of sins against the Holy Spirit theologians are accustomed to call six sins which particularly oppose the Holy Spirit, because they resist the action of grace more, and therefore are blotted out with greater difficulty. They are: Presumption, Despair, attack on known truth. Envy concerning grace granted to a brother, Obstinacy. Impenitence.

III. From various places of Sacred Scripture are gathered four sins which peculiarly call for heavenly vengeance. The first, against the individual neighbor, is homicide; the other, against the human race, is sodomy; the third and fourth are against the social good: oppression of the poor, the defrauded wage of workers.

IV. Because of positive or negative cooperation, sins committed by another are also imputed.