Explanation of Catholic Morals: A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic MoralsStapleton, John H. (John Henry)
Religion
Explanation of Catholic Morals: A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals
Stapleton, John H. (John Henry)
Christian ethics -- Catholic authors
Finally recklessness may be the cause of our harming another. It is a
sound principle of morals that one is responsible for his acts in the
measure of his foreseeing, and consenting to, the results and
consequences. But there is still another sound principle according to
which every man is accountable, at least indirectly, for the evil
consequences of his actions, even though they be unforeseen and
involuntary, in the measure of the want of ordinary human prudence
shown in his conduct. A man with a loaded revolver in his hand may not
have any design on the lives of his neighbors; but if he blazes away
right and left, and happens to fill this or that one with lead, he is
guilty, if he is in his right mind; and a sin, a mortal sin, is still a
sin, even if it is committed indirectly. Negligence is often culpable,
and ignorance frequently a sin.
Naturally, just as the soul is superior to the body, so evil example,
scandal, the killing of the soul of another is a crime of a far greater
enormity than the working of injury unto the body. Scandal comes
properly under the head of murder; but it is less blood than lust that
furnishes it with working material. It will therefore be treated in its
place and time.
CHAPTER LXXV.
OUR ENEMIES.
WHAT is an enemy? A personal, an individual enemy is he who has done us
a personal injury. The enemy, in a general or collective sense, are
they--a people, a class or party--who are opposed to our interests,
whose presence, doings or sayings are obnoxious to us for many natural
reasons. Concerning these latter, it might be said that it is natural,
oftentimes necessary and proper, to oppose them by all legitimate
means. This opposition, however lawful, is scarcely ever compatible
with any high degree of charity or affection. But whatever of aversion,
antipathy or even hatred is thereby engendered, it is not of a personal
nature; it does not attain the individual, but embraces a category of
beings as a whole, who become identified with the cause they sustain
and thereby fall under the common enmity. The law that binds us unto
love of our enemy operates only in favor of the units, and not of the
group as a group.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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