CASUISTRY, the science or art of deter mining cases of conscience and the moral character of human acts; so called from eases consciesstice, a case of conscience. Wherever the question arises, Is such an act allowable by moral law? there is a case of conscience and matter of casuistry, and in deciding the ques tion for himself, as everyone habitually does, everyone is a casuist. But in current ustai'e a i casuist is one who, skilled in the prescriptions of the divine moral law and its interpretation whether by lawgivers, moralists or theologians, studies either suppositions or actual cases of conscience and judges whether a given act, or even a given thought is consistent with or in violation of moral law— for, unlike the civil lawgiver or the ministers of civil law, the cas uist must determine the moral character of thoughts no less, or rather more, than of acts. The professional casuist is inevitable in the system of the Catholic Church, where the min ister of religion, in his capacity of confessarius or confessor must be the counsellor and direc tor of penitents and resolve for them questions of guilt or innocence, questions touching the obligation to restitution, for example of goods, or reparation of damage to a neighbor's reputa tion by slander; granting or withholding abso lution according to the merits. For the minis ter of the sacrament of penance acts under Jesus Christ's commission, whose sins ye shall forgive, whose sins ye shall retain, shall be forgiven or retained; and to execute that com mission the minister of the sacrament must de cade for himself and the penitent the moral character of the acts. The science or art of casuistry has doubtless been carried to extraor dinary lengths; but though the questions which it treats are such as touch individually and most intimately daily and hourly the many millions of souls who resort to the confessional, the works of writers on casuistry, though vo luminous, would count as a scant armful com pared with only one part of the works con tained in a law library—those which record the decisions of the civil courts. It is true also and inevitable that casuistry like law lore is often employed as a means of escaping from legal penalty or of quieting the sense of guilt. As there are lawyers who for a fee will defend any cause however defenseless morally, even to the extent of working injustice—loss of prop erty, loss of reputation to the party opposite — indulgent there are d i casuists who by their overin ning to an ndulgent interpretation of the divine moral law release or cut the nerve of moral responsibility, administer an opiate to conscience.
Probabilism is the name given to the doc trine which declares to be lawful in Toro con sciesstio an act the moral correctness of which is affirmed by any moral theologian of weight (doctor grayss); or, as defined by Liguori, a probable opinion is one which rests on a solid foundation (fundament° gravi) both of reason and of authority, so that it is able to move the assent (flectere assensum) of a prudent man, though with fear regarding the opposite. But a writer in a great encyclopmdia, who regards probabilism as °the most remarkable doctrine they (the casuists) promulgated—a doctrine which it is hard to believe that any one ever ventured to assert° teaches that °according to probabilism° aany opinion which has been ex pressed by a 'grave doctor> may be looked upon as possessing a fair amount of probability, and may, therefore, be safely . followed, even though one's conscience may insist upon the opposite course°: the last clause is gratuitous and has no warrant in the teachings of Catholic moralists, who unanimously hold that an act done in defiance of conscience, even be it a plainly erroneous conscience, is a sin.
Viewed in the abstract, the rule of the prob abilists is not an unreasonable one; it is acted upon daily by whoever, doubting his own judg ment, asks counsel of others whom he regards as trustworthy advisers, even though they be not grave doctors (graves doctores). It is admitted that some of the probabilists, even the greatest of them, as Escobar, Suarez, Busem baum, did not'always guard the doctrine against misconstruction, and gave occasion for views of moral obligation which were too lax: but the ecclesiastical censure has fallen upon such erroneous teachings, without discrediting for Catholic moralists the principle of probabilism. Let any other school of moral teaching set to itself the same task which confronts the moral theologian of the Catholic Church, that is, to define with precision the moral character of every act, every thought, every imagination that has relation to the moral law, and it will be seen whether probabilism must not have a place in its system.