H. Waller, Esq.
8, New Square, Lincoln’s Inn,
Dec. 1851.
My dear Sir,
I have to thank you for the manner in which you have received my communication, but I am sorry to find that, contrary to my expectation, a simple reference to the original text of the Constitutions has not sufficed to show you that the version for which you contend is, as I still believe I shall be able to convince you, founded in misapprehension. I attribute to you—I am bound to attribute to you a wish to see it satisfactorily proved, that the passage has not the dreadful sense which has been given it, and which you assign to it simply because it seems to you unavoidable. I cannot think, then, that I have a difficult task to accomplish.
In several places in the Constitutions the expressions, “obligatio ad peccatum,” “obligatio peccati,” and “obligatio sub pœnâ peccati,” are used indifferently, as equivalent to one another. Thus, the title of cap. v., pars vi., itself is, “Quod Constitutiones peccati obligationem non inducunt;” obviously the same thing must be meant as by, “obligatio ad peccatum,” in the chapter itself. Now you admit that, “obligatio peccati” has the same meaning as “obligatio sub pœnâ peccati;” surely then “obligatio ad peccatum” has the same meaning too.
In pars ix., c. v., § 6, the following passage occurs: “si non compulerit talis obedientia Summi Pontificis, quæ ad peccatum obligare posset;” even in the translation which accompanies the edition of the Constitutions to which you have referred me, this is rendered, “unless such obedience to the Pope, as is compulsive under the penalty of sin, oblige him, &c.” What could have led the translator to put a different meaning on the same expression in the passage we are discussing, I cannot conceive, except I impute it to prejudice.
I do not deny that obligare ad aliquid frequently means to oblige a person to do something; but I deny that it does or, construed with all the context, can mean this in the particular passage. I would beg you to consider the whole chapter, which, I really must say, is turned, not only into something fearful, but into something quite absurd by the construction you give it. Only reflect on the frightful incongruity of any one commanding another to commit sin in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the person of whom this is required complying through love and a desire of all perfection. I hope you will say that this had escaped your notice, not tell me that to urge it is begging the question. Pray read the entire chapter in accordance with the version Catholics give of the passage in question, (if that is to be called a version which simply declares its meaning,) and I still entertain a hope that you will discover its excellent purport and intention.
I may observe, though I do so with some diffidence, as I have almost forgotten my grammar, that in order to make the passage bear the sense which you put on it, the pronoun “ea” should be, not in the plural but the singular, as I presume you refer it to “peccatum mortale vel veniale,” which is disjunctive; and then should be, not id but hoc.
I find that many Protestant writers have repudiated, or at least not adopted, the bad meaning. Thus, Steinmetz in his Novitiate says: “Part vi., c. 5.—Where it is decided, that the guilt of sin attached to disobedience when the superior commands in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, or in virtue of obedience.”—Novitiate, p. 98, 2nd ed. 1847. And in his History of the Jesuits, he does not, so far as I have been able to find, say anything different.
I might say more in vindication of the Constitutions of the Jesuits, but I think I have said enough to justify an expectation that you will be convinced of the incorrectness of your statement.