Everyone knows what justice is when personal rights are violated. Something undue has happened and it hurts or stings. Being robbed of one’s possessions, experiencing insulting remarks in a public or private forum, being punched in the face, all of these unjust experiences remind us that a civil society of people respecting each other’s rights causes civil peace at the least, which leads to greater cooperation and collaboration in a society.
When thinking about the sin of adultery, it is easy to see that it is not merely a sexual sin but also an act of grave injustice to spousal love. It attacks the marital bond without destroying it, however, since that indissoluble bond comes from God. Few think of simple fornication — or as it is now called “hooking up” — can possibly be against justice, unless it is a form of rape, wherein one person gets the other drunk or renders them unconscious by a drug.
On the other hand, St. Thomas Aquinas, in a very little read portion of the Summa Theologiae (II-II 154, 2), asks the question whether “simple fornication is a grave sin.” At first, it seems to be a “no-brainer”, because it is a sexual sin, an act done without the benefit of marriage and so against chastity. And while this is true, this conclusion is over-simplified because it is deeper than a simple act of unchastity. Thomas’s fourth objection is quite contemporary for an thirteenth century author:
…every moral sin is contrary to charity. Yet simple fornication is not against charity or the chosen love of God, for, doing nobody any harm, it is not directly against the love of God and our neighbor. So it is not a mortal sin.
He gives a very poignant and lengthy answer:
A sin which directly attacks a requirement for human life is contrary to the life of man. Now fornication is an inordinate act of a kind to injure life that may be born from intercourse.
The reader will notice that the harm is potential. However, one willing to do potential harm implies a bad will. So, Aquinas develops his thought:
Now it is evident that the bringing up of a human child requires the care of a mother who nurses him, and much more the care of a father, under whose guidance and guardianship his earthly needs are supplied and under whom he progresses in goods both internal and external (what Aquinas is getting at is a child’s character). Therefore human nature rebels against an indeterminate union of the sexes and demands that a man should be united to a determinant woman and should abide with her a long time or even for a whole lifetime. Hence it is that in the human race the male has a natural solicitude for the certainty of offspring because on him devolves the upbringing of he child: and this certainly would cease if the union of sexes were indeterminate.
Of course our anti-culture would scoff at Aquinas, because contraceptive use by a woman or man would seemingly prevent an injustice to the child. But as is known now by experience, contraceptives only makes moral matters worse in terms of the risk of transmitting venereal diseases (injustice again) and if a contraceptive fails, the offspring is often aborted (graver injustice). It is also interesting that St. Thomas understands the importance of father in a family as educator in contrast to so-called progressive thinkers who consider fathers in a household as unnecessary.
To sum up, Aquinas answers the fourth objection:
Simple fornication is contrary to the love we should bear our neighbor, for, as we have indicated, it is an act of generation performed accomplished in a manner disadvantageous to the future child.
The reader will notice that Thomas’s assumption that fertility is present as integral to his argument. He neglects to argue his case for those who are no longer child bearing or those very few who may know about NFP in today’s world, and use this discovery when choosing to fornicate. So his argument is incomplete, but true for those who easily can bear offspring. Nevertheless, at that point his other teaching concerning the daughters of lust, elaborated by St. Gregory the Great in his Moralia is always relevant to any and all sexual sins. They are called blindness of mind, thoughtlessness, inconstancy, rashness, disordered self-love, hatred of God, excessive love for the present world and abhorrence and despair of the next. The first four daughters deteriorate and attack the virtue of prudence, which is the charioteer of all the virtues.
Attempting to make good decisions under the influence of the unbridled desire for sexual pleasure causes a certain blindness of mind that does not easily go away, as well as a failure to seek counsel, causing actions without foreseeing the deleterious consequences. Finally, even if one can come to a reasonable conclusion about sexuality and decide to act chastely, carrying out that plan is easily overturned as the will is often weak to follow through.
What is even more interesting is that as the vice of lust grows it seems to attack the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity and likewise strengthens the vice of greed or avarice, which is another enemy of the spiritual life. The more one becomes immersed in sensual pleasure for its own sake, the more likely one will be repelled by spiritual delights coming from the acts of the theological virtues because actions from these above all produce contemplative delights. Lust diminishes and often shuts down these delights, making one’s life a swamp of sexual gluttony. Fortunately, just as no one is impeccable, so no one is so fixed or deep seated in sin in this life that grace cannot overcome and help one’s will to change repentance and turning back to the life of virtue.
Avarice, the vice which undermines social justice because it leads one down the path of becoming immersed in possessing things for all kinds of unreasonable motives, can be prompted by lust because when the bodily desire for sexual pleasure takes hold of a person, then material things being extensions of one’s body (and soul), becomes a greater value in one’s life. It becomes a deep portion of my identity in such a way that having them becomes an illusory feeling of building my ego up, thereby closing down any concern and feeling I should have for those around me, the common good of my society, the suffering and especially the poorest of the poor.
Social justice, or being pro-life becomes meaningless if one does not strive for the chaste life of the spirit as the deep foundation for justice.
Father Basil Cole, O.P. is currently a Professor of Moral and Spiritual Theology, Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. Father is also author of Music and Morals, The Hidden Enemies of the Priesthood and coauthor of Christian Totality; Theology of Consecrated Life. A native San Franciscan, Father has been a prior in the Western province of the Dominicans, a parish missionary and retreat master, and invited professor of moral and spiritual theology at the Angelicum in Rome.
