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Dear Father Angelo,

I read with emotion the letter of the person who keeps her Prayer in modesty, and she gets up from her knees when she hears someone coming.

Your answer gave me a great consolation, dear Father, because I act so as well.

Besides my will to preserve modesty when in intimacy with the Lord, I consciously do not want people blaming Holy Things rather than me, at all.

I keep my intimate Faith hidden, as I do not want anyone to offend or denigrate Holy People because of me.

About this topic nowadays, many Priests invite to perform dramatic signs of the Cross, rather branding as shy and ridiculous those who maintain modesty, like the “famed” lukewarm people who will be vomited out, who are conditioned by a “modern thought” which presumes to judge the Christian, and the Catholic Christian in particular… !?…

My prayer for you and for your very important order.

Lara.

The Priest’s answer

Dear Lara,

1. your email leads me to write again to further reinforce what you wrote and to apply it to other topics.

St. Thomas distinguishes between positive moral precepts and negative moral ones, and the magisterium of the Church does it together with him, as we will see later.

Positive moral precepts bind us to perform good actions.

Negative moral precepts prohibit performing a bad action.

2. Now, positive moral precepts always bind, but not in every circumstance, like the precept to pray.

These precepts always bind, but not necessarily at every moment we must start praying, in fact we also must do other duties which sometimes cannot be postponed.

3. St. Thomas says that the positive precepts always bind as a disposition of the soul, but they do not always require to perform a specific action because “they bind as to place and time according to other due circumstances, in respect of which human acts have to be regulated in order to be acts of virtue.

Thus then it is not necessary for salvation to confess one’s faith at all times and in all places, but in certain places and at certain times, when, namely, by omitting to do so, we would deprive God of due honor, or our neighbor of a service that we ought to render him: for instance, if a man, on being asked about his faith, were to remain silent, so as to make people believe either that he is without faith, or that the faith is false, or so as to turn others away from the faith; for in such cases as these, confession of faith is necessary for salvation” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, 3, 2).

4. Also holy Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Veritatis splendor, reminds the need to distinguish between positive moral precepts and negative moral precepts.

So he writes: ”In the case of the positive moral precepts, prudence always has the task of verifying that they apply in a specific situation, for example, in view of other duties which may be more important or urgent. But the negative moral precepts, those prohibiting certain concrete actions or kinds of behaviour as intrinsically evil, do not allow for any legitimate exception. They do not leave room, in any morally acceptable way, for the “creativity” of any contrary determination whatsoever. Once the moral species of an action prohibited by a universal rule is concretely recognized, the only morally good act is that of obeying the moral law and of refraining from the action which it forbids” (VS 67).

5. Further on, John Paul II recalls “the absolute validity of negative moral precepts, which oblige without exception“ and that “the faithful are obliged to acknowledge and respect the specific moral precepts declared and taught by the Church in the name of God, the Creator and Lord” (VS 76). 

6. Recently, Pope Francis had to reiterate the Catholic moral doctrine, according to which the exercise of sexuality is licit only within marriage.

Followingly, when outside of marriage and in respect of the matter, every exercise of sexuality always constitutes a grave matter, that is, a grave sin.

That means it is never lawful, not even among civilly remarried divorcees.

Therefore, it always remains valid what John Paul II wrote in Familiaris consortio: ”Reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage. This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for example the children’s upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they “take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples” (FC 84).

7. However, it is necessary to remember that a grave matter is not sufficient for a subject to commit a grave sin.

As the magisterium of the Church recalls: [tr.] “while some particular circumstances, coming along a human act, cannot transform an objectively bad one into an objectively virtuous one, however they can make one innocent or less guilty or subjectively justifiable” (answer by the Congregation of the Clergy to the Washington case, 26.4.1971).

Therefore, while that transgression never becomes a virtuous and holy act to the point that it deserves to be offered to God, in some cases the personal responsibility can diminish or even be wholly eliminated.

8. Finally, I thank you for the prayer you promised for me and for the Most Important Order which I belong to.

Yes, this Order inspired by the Holy Spirit is very important and, I would add, it is also very precious for the Church because it intends to announce the word of salvation in its purity.

Any inaccuracy or error would always be harmful to the lives of Christians.

To remain faithful to this target, the Dominican Order enjoys a particular grace, that one which the Eternal Father revealed to Saint Catherine of Siena: “Therefore I have given a quite particular intelligence of my words to him and to his religious with fidelity to follow them [tr.n.: my words]” (Raymond of Capua, Life of Saint Catharine of Sienna, Ch. V,  n.144).

I wish you all the best and I bless you.

Father Angelo