Christianity is supposed to rest, suffered no transactions in matters
so clear to the human conscience. Jesus himself refined upon the
legality of the Mosaic code by defining sin as egotism or concupiscence.
But the Company of Jesus took pains in their casuistry to provide
attenuating circumstances for every sin in detail. By their doctrines of
the invincible erroneous conscience, of occult compensation, of
equivocation, of mental reservation, of probabilism, and of
philosophical sin, they afforded loopholes for the gratification of
every passion, and for the commission of every crime. Instead of
maintaining that any injury done to a neighbor is wrong, they multiplied
instances in which a neighbor may be injured. Instead of holding firm to
Christ's verdict that sexual vice is implicit in licentious desire, they
analyzed the sensual modes of crude voluptuousness, taxed each in turn
at arbitrary values, and provided plausible excuses for indulgence.
Instead of laying it down as a broad principle that men must keep their
word, they taught them how to lie with spiritual impunity and with
credit to their reputation as sons of the Church. Thus the inventive
genius of the casuist, bent on dissecting immorality and reducing it to
classes; the interrogative ingenuity of the confessor, pruriently
inquisitive into private experience; the apologetic subtlety of the
director, eager to supply his penitent with salves and anodynes; were
all alike and all together applied to anti-social contamination in
matters of lubricity, and to anti-social corruption in matters of
dishonesty, fraud, falsehood, illegality and violence. The single
doctrine of probabilism, as Pascal abundantly proved, facilitates the
commission of crime; for there is no perverse act which some casuist of
note has not plausibly excused.

It may be urged that confession and direction, as adopted by the
Catholic Church, bring the abominations of casuistry logically in their
train. Priests who have to absolve sinners must be familiar with sin in
all its branches. In the confessional they will be forced to listen to
recitals, the exact bearings of which they cannot understand unless they
are previously instructed. Therefore the writings of Sanchez, Diana,
Liguori, Burchard, Billuard, Rousselot, Gordon, Gaisson, are put into
their hands at an early age--works which reveal more secrets of
impudicity than Aretino has described, or Commodus can have
practiced--works which rec