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as having about £10' if he has only sixpence. One month's extension may be reasonable enough as a rough average: but, manifestly, the extension should be very much less in the case of one Mass and one month than it is in the case of 100 Masses and six months. If a month's extension is enough in the second case-and we think it is—an extension of a week or fortnight would represent a liberal allowance in the first.

Within these limits a 'just cause' may be established readily enough. But we doubt very much whether it exists 'in most cases.' Not in the average case, we should think.

NON-FASTING COMMUNION-THE VIATICUM

REV. DEAR SIR,-I venture to send you the following cases, and hope you will be so good as to tell me what I am to do about John and James, in the light of the general principles of theology and of the latest decrees of the Holy See :

1o. John is so ill that he is confined to bed save for the two or three hours a day that he is allowed to spend in a chair. May he be allowed the privilege of taking a drink before Holy Communion twice a week?

2o. Does the fact that John goes fasting to Communion on the other days of the week militate against his availing of the above privilege? 3°. James has been anointed and has received Viaticum. May James continue going to Communion every day without fasting, as long as he continues in danger of death?

4°. If James is told by his nurse, that he is still in danger of death, after six weeks, will his privilege of receiving without fasting still hold good? In fine, how is one to define periculum mortis in cases of chronic illness?

BORROMAEUS.

We discussed the decree of December, 1906, and the various classes of persons to whom it applies, in earlier issues of the I. E. RECORD.1 If 'Borromaeus' consults the replies, he will find the reasons for some of the statements given below, and the limitations with which they are to be accepted. We need not give them again.

1o. Provided the conditions about difficulty of keeping the fast, absence of sure hope of speedy recovery (i.e., according to the various opinions, recovery within three or four days, or perhaps, a week), etc., are fulfilled, the patient may be allowed to receive after breaking the fast per modum potus-once or twice a week if he lives in an institution where the Blessed Sacrament is kept, or has the privilege of a private oratory: once or twice a month in other circumstances. The distinction between the two cases was made partly in the interest of priests, who would have more trouble in the second than in the first, partly to preserve public reverence for the Eucharist by not making the Communion of the sick-carried out with elaborate ceremony in some of the Continental centres-a daily and hourly occurrence all through the parish. These motives, however, have evidently lost their weight. After the 19th of May next, the privilege will be extended. Everyone will then be allowed to communicate, in the circumstances 1 Fifth Series, April, 1914, vol. iii. pp. 416-20; October, 1915, vol. vi. pp. 408-9.

mentioned, once or twice a week, whether he lives in one of the aforesaid institutions or not.1 And he will also be allowed, in the same circumstances, to take some medicine'-solid medicine evidently, for medicine in liquid form is allowed already.

2o. Opinions differ. As a sample of the strict view, we may translate this from Vermeersch :—

What if the invalid, who is morally unable to keep the fast, conquers all difficulties and communicates occasionally before he has broken it? May he add to these Communions, which are the fruit of his extraordinary devotion, the Communions allowed by the present Indult?

Though his laudable zeal deserves a reward, we do not think that the course is allowable. The special purpose of the decree was to give the invalid an opportunity of communicating once or twice in the month or week. When a person, then, has made provision for himself in this respect by other methods, he seems to fall outside the scope of the decree and the favour it confers.

But others take a more liberal view of the matter. They warn us to steer clear of two extremes in our interpretation of the decree not merely that of undue laxity, but equally that of undue severity. We may quote one of the most recent: 'A nun who remains fasting on other days, in spite of grave (though, of course, not very dangerous) inconvenience, is not to be excluded from the privilege. She may communicate on the two days in virtue of the privilege [allowed by the decree of 1906] and also on the others in virtue of her having kept the fast.' 3

We must say our sympathies are altogether with the second opinion. And we think it safe enough, until we have a decisive answer to the contrary. But we must remember that, like the decree itself, it operates only in favour of those who find it 'morally impossible' to keep the fast.

3o. Yes, he may. Those who are dangerously ill are simply exempt from the law on fasting; and there is no reason why, granted the state of grace and a good intention, they may not receive every day, if they please. The older theologians used to hold stricter views: some on the principle that very perfect dispositions are required to qualify a person for daily Communion; others influenced by the consideration already mentioned that the bringing of Communion very frequently to the sick would have a bad effect on public feeling. The principle is obsolete since the date of the decree on frequent Communion: the fear, too, has evidently been found by the Roman authorities to be without much foundation-anyhow it has no foundation at all in this country, where the Sacraments are brought to the sick without exciting any public attention.5

But, of course, the dispositions mentioned in the decree are essential. And the crowded duties of a missionary priest's life will prevent the full use of the privilege by any except a very few.

4°. Again, yes. It is no easy matter to define the danger; absolutely

1 New Code, 858, § 2.

2 Periodica, ii. (1907), p. 183.

a Sabetti-Barrett, Comp. Th. Mor., n. 700, q. 7.

4 See the decrees of the 20th December, 1905, and 15th September, 1906. They are given in the Appendix to the Maynooth Statutes (35-39, 41-49). Cf. Sabetti-Barrett, n. 691, q. 6 (other views also mentioned).

impossible to define it mathematically. But it will be enough to remember that moral certainty is not required; that, when ordinarily prudent people say that there is a probability that death may occur, the priest is allowed, and, indeed, is obliged, to administer the Viaticum; that parish priests and others who postpone giving the Viaticum so long that there is danger of the invalid's dying without receiving it at all are to be 'gravely admonished'; that, finally, on the testimony of the very best authorities in moral theology, this is one of the clearest cases in which scruples are to be utterly disregarded.1

On this point, there is practically no difference of opinion among theologians now, whether the illness be chronic or not. What they do differ about is as to whether, after a month or so of chronic illness, the danger, which they all admit may be present, is the same danger as existed a month before. We have had occasion to refer to that matter already. 'Borromaeus' will see that we take 'danger' in the subjective sense, i.e., we regard a man as being in danger of death when, on the basis of the facts as commonly ascertained, ordinary people think that he is probably going to die. For our reasons we refer him to our next reply.

2

MEANING OF 'DANGER'

REV. DEAR SIR,-In conferring the sacraments of Extreme Unction and Penance, are we to take 'danger' objectively or subjectively? What I mean is-Are we to make the validity of a sacrament (Extreme Unction, for example) depend sometimes on the subjective views of the priest who administers it? I have often had trouble on the matter, and have never arrived at any conclusion that quite satisfied me.

D. W.

'Danger' is the term for a composite result-the evil apprehended multiplied by the probability that it will occur. The evil is objective; the probability, we believe, is not. We conclude, therefore, that' danger' always involves a subjective element.

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Of course we sometimes speak of objective probability.' But only in a very restricted sense. We mean that, independent of ourselves, there are, or have been, forces at work whose character or results we cannot fully fathom or forecast; or we mean that, apart from the subjective views of any individual, the normal human mind recognizes the probability. In that sense we may say, for instance, that, in the present condition of our knowledge, it is 'objectively probable' that the number of the stars is odd. But, obviously, from the real objective standpoint, there is no probability' whatever: there is certainty' one way or the other; the number simply is odd, or is not. And there may be subjective (individual) certainty' as well. Anyone may believe it certain that the number is odd, and may repeat the thesis as often as he likes in whatever asylum he is sent to.

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On these principles, we believe-but this is only our own view and we do not ask 'D. W.' to accept it—that there is never any such thing

1 Cf. St. Alph., Hom. Apost., n. 46; Th. Mor., vi. 285, d. 3, etc.
I. E. RECORD (June, 1915), Fifth Series, vol. v. pp. 635–7.

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as purely 'objective danger' at all. To our mind 'danger' is merely a term employed to provide for the ignorance or limited knowledge of the normal man-a subjective matter: if we knew all the objective facts, past, present, and to come, we should never say that a man is 'in danger,' we should simply say that he is going to die or that he is not. 'Danger,' as we have said, implies objective facts that may lead to unpleasant consequences-and, like the 'probability' that helps to constitute it, may be called partially 'objective '-but per se and essentially it involves the estimate formed of those facts, not necessarily by any particular mind, but by the mind of the normal individual-and is, therefore, per se and essentially subjective.' If a man is standing under a building that is going to collapse, and will certainly kill him if it falls while he is still there, we say he is in danger of death. But what does it all mean? Simply that we think it likely that the building will collapse before he gets away. But, if we knew exactly when he would move, and when exactly the building would collapse, we should not speak of 'danger at all we should simply say he is doomed or not. A soldier going into battle is said to be in danger.' So we speak of him in our ignorance. But, again, if we knew all future things, free and necessary, knew where he would be at each individual instant, and knew, moreover, that no bullet would be there at exactly the same moment, we should see that he was in no danger at all, though others, less gifted than ourselves, might be ignorant enough to think the opposite. Or, if we knew that the bullet would be there, again we should recognize that he was not in 'danger'—that he was simply walking to his death. A man in an open field is not generally said to be in danger-no ordinary priest would give him the Viaticum-but if we foresaw that heart-disease, of which he knew nothing, was going to reach its crisis, or that he was to be struck by lightning, or that any one of a thousand other possible things was going to happen-as we might foresee, if we knew everything-then we should know that he was, not in danger,' but face to face with a 'certainty.' And so in countless other possible examples. Our employment of the term 'danger' is only a result of, and a concession to, our own ignorance. Apart from that ignorance-a subjective thingdanger' would have no existence.

In our last reply, therefore, we took 'danger' in the subjective sense. And, in answer to 'D. W.,' we would say that the validity always depends on the estimate formed of the facts by an ordinarily prudent and reasonable man who has had a fair chance of summing up the situation.1 Or, if 'D. W.' prefers to insist on the slight trace of 'objectivity' that we have mentioned as attaching to 'probability' and, consequently, to danger,' we would put the matter in another way-the validity depends on the objective facts so estimated. result in practice is the same.

M. J. O'DONNELL

The

1 The malingerer gives as much trouble here as he does in military circles. It is difficult to admit that he could be anointed, even if he were certified as hopeless by all the Faculties of Europe.

CANON LAW

THE RESERVATIONS OF NATIONAL AND PROVINCIAL

COUNCILS

REV. DEAR SIR,-I venture to write you on a malter that concerns the working life of the Confessor. You dealt in the Irish Theological Quarterly with the decree of S. Off. De Reserv.; dealing with it you looked upon the law as incomplete till the publication of the new Code. The new Code has come, and I have searched it, and not a word as to provincial or national reservations. Hence the difficulty: Are these to remain in spite of the temporary nature of Reservation till a new Synod meets or until the Holy See acts, or are there really provincial or national reservations? One away from books of reference must naturally be chary of his opinion. I have thought over the matter; it concerns us intimately. Maynooth, 1900, has two reserved censures; Armagh has two reserved censures and three reserved sins. I am inclined to hold that there are no national or provincial reservations as such-that they are diocesan ones in reality.

(a) These Councils have no power to make such reservations-(1) From wonderful silence of Council of Trent, Sess. XIV. cap. 7, of such power;

(2) Silence of new Code;

(3) Silence of authors;

(4) Wording of definition of reservation in new Code supposes the power to vest in an individual, not in a corporate body; (5) Powers to reserve and grant faculties imply jurisdiction in foro interno sacramentali. Can a Council have such power? (b) Even if they have power they wish to make reservations, not as a body, but as individuals, for the several dioceses they govern. (1) Bouix (De Episcopo, vol. ii. p. 244): Synodus non sibi tanquam synodo sed singulis Episcopis casus reservasse censetur.' He quotes Benedict XIV (De Syn., 1. 5, c. 4, n. 3). Benedict mentions several Synods, and says: Eadem Concilia non sibi... sed ipsismet Episcopis reservarunt' (1.c.).

(2) Armagh Synod: Nobis reservamus' (Facultatis absol., p. 35).
(3) The nature and purpose of reservation were the same under old
law as under new; hence Bishops should mean that reserva-
tion would be under the grasp of a living authority to revoke
it or continue it as long as necessary. This could only be
done by their wishing to make the reservation, though made
on the occasion of a Provincial Synod, not a provincial one
but a diocesan one.

(4) The Bishops act thus when they meet and make laws at their
yearly meetings. These laws cannot be national ones, they
are diocesan. In like manner reservations were made. This
solution, if it has any strength, would solve the problem
brought to our notice by the new Code.

PAROCHUS.

We have read this query with much interest. It suggests many of the difficulties which presented themselves to us when dealing with the VOL. X-29

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