Case of Conscience. What is a case of conscience ? It is a question related to the duties of man and Christian, about which it is up to a theologian, known as a casuist , to weigh the nature and the circumstances, and to reach a decision according to the light of reason, the laws of society, the canons of the Church, and the maxims of the Gospels; four great authorities that can never be in conflict with each other. See Casuist.

We are Christians through belief in revealed truths, and through the practice of the maxims of the Gospels. Through faith we sacrifice our reason to God, and we sacrifice to him our natural inclination [for pleasure] by means of mortification: these two branches of the abnegation of the self are equally essential to Salvation: but the infractions are not perhaps equally dire for society; and it is yet to be determined if those who attack the dogmas of a religion are as bad citizens as those who corrupt morality.

It seems at first glance that the poison of the Corrupters of morality would be spread by more people than that of the impious. The depravity of morals is a direct effect of that of moral principles; by contrast, it is a more distant consequence of irreligion; but a consequence that follows from it always and infallibly, as one of our greatest orators, Father Bourdaloue, has clearly demonstrated. The non-believer is moreover sometimes a man who, tired of seeking fruitlessly in common sources and ordinary conversations the ray of light that would remove the scales from his eyes, has addressed himself to the public, has received from them the clarifications he needs, has abjured his error, and has avoided the greatest of all evils, death in a state of impenitence: this is a man who has exposed many others to harm in order to cure himself of the evil that attacked him. See the article Certainty. But the person who disfigures morality tends to render others evil, without the hope of becoming better himself.

Moreover, whatever position one takes on this question, equity demands that one distinguish clearly the person from the opinion and the author from the work: because this is really where the full proof that morals and writings are two different things is located. Of the crowd of casuists whom Pascal condemned for laxity of principles it would be difficult to accuse even one of laxity of conduct: none of them seems to have been indulgent except for others: it is at the foot of the crucifix, where it is said that he remained prostrate for whole days on end, that one of the most famous of them resolved in Latin those combinations of debauchery so weird that it is hardly possible to speak of them decently in French. Another seems to have competed with the Desert Fathers in the austerity of his life. But we won’t agree any better on the morals of the Casuists: it is enough to have shown that they had nothing in common with their maxims.