"
"Happen, how?" cried I.
"Oh!" rejoined the monk, "so you think that if a person experience
some inconvenience in avoiding the occasions of sin, he is still bound
to do so? Not so thinks Father Bauny. 'Absolution,' says he, 'is not
to be refused to such as continue in the proximate occasions of sin,
if they are so situated that they cannot give them up without becoming
the common talk of the world, or subjecting themselves to personal
inconvenience.'"
"I am glad to hear it, father," I remarked; "and now that we are
not obliged to avoid the occasions of sin, nothing more remains but to
say that we may deliberately court them."
"Even that is occasionally permitted," added he; "the celebrated
casuist, Basil Ponce, has said so, and Father Bauny quotes his
sentiment with approbation in his Treatise on Penance, as follows: 'We
may seek an occasion of sin directly and designedly- primo et per
se- when our own or our neighbour's spiritual or temporal advantage
induces us to do so.'"
"Truly," said I, "it appears to be all a dream to me, when I
hear grave divines talking in this manner! Come now, my dear father,
tell me conscientiously, do you hold such a sentiment as that?"
"No, indeed," said he, "I do not."
"You are speaking, then, against your conscience," continued I.
"Not at all," he replied; "I was speaking on that point not
according to my own conscience, but according to that of Ponce and
Father Bauny, and them you may follow with the utmost safety, for I
assure you that they are able men.
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