Appendix 9. (689).
We may have grave doubts about the opinions of the 150 probabilists cited by Fr. Tirillo, and of any 150 authors since Tirillo's time; we may reject the wide application of probabilism by Sanchez and Diana in their Catalogues, by De Champs in his famous Quaestio facti, and by Nicolò Ghezzi in his Principi di Filosofia morale - the last two authors would claim (absurdly) there was a time when every school in the Catholic world taught probabilism. Nevertheless, probabilism has been supported by a very large number of theologians and teachers, famous in their time, who were evidently persuaded they upheld the truth. It is no surprise therefore to note the great effort required by learned opponents of the system in answering Fr. Gagna, who challenged them to name 'a single Dominican theologian to oppose probabilism in the 80 years from Molina to the general chapter of 1656.' (This extraordinary controversy is found in Risposta alle Lettere teologico-morali di Eusebio Eraniste in difesa dell' Istoria del Probabilismo del Concina, Modena 1753, Lett. 1). Can a system supported by so many in the Catholic Church contain no element of truth? This would be difficult to believe.
If we admit that probabilism is a mixture of truth and falsehood (which, I believe, this book demonstrates), we also discover it does not stand alone; many disciplines in the history of knowledge are similar. The history of philosophical and moral sciences is made up of such facts.
A person of authority propounds an insufficiently determined principle, a principle which is partly true but too extensive, lacking the necessary limits. Some thinkers deduce true consequences from it, restricting themselves to the basis of truth in the principle; others, wishing to apply the principle to its fullest extent with a stricter, more coherent logic, deduce false consequences. At first, firm faith in the principle leads to the acceptance of the false consequences. They may indeed seem strange, but this is attributed to our ignorance, ingrained prejudices and our different habits of feeling. Finally a time comes when the errors and damage of the consequences attract the attention of alert people who are endowed with good sense and, in moral matters, possess a greater, more delicate moral feeling. The truth of the principle is doubted and there is a return to the beginning. The principle is now ferociously attacked and defended, but as long as good faith remains, both sides gain. Finally, the truth is reached, especially if the Church, by its decisions, gradually restricts the error. Such, briefly, has been the history of probabilism.
An attentive reading of the earliest authors to profess probabilism shows that at the beginning the principle was accepted without awareness of its consequences. The learned Veronese priest, Fr. Pietro Ballerini, in his Risposta alla Lettera del Segneri, c. 8, says: 'It is very difficult for me to understand the real feeling of those who wrote mainly before 1600. In some places we find them proposing what seem to be probabilist opinions; in other places we read what are apparently contrary principles.' A little further on he says: 'In the case of many of the early probabilists described in the lists above it is impossible to understand the probabilism they propounded and how they understood the words more and less probable. They speak so obscurely, so incoherently, with so many ambiguities and disparate meanings that obviously this new principle was not yet determined nor even understood by them in the way it is today. I also noticed among them a wide difference in the principles they used to establish their maxim, with the result that the basic principle admitted by one is denied by another.'
In this first stage, therefore, probabilists used the same principle in different ways, deducing different, incomplete consequences according to the wider or stricter meaning they gave to the principle. Only after many consequences had been deduced, was the importance of the principle acknowledged. At this stage, disagreement and discord broke out. Of the probabilists of this second period Ballerini says: 'The earlier notions of probability, which had been obscure and uncertain, were established and classified by the beginning of this century (1600). It immediately faced strong, continual opposition, which has prevented its total acceptance in good faith.' Next, in order to explain the position of those who on the basis of hearsay accuse the Jesuits of laxism, Ballerini, a great adversary of probabilism, continues: 'And it is to the everlasting glory of the Society of Jesus that they provided the first and most famous opponents of the system, who in turn were followed by others from every Order and nation.' Fr. Patuzzi says the same: 'In those dark days, the Society of Jesus truly provided the most outstanding anti-probabilists among private theologians' (Trattato della Regola prossima delle azioni umane etc., pt. 3, c. 3, §3).
Finally, after reaching its zenith, probabilism began to decline in the period following 1656, although it continued to be defended by the great Dominican school. Thus, the Dominican chapter held in the year 1656 when, as it were, the holy war was proclaimed, will always be memorable in the history of probabilism. The Church, in its divine wisdom, defended the freedom of both parties to debate the question, but at the same time fixed limits permissible to the experts. Subsequently it condemned any proposition infected with excessive laxism. Such propositions are the 28 condemned by Alexander VII with the decree of 7th September 1665, the 45 condemned by the same pope with the decree of 18th March 1666, the 65 condemned by Innocent XI with the decree of 2nd March 1679, and finally the two propositions condemned by Alexander VIII with the decree of 24th August 1690. They can all be found in Damnatarum Thesium Theologica Trutina, etc. by Dominic Viva.
These and other separate condemnations made by the popes at different times, together with their condemnation of Jansenist rigorism, restored moral science to the right path from which at times it seemed to stray. In the meantime the popes' own conduct showed that probabilism was not necessarily false in its entirety, because none of them ever condemned it totally. It is no surprise therefore that in our time we have seen a holy bishop use the work and thought of probabilists to render moral science as benign as the goodness of the divine legislator and as strict as his justice. This is clearly the spirit and intention of St. Alphonsus, and it is in the same spirit and with the same intention that we set out to write, and hope we have written, about those particular points in which we differ from the letter of the holy moralist, to whom Christian moral science owes so much.