Annotation CCCXXXII

”Let us therefore approach with confidence to the throne of grace.” — Hebrews 4:16

Whether the laity and monks are equal — [their] obligations and offenses [being] equal.

Chrysostom, [in] the seventh homily on the epistle to the Hebrews, seems to think, that to the laity [saecularibus] nothing more is lawful than to monks, except to have a wife; but in the rest they are held to live equally; nay, that — fornication excepted, which is graver in monks — the sins of the laity are as grave as [those] of monks. His words are these: “BUT what [have] labors, readings, vigils, fasts to do with us (sayest thou), who are not monks? These [things] thou sayest to me; say [them] to Paul when he says,¹ ‘Watching in all patience and prayer’; when he says,² ‘Make not provision for the flesh in [its] concupiscences.’ For he wrote thus not to monks only, but to all who were in the cities. For a secular man ought not to have anything more than a monk, except to cohabit with a wife only. For in this he has pardon, but in others by no means; but he ought to do all [things] equally as a monk.” This same [thing], in the third book against the vituperators of the monastic life, more clearly and fully explaining, he thus writes: “BUT (thou wilt say) it is not of the same crime, for him who is addicted to the world to sin, and [for] him who once, and utterly, has devoted himself to God, to fall from the purpose of religion. For neither do both fall from the same height, so neither indeed do they receive the same wounds. Thou deceivest thyself utterly, and beguilest [thyself], if thou thinkest one [thing] to be required from secular men, another from monks. For this is almost the sole difference in either kind of life: that they [laymen] indeed bind themselves with the bonds of matrimony, but these [monks] endure free from these. But in the rest a common, and the same, method of the whole life is required from both; and to the same, for [their] faults, one [and the same] penalty is owed to all. For he who is angry at his brother without cause — whether he be a secular or a monk — offends God equally. And he who looks upon a woman, and covets her — in whatever state of life he be — is smitten with the same penalty of adultery. Nay rather (that we may dare to add something from ourselves, which may seem consonant to reason), he will sin more, without any hope of pardon, who from the world [secular life] has committed that crime. For neither [is it an equal misdeed] to commit—

—[to] commit [an equal misdeed], it seems, [for] him who, propped by the solace of a wife, is entangled by the comeliness of the woman, and [for] him who, destitute of such help and remedy of [his] infirmity, is nevertheless sometimes seized by this plague [of lust].” Thus far Chrysostom.

THERE ARE [some] who think that the monks of whom Chrysostom speaks were different from those whom the church now has — bound by monastic vows and by the constitutions of their founders and leaders — but were so like to seculars, that, beyond the voluntary institute of celibacy, they had no obligation of profession which bound them more than seculars. There are also [some] who think that Chrysostom uttered such [things] by hyperbole, to drive away the slothful and dull opinion of certain seculars, who thought that prayers, fasts, and vigils were imposed by Christ upon monks only. The divine Thomas [Aquinas], in the Secunda Secundae, question 186, discerning monastic sins by a twofold distinction, says that some are done either against the vows of profession, or from contempt of the offense, or with scandal of neighbors — and these he judges far graver and worse than crimes of the same kind committed by seculars; but others are admitted from frailty, or ignorance, without transgression of the vow and scandal of the neighbor — which indeed he shows to be lesser and lighter, at least for this reason: that they are absorbed by the many good works which the monk does, and are much more easily forsaken by him. And that Chrysostom regarded these [things] can be an argument [from the fact] that he says, “The secular will sin more, without any hope of pardon, [in] that he looks upon a woman and covets [her], than the monk. For neither does he seem to commit an equal misdeed, who, propped by the solace of a wife, is entangled by the comeliness of the woman, and he who, destitute of such help and remedy of [his] infirmity, is nevertheless sometimes seized by this plague.”