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Summa Theologiae · Suppl., q. 2, a. 1

Whether man should be contrite on account of the punishment, and not only on account of his sin?

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, question 2, Of the Object of Contrition, article 1. About 2 min.

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From the Supplement, compiled after Aquinas’s death from his Commentary on the Sentences and transcribed here from the 1917 to 1922 printings. About the Supplement.

Text: Summa Theologiae, Supplement to the Third Part (Supplementum Tertiae Partis), transcribed from Internet Archive scans, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. The Supplement, compiled after Aquinas’s death from his earlier Commentary on the Sentences, in the same English Dominican translation as the Gutenberg Parts. Transcribed by Bibliotheca Catholica from the OCR of four Internet Archive scans of the pre-1931 printings (Questions 1 to 33 from the 1917 Washbourne and Benziger volume, 34 to 68 from the 1922 volume, 69 to 86 from the 1921 volume, and 87 to 99 from the 1922 Benziger volume), with OCR errors corrected and doubtful passages marked, not rewritten. 99 questions and 446 articles. The two appendices printed after Question 99 are not included. Sources, SHA-256 of each OCR file, and the method are in the source record. Rights: Public domain (US)

The Supplement is not a Project Gutenberg text. It is Bibliotheca Catholica’s transcription of public-domain scans at the Internet Archive; obvious OCR errors were corrected, and passages marked “OCR uncertain” could not be confidently corrected, so check them against the linked scan page.

Objection 1: It seems that man should be contrite on account of the punishment, and not only on account of his sin. For Augustine says in De Pcenitentia;* No man desires life everlasting unless he repent of this mortal life. But the mortality of this life is a punishment. Therefore the penitent should be contrite on account of his punishments also.

Obj. 2: Further, the Master says [Sentent. iv., D. 16, cap. i.), quoting Augustine [De vera et falsa Pcenitentia]), that the penitent should be sorry for having deprived himself of virtue. But privation of virtue is a punishment. Therefore contrition is sorrow for punishments also.

[*Cf. Horn. 50 inter 1.]

[*Work of an unknown author.]

On the contrary, No one holds to that for which he is sorry. But a penitent, by the very signification of the word, is one who holds to his punishment.* Therefore he is not sorry on account of his punishment, so that contrition which is penitential sorrow is not on account of punishment.

I answer that, As stated above (Q. L, A. i), contrition implies the crushing of something hard and whole. Now this wholeness and hardness is found in the evil of fault, since the will, which is the cause thereof in the evil-doer, sticks to its own ground, t and refuses to yield to the precept of the law, wherefore displeasure at a suchlike evil is called metaphorically contrition. But this metaphor cannot be applied to evil of punishment, because punishment simply denotes a lessening, so that it is possible to have sorrow for punishment but not contrition.

Reply Obj. 1: According to Augustine, penance should be on account of this mortal life, not by reason of its mortality (unless penance be taken broadly for every kind of sorrow); but by reason of sins, to which we are prone on account of the weakness of this life.

Reply Obj. 2: Sorrow for the loss of virtue through sin is not essentially the same as contrition, but is its principle. For just as we are moved to desire a thing on account of the good we expect to derive from it, so are we moved to be sorry for something, on account of the evil accruing to us therefrom.

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Also online, linked only: the same translation at New Advent and the Latin text at Corpus Thomisticum. Neither is copied here.

Source: Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica, Supplement to the Third Part. Internet Archive scans: Third Part, Fourth Number (QQ. LXXXIV to Suppl. XXXIII), 1917, Third Part (Supplement), QQ. XXXIV to LXVIII, 1922, Third Part (Supplement), QQ. LXIX to LXXXVI, 1921, and Third Part (Supplement), QQ. LXXXVII to XCIX and Appendices, 1922; two curled pages of the 1921 volume are read from another scan of the same printing. Public domain in the USA. Printed in 1917, 1921, and 1922, before 1931. Outside the U.S., check local copyright rules. Transcription, OCR file checksums, and method: source record.