Clerical casuists understood that as a criticism of Mr Khamenei's claim to be supreme leader not just of Iran, but of all Shias.
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No longer is the casuist one among other casuists who privately determine solutions and promulgate decisions.
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From then on, Jansenists of Port-Royal ceased publishing Lettres provinciales, and, along with Pascal, started collaborating with the Ecrits des curés (Friars' Writings) which condemned casuistry. Two further decrees, of 24 September 1665 and 18 March 1666, condemned the Casuists' "laxist morality". Pope Innocent XI issued a second condemnation in a 2 March 1679 decree. In total, the Vatican had condemned 110 propositions issued by Casuists, 57 of which had been treated in Lettres provinciales.
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Nicholas Terpstra, Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence (Johns Hopkins University Press 2010 ), p. 91Jean Reith Schroedel, Is the Fetus a Person? (Cornell University Press 2000 ), p. 19 In 1679, Pope Innocent XI publicly condemned sixty-five propositions taken chiefly from the writings of Escobar, Suarez and other casuists (mostly Jesuit casuists who had been heavily attacked by Pascal in his Provincial Letters) as propositiones laxorum moralistarum (propositions of lax moralists) as "at least scandalous and in practice dangerous".
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Those who are privy to another person's confession either as an interpreter or by accidental circumstance are likewise punished according to the gravity of their delict "not excluding excommunication".CIC c. 1388 §2 In the Early Modern period, some casuists (Thomas Sanchez, etc.) justified mental reservation, a form of deception which does not involve outright lying, in specific circumstances including when such an action is necessary to protect secrecy under the seal of the confessional. Other casuists considered "grey areas" in which it was unclear whether or not the seal was being violated.
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He lost no time in declaring and practically manifesting his zeal as a reformer of manners and a corrector of administrative abuses. Beginning with the clergy, he sought to raise the laity also to a higher moral standard of living. He closed all of the theaters in Rome (considered to be centers of vice and immorality) and famously brought a temporary halt to the flourishing traditions of Roman opera. In 1679 he publicly condemned sixty-five propositions, taken chiefly from the writings of Escobar, Suarez and other casuists (mostly Jesuit casuists, who had been heavily attacked by Pascal in his Provincial Letters) as propositiones laxorum moralistarum and forbade anyone to teach them under penalty of excommunication.
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The notes are independent treatises reviewing Modena's works chapter by chapter, now supplementing, now refuting his views. Reggio's main point is that most of the Talmudic ordinances were not intended for perpetual observance; they were practiced only by the rigorous Pharisees. It was not until much later, he declares, that the casuists ("poseḳim") established such ordinances as a part of the Law. Consequently, Modena was, in many cases wrong in attacking the Talmudists.
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Jonsen, Albert R., The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, University of California Press, 1988. (p. 2). However, Puritans were known for their own development of casuistry. In 1679 Pope Innocent XI publicly condemned sixty- five of the more radical propositions (stricti mentalis), taken chiefly from the writings of Escobar, Suarez and other casuists as propositiones laxorum moralistarum and forbade anyone to teach them under penalty of excommunication.Kelly, J.N.D., The Oxford History of the Popes, Oxford University Press, 1986. (p. 287).
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One approach which attempts to overcome the seemingly impossible divide between deontology and utilitarianism (of which the divide is caused by the opposite takings of an absolute and relativist moral view) is case-based reasoning, also known as casuistry. Casuistry does not begin with theory, rather it starts with the immediate facts of a real and concrete case. While casuistry makes use of ethical theory, it does not view ethical theory as the most important feature of moral reasoning. Casuists, like Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin (The Abuse of Casuistry 1988), challenge the traditional paradigm of applied ethics.
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Jacob ben Hayyim Zemah (17th century) was a Portuguese kabalist and physician. He received a medical training in his native country as a Marrano, but fled about 1619 to Safed and devoted himself to the Talmud and the casuists ("poseḳim") until 1625; then he went to Damascus, where for eighteen years he studied kabbalah from the Zohar and the writings of Isaac Luria and Hayyim Vital. He finally settled at Jerusalem and opened a yeshivah for the study of the Zohar and other kabbalistic works, David Conforte being for some time one of his pupils.Ḳore ha-Dorot, pp.
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He published "Theologia vetus fundamentalis", according to the mind of "the resolute doctor", J. Bacon (Liège, 1677); "Theologia sanctorum veterum et novissimorum", a defence of morality against the attacks of the modern casuists (Louvain, 1700). His chief work is entitled "Ethica amoris, or the theology of the saints (especially of St. Augustine and St. Thomas) on the doctrine of love and morality strenuously defended against the new opinions and thoroughly discussed in connection with the principal controversies of our time" (3 vols., Liège, 1709). The first volume treats of human acts; the second of laws and virtues, and the decalogue; the third, of the sacraments.
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Lettres provinciales stimulated several responses from the Jesuits, including in 1657 the publication of the anonymous Apologie pour les Casuistes contre les calomnies des Jansénistes, written by Father Georges Perot. It rather unfortunately claimed as its own Pascal's interpretations of the Casuists' propositions, in particular concerning controversial propositions about homicides. This led the friars of Paris to condemn Jesuit casuistry. On 15 February 1665, Alexander VII promulgated the apostolic constitution Regiminis Apostolici, which required, according to the Enchiridion symbolorum, "all ecclesiastical personnel and teachers" to subscribe to an included formulary, the Formula of Submission for the Jansenists – assenting to both Cum occasione and Ad sanctam beati Petri sedem.
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The casuistic method was popular among Catholic thinkers in the early modern period, and not only among the Jesuits, as it is commonly thought. Famous casuistic authors include Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, whose Summula casuum conscientiae (1627) enjoyed a great success, Thomas Sanchez, Vincenzo Filliucci (Jesuit and penitentiary at St Peter's), Antonino Diana, Paul Laymann (Theologia Moralis, 1625), John Azor (Institutiones Morales, 1600), Etienne Bauny, Louis Cellot, Valerius Reginaldus, Hermann Busembaum (d. 1668), etc. One of the main theses of casuists was the necessity to adapt the rigorous morals of the Early Fathers of Christianity to modern morals, which led in some extreme cases to justify what Innocent XI later called "laxist moral" (i.e.
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Voltaire was one of many philosophers, theologians and intellectuals to be deeply affected by the disaster. Catholics attempted to explain it as God's wrath on the sins of the Portuguese, among them Protestant heretics and Jesuit casuists; while Protestants blamed the Portuguese for being Catholic. Polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and poet Alexander Pope were both famous for developing a system of thought known as philosophical optimism in an attempt to reconcile a loving Christian God with the seeming indifference of nature in disasters such as Lisbon. The phrase what is, is right coined by Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man, and Leibniz' affirmation we live in the best of all possible worlds, provoked Voltaire's scorn.
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For the preacher Odo, the cat represented those who know the single scheme, to "spring into heaven", while the fox stood for "attorneys, casuists, tricksters" and others with a "bagful of tricks". The interpretation in the 13th century Gesta Romanorum is very similar, making a distinction between "the simple men and women who know but one craft, that is to call to God", and those that make a living by the glibness of their tongues. The moral supplied by Marie de France is different, though perhaps complementary: that a wise man would be able to detect a liar, however plausibly he talked. Berechiah ha-Nakdan followed her by including the tale as number 94 of his hundred Fox Fables in Hebrew.
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Other casuists justifying mental reservation included Thomas Sanchez, who was criticized by Pascal in his Provincial Letters - although Sanchez added various restrictions (it should not be used in ordinary circumstances, when one is interrogated by competent magistrates, when a creed is requested, even for heretics, etc.), which were ignored by Pascal. This type of equivocation was famously mocked in the porter's speech in Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which the porter directly alludes to the practice of deceiving under oath by means of equivocation. "Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven." (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3) See, for example Robert Southwell and Henry Garnet, author of A Treatise of Equivocation (published secretly c.
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Instead of starting from theory and applying theory to a particular case, casuists start with the particular case itself and then ask what morally significant features (including both theory and practical considerations) ought to be considered for that particular case. In their observations of medical ethics committees, Jonsen and Toulmin note that a consensus on particularly problematic moral cases often emerges when participants focus on the facts of the case, rather than on ideology or theory. Thus, a Rabbi, a Catholic priest, and an agnostic might agree that, in this particular case, the best approach is to withhold extraordinary medical care, while disagreeing on the reasons that support their individual positions. By focusing on cases and not on theory, those engaged in moral debate increase the possibility of agreement.
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An ardent defender and exponent of the teaching of Thomas Aquinas and an illustrious representative of Neo-Thomism, he set forth the traditional teaching of his school with clearness and skill, with some bitterness against the representatives of different views. He lived at a time when theological discussion was rife, when men, weary of treading beaten paths, had set themselves to constructing systems of their own. His zeal, however, for the integrity of Thomistic teaching, and his bitter aversion from doctrinal novelty sometimes carried him beyond the teaching of his master, and led him to adopt opinions on certain questions of theology especially those dealing with predestination and reprobation which were rejected by many learned theologians of his own school. In 1669 he published a work on the morality of human acts, the purpose of which was to defend the Thomistic doctrine at once against what he calls the laxities of the modern casuists, and the rigorism of the Jansenists.
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