129. The Nine Ways of Sharing in Another's Sin

"Neither be partaker of other men's sins. Keep thyself chaste." — 1 Timothy 5:22

It is possible to keep one's own hands outwardly still and yet help another person to sin. Evil does not travel only through the person who performs the final act. It may be suggested by one, commanded by another, approved by a third, concealed by a fourth, and defended afterward by many who insist that they did nothing.

The Catholic catechism therefore asks a question that reaches beyond the shallow examination, Did I perform the act myself?

In how many ways may we become accessory to another person's sin, and be answerable for it?

In these nine ways: by counsel; by command; by consent; by provocation; by praise or flattery; by concealment; by partaking; by silence; and by defense of the ill done.

This teaching is not meant to make the soul suspicious of every human contact. It teaches moral responsibility. God judges not only the last hand in a chain of evil, but every free will that knowingly helped the evil to begin, continue, prosper, or appear innocent.

St. Paul states the principle with terrible plainness. After naming grave disorders among those who had rejected known truth, he warns that guilt belongs not only to those who do such things, but also to those who consent to those who do them. Elsewhere he commands the Christian to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather to reprove them. The disciple of Christ must therefore examine not only his deeds, but also his influence, permission, assistance, approval, and omissions.

Counsel shares in sin when it advises, recommends, plans, explains, or encourages what is evil. The counselor may never touch the stolen object, repeat the lie, enter the impure place, or participate in the false worship. Yet if his words deliberately showed another person how to do wrong, persuaded him that the wrong was useful, or removed the fear that restrained him, he helped move the will toward sin.

Bad counsel is not always given in solemn words. It may sound casual:

• "No one will know."
• "You have to look after yourself."
• "Just tell them what they want to hear."
• "Your parents are too strict."
• "Doctrine does not matter as long as you mean well."
• "Go along with the false service so the family will not be upset."

Counsel is especially dangerous when the adviser possesses trust, experience, learning, or spiritual influence. A confused soul may resist an obvious tempter while yielding quickly to a respected friend who calls compromise prudent. Good counsel places truth before the soul and strengthens it for duty. Evil counsel makes the crooked road seem reasonable.

Command uses authority, office, employment, seniority, parenthood, or power to direct another person into sin. The one who commands is often more deeply responsible than the subordinate who carries out the order, because the commander sets the evil in motion and employs another will as his instrument.

A father may not command falsehood for the supposed protection of the home. An employer may not order fraud. A ruler may not command injustice. A religious superior may not command contradiction of revealed truth or participation in false worship. No created authority receives from God the power to make sin lawful.

This is where the doctrine of authority must remain whole. The answer to unlawful command is not contempt for authority itself. Authority is God's ordinance for true order. Precisely because it comes from God, it is bound beneath His law. Pharaoh corrupted authority when he used rule to resist God's command and hold souls from true worship. Moses did not answer him with leaderless autonomy; he answered with the higher command of God. So also in the home, Church, workplace, and civil order: lawful commands bind, but a command to sin must be refused.

The person under authority should refuse without pride, needless insolence, or delight in rebellion. The person who possesses authority should tremble lest another's sin begin with his word.

Consent is the willing approval of another's sin or the granting of permission necessary for it to proceed. Sometimes consent is inward and approving. Sometimes it is expressed by a vote, signature, authorization, agreement, or deliberate assent. Sometimes a person says nothing with his lips but makes his approval unmistakable.

Not every knowledge of another's act is consent. Not every failure to stop what one lacks power to stop is consent. Consent requires an act of the will: I agree to this evil; I approve it; I permit it where my permission matters; I choose that it go forward.

Parents must examine what they knowingly authorize in the home. Those who govern institutions must examine policies they approve. Members of groups must examine what they endorse in the group's name. A person cannot wash his conscience merely by arranging for someone else to perform what he has knowingly approved.

This applies with particular gravity to religious error. To recognize heresy as false but consent to its public presentation as Catholic truth is not charity. To authorize counterfeit worship for the sake of numbers, peace, custom, or human approval is not neutrality. Love for persons can never require consent to what injures their souls.

Provocation deliberately stirs another person's passions so that he is drawn into sin. A person may provoke anger by taunting, impurity by suggestion, envy by display, revenge by repeated incitement, disobedience by calculated mockery, or despair by cruel pressure.

The provocateur often excuses himself by pointing to the other's freedom: I did not make him do it. Certainly, no one can transfer his own free will to another. Yet a person who knowingly strikes the weakness of his neighbor in order to produce a fall does not become innocent merely because the neighbor also consented.

Domestic life requires a careful examination here. One spouse may know exactly how to wound the other into rage. An older child may torment a younger until the younger explodes, then appear innocent because he did not strike the blow. A companion may shame another into drinking, impurity, cruelty, or irreverence. Online, crowds provoke outrage and then feed upon the sins they have excited.

Charity does the opposite. It does not exploit another's predominant fault. It removes occasions, calms passions, speaks at the proper time, and helps the weak stand.

Praise strengthens action. When it is given to virtue, it may encourage the good. When it is given to sin, it rewards evil with honor and invites repetition. Flattery is more deceitful still: it uses approval to gain favor while confirming another person in what may destroy him.

One can share in sin by laughing at the cruel story, applauding irreverence, admiring dishonest cleverness, calling immodesty beautiful, treating vengeance as strength, or praising public rebellion as courage. False teachers are sustained not only by those who formulate error, but also by those who celebrate them as bold, learned, compassionate, or enlightened because they oppose Catholic truth.

There is a severe difference between loving a sinner and praising his sin. True love desires his salvation and therefore refuses to crown his wound. Sentimental approval may feel warm while it is pushing a soul deeper into danger.

Father Faber's maxim belongs here: where there is no hatred of heresy, there is no holiness. Hatred of heresy is hatred of soul-killing falsehood, never hatred of the person deceived by it. The same principle must be turned inward. If I praise another's compromise because I want my own compromise praised, I have joined his wound to mine.

Concealment actively hides evil that one has a duty to reveal, correct, or place before the proper authority. It may destroy evidence, invent an excuse, mislead those responsible, warn the wrongdoer how to avoid discovery, or deliberately keep endangered persons ignorant.

This does not abolish discretion, the seal of confession, professional confidence, family privacy, or the demands of justice concerning reputation. Not every fault should be published. Detraction remains a sin. The question is whether the person hides evil from someone who has a right and duty to know, and whether the concealment enables further harm.

A parent who conceals a real danger from the other parent, a subordinate who hides fraud from the person charged with preventing it, or an institution that covers grave misconduct in order to preserve reputation may become a protector of the wrong rather than of the innocent.

Prudence asks: Who has the authority to act? Who is in danger? What facts are certain? What must be said, to whom, and no further than necessity requires? Concealment hides in order that evil may remain safe. Catholic discretion guards truth, justice, and persons in their proper order.

Partaking means joining in the sinful deed, supplying effective help, sharing its fruits, or willingly benefiting from the injustice. The partner may perform only one portion, yet that portion belongs to the common act.

The lookout shares the theft. The person who knowingly supplies the necessary tool shares the planned wrong. The one who helps distribute impurity shares in its corruption. The beneficiary who knowingly receives stolen goods and chooses to keep them shares in the injustice. The person who takes an active role in false worship cannot excuse the act by saying that he did not compose the rite.

But moral judgment must remain exact. Ordinary contact with a sinner is not partaking in every sin he commits. Buying an ordinary good from a business, living under an unjust government, being related to a sinner, or being physically present where another unexpectedly does wrong does not by itself make one a partner. The relevant questions are whether one's act assists the evil, whether that assistance is chosen, how close and necessary it is, what duty or grave reason exists, and whether scandal is caused.

The doctrine protects the conscience from laxity and from scruple. It will not allow us to rename chosen assistance as neutrality. Neither will it condemn every remote association as though human society were possible only among the sinless.

Silence becomes sinful when a person can and should speak, warn, correct, report, or command, but refuses through fear, favor, laziness, human respect, or secret agreement with the evil. The duty does not fall equally upon everyone. It arises from authority, office, relationship, knowledge, the danger involved, and the reasonable possibility of helping.

Holy Scripture gives the warning through the prophet Ezechiel: if the watchman fails to warn the wicked man, God will require the man's blood at the watchman's hand. Holy Scripture also records God's judgment upon Heli because he knew the wickedness of his sons and did not restrain them as his office required.

A father may not remain silent while grave disorder becomes the law of his home. A mother may not call passivity peace while children are being corrupted. A shepherd may not conceal doctrine because truth will displease. A friend may have to warn a friend whose soul is approaching danger. A witness may have to speak to the proper authority when silence leaves the innocent exposed.

Yet this doctrine does not command constant argument, imprudent confrontation, public accusation without proof, or correction by those who possess neither facts nor responsibility. Our Lord Himself was sometimes silent. Prudence governs the time, manner, person, and probable fruit of speech. Silence is guilty not because words are always required, but because duty sometimes requires them.

This distinction is essential in an age of universal commentary. A person is not appointed watchman over every stranger on earth. He is answerable first for the souls, offices, promises, and circumstances actually entrusted to him. But when duty is clear, calling cowardice "prudence" does not change its nature.

Defense of the ill done comes after or alongside the sin and attempts to justify it, excuse it falsely, protect it from just correction, attack those who name it, or change the moral standard so that the wrong appears right.

This is more than forgiving a repentant sinner, protecting him from cruelty, insisting upon proof, or explaining circumstances that truly lessen culpability. Those acts may serve justice and mercy. Defense of the ill done defends the evil as evil. It says the lie was necessary, the impurity harmless, the apostasy prudent, the false worship acceptable, the rebellion courageous, or the heresy merely another opinion.

The defense may become worse than the first fall because it hardens what might have been repented. The sinner who is ashamed may yet return. The defender teaches him to be proud. The first act wounded one occasion; the public defense may instruct multitudes to imitate it.

Here the operation of error advances by stages. A lesser falsehood is first tolerated, then excused, then defended, then praised, until the mind resents the truth that exposes it. God is never the author of this blindness. The will first refuses offered truth; God may then justly permit the person to suffer more deeply the deception he chose. The warning must be applied inwardly: every excuse I construct for my own known compromise trains me to resist the next light God gives.

The nine ways name real forms of responsibility, but they are not a mechanical declaration that every person connected with a sin bears identical guilt. Moral responsibility depends upon knowledge, freedom, intention, the gravity of the evil, the closeness and effectiveness of one's assistance, one's authority and duty, and the consequences reasonably foreseen.

St. Thomas Aquinas makes this concrete when treating restitution after theft. Some cooperators are principal causes; others become responsible only when their assistance truly contributed to the injury. A person who commands the theft stands differently from one whose casual remark neither intended nor caused it. A ruler charged with preventing injustice stands differently from a private person who has no authority and would incur grave danger without likely protecting anyone.

This is why the catechetical list must be used beneath Catholic moral principles, not as a weapon for rash judgment. It reveals doors through which another's sin may enter my conscience. It does not give me permission to read hearts, ignore diminished responsibility, or pronounce every difficult association mortal sin.

For a sin to be mortal in the cooperator, grave matter, sufficient knowledge, and deliberate consent are required. The soul should be honest without becoming frantic. When a case is genuinely doubtful or complicated, it should seek sound Catholic moral guidance rather than inventing either an easy permission or an impossible burden.

The list becomes especially searching wherever one person governs another. Authority multiplies opportunities for command, consent, concealment, and guilty silence. It also gives real power to prevent harm.

A father cannot say, "I did not commit the child's sin," if he trained the appetite, permitted the occasion, praised the rebellion, or refused necessary correction. A mother cannot protect a child by concealing conduct that exposes the child's soul or others to danger. An employer cannot profit from fraud performed under his direction and place all guilt upon the employee. A shepherd cannot teach ambiguity and blame the flock for becoming confused.

But subjects also have duties. They must not flatter rulers into pride, provoke them toward unjust severity, conceal necessary truth from them, or obey sinful commands. The answer to corrupt authority is neither servility nor revolt. It is the recovery of authority under God: superiors commanding within truth, subjects obeying lawful commands, and all refusing what contradicts divine law.

The present religious crisis did not spread through teachers of error alone. Error becomes socially powerful through the whole ninefold chain:

• theologians counsel accommodation;
• officials command or impose counterfeit practices;
• others consent by formal approval;
• agitators provoke contempt for tradition;
• admirers praise and flatter innovators;
• institutions conceal contradiction and scandal;
• ministers and laity partake in false worship;
• those charged to guard souls keep silence;
• apologists defend the ill done and call resistance uncharitable.

The same examination applies to every traditional Catholic group and to every private Catholic home. It is not enough to condemn a vast counterfeit while reproducing the same moral habits on a smaller scale. A priest, father, mother, writer, or layman who knows the truth must not counsel pride, command what exceeds his office, consent to error, provoke faction, flatter personalities, conceal danger, partake in injustice, keep guilty silence, or defend wrongdoing merely because it was committed by "our side."

Hatred of heresy begins with fidelity to truth. It cannot be selective loyalty to persons.

Repentance must correspond to the manner of cooperation.

Bad counsel should be withdrawn and corrected. An unlawful command should be revoked. Consent should be renounced. Provocation should cease and the occasion be repaired. False praise should be corrected with truthful speech. Concealment may require disclosure to the proper person. Partaking may require withdrawal, restitution, or removal of assistance. Guilty silence may require a prudent warning. Defense of the ill done requires an honest retraction.

When the cooperation concerned grave injustice, scandal, reputation, stolen goods, or the corruption of others, confession alone does not dispense from repair where repair is possible. Zacchaeus did not merely feel sorry; he restored what he had taken. If public approval strengthened public sin, private regret may not be sufficient to undo the example.

Repair must itself be prudent. One may not reveal secrets indiscriminately, create new scandal, or injure innocent persons under the pretext of correcting the past. The soul should seek to remove its contribution to evil and restore the good it damaged, according to justice, charity, and its actual duty.

Ask slowly before God:

1. Counsel: Have I advised, encouraged, or shown anyone how to sin or compromise the Faith?
2. Command: Have I used authority, money, employment, parenthood, or influence to require what is wrong?
3. Consent: Have I knowingly approved evil or granted permission that allowed it to proceed?
4. Provocation: Have I deliberately inflamed another's anger, impurity, envy, revenge, rebellion, or despair?
5. Praise or flattery: Have I rewarded sin with laughter, admiration, approval, or pleasing words?
6. Concealment: Have I hidden serious wrongdoing from someone who had a right and duty to know, thereby enabling harm?
7. Partaking: Have I joined the act, supplied meaningful help, shared its fruits, or willingly profited from injustice?
8. Silence: When my office, relationship, or clear duty required speech, did I remain silent from fear or human respect?
9. Defense of the ill done: Have I excused, justified, protected, or renamed evil because I loved a person, party, institution, or my own reputation more than truth?

Then ask the question pride avoids: Whose sin became easier because of me?

Do not ask it in despair. Ask it beneath the Crucifix. Christ shed His Precious Blood for sins committed alone and sins multiplied through others. Grace can break the chain. The same tongue that counseled evil can speak truth. The authority that commanded wrongly can restore order. The person who flattered can warn. The silent watchman can awaken. The defender of error can make a clean retraction.

Charity does not stand beside a precipice and applaud the falling. It does not hand a weapon to the tempted, hide the wound from the physician, silence the watchman, or tell the injured soul that poison is mercy.

Charity wants the sinner saved. Therefore it refuses to help sin appear wise, safe, beautiful, necessary, or holy.

The nine ways teach a severe and merciful truth: our lives are joined. One soul can make another's fall easier. One soul can also remove the occasion, speak the warning, refuse the command, correct the lie, repair the scandal, and help a neighbor return to God.

The Catholic must therefore pray not only, Lord, keep me from sin, but also:

Lord, never permit my counsel, authority, approval, silence, or example to lead another soul away from Thee. Give me prudence to know my duty, courage to perform it, humility to repair what I have damaged, and charity that loves souls too much to assist in their ruin.

Sources and Doctrinal Note

1. 1 Timothy 5:22; Romans 1:32; Ephesians 5:11; Ezechiel 3:18; 1 Kings 3:13; Luke 19:8, Douay-Rheims Bible.
2. Rev. J. H. Slinger, O.P., Catechism of the Christian Doctrine for the Use of Catholic Schools (New York: P. F. McBreen, 1877), question 34, p. 136. This is the source of the ninefold wording used as the chapter's organizing list.
3. Rev. Joseph Deharbe, S.J., A Complete Catechism of the Catholic Religion, trans. Rev. John Fander, 6th American ed., ed. Rev. James J. Fox, D.D., and Rev. Thomas McMillan, C.S.P. (New York: Schwartz, Kirwin & Fauss, 1912), ch. IV, sec. 3, qq. 34–35. Deharbe explains guilty silence as failure to act when one could and should prevent sin and joins the doctrine to Ezechiel 3:18 and Heli's failure to restrain his sons.
4. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 62, a. 7. St. Thomas distinguishes direct and indirect cooperation in unjust taking and explains when a cooperator becomes bound to restitution.
5. Fr. Frederick William Faber, C.O., The Precious Blood (London: Burns and Lambert, 1860), ch. VI, p. 316: "Where there is no hatred of heresy, there is no holiness." The chapter applies the maxim to error, never to hatred or contempt of persons.
6. The degree of personal guilt is not inferred from the ninefold list alone. It must be judged according to the object of the act, knowledge, freedom, intention, causal contribution, circumstances, scandal, and the person's real authority or duty. No living person's interior culpability is pronounced here.