2. Second Way of Speaking and its Rejection24. The second way of speaking is that he conceded it, or rather permitted it, for a time to avoid scandal [Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas]. 25. But this is a nothing, because “it is more useful for scandal to be permitted to arise than for truth to be abandoned” [Gregory IX, Decretals V tit.41 ch.3]. 26. Again, Gregory [the Great] would have sinned mortally in making this concession if he had conceded de facto what he could not have conceded de iure; and he would have given priests an occasion for sinning mortally, namely for doing what it was not licit for them to do. |