Thomas Says: Scandal, It’s So Special

This is the third in my intermittent series on Aquinas on the topic of scandal, which is covered in question 43 of the second part of the second part of his Summa Theologiae. In the first two posts I covered the main contours of his thinking on the issue. First, scandal is defined as “something less rightly said or done that occasions spiritual downfall.” Second, there are two aspects of scandal: active and passive. Active scandal occurs when a person sins (or even has a strong appearance of sinning) and thereby causes another to sin. Passive scandal occurs when a person is enticed to commit a sin after observing the actions of another—regardless of whether those actions are sinful. The upshot of this is that there can be cases of active without passive scandal, or passive without active scandal.