Untitled - Saints' Books

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CHAP- viii.] The Sin of Scandal. 1
39
they imitate them the more ardently."
God has placed
priests in the world that they maybe a model to others,
as our Saviour himself was sent by his Father to be an
example to the world: As the Father hath sent me, I also
send you? Hence St. Jerome wrote to a bishop to guard
against actions by the imitation of which others might
3
be drawn, as it were, by force into sin.
The sin of scandal consists not only in directly
advising others to do evil, but also in inducing them in
directly by acts to the commission of sin. Scandal is
thus defined by St. Thomas and other theologians:
Every word or action, more or less inordinate, that con
stitutes for the neighbor an occasion of falling into sin."
To understand the grievousness of the sin of scandal, it
is
enough to know, that according to St. Paul he who
offends against a brother by leading him into sin, offends
against Jesus Christ: When you sin against the brethren,
and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ? St
Bernard assigns the reason, saying, that the author of
scandal robs Jesus Christ of the souls redeemed by his
blood. The saint goes so far as to say that Jesus Christ
suffers more from those that scandalize others than he
did from his crucifiers. If our Lord," he says, has
given his blood to redeem souls, do you not think that of
these two persecutions, the one in which scandal robs
him of souls purchased by his blood, the other in which
1 "
Persuadent sibi id licere,
et ardentius perpetrant."
quod a suis pastoribus fieri conspiciunt,
s
3 "
Sicut misit me Pater, et ego mitto vos." John, xx. 21.
Cave ne committas quod, qui volunt imitari, coguntur delin-
Ep. ad Heliod.
Dictum vel factum minus rectum, praebens occasionem ruinae."
quere."
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5 "
2, 2, q. 43, a. i.
Peccantes autem in fratres, et percutientes conscientiam eorum
infirmam, in Christum peccatis."
i Cor. viii. 12.