accidental
homicide_ is the _material_ transgression. The _matter_ of the act is
the same in both cases; but in the _homicide_, there is nothing more
than the act, whereas in _murder_ there must be the intention, &c.,
which constitutes the formal sin. So, again, an executioner commits the
material act, but not that formal killing which is a breach of the
commandment. So a man, who, simply to save himself from starving, takes
a loaf which is not his own, commits only the material, not the formal
act of stealing, that is, he does not commit a sin. And so a baptized
Christian, external to the Church, who is in invincible ignorance, is a
material heretic, and not a formal. And in like manner, if to say the
thing which is not be in special cases lawful, it may be called a
_material lie_.

The first mode then which has been suggested of meeting those special
cases, in which to mislead by words has a sufficient occasion, or has a
_just cause_, is by a material lie.

The second mode is by an _aequivocatio_, which is not equivalent to the
English word "equivocation," but means sometimes a _play on words_,
sometimes an _evasion_: we must take these two modes of misleading
separately.

2. _A play upon words._ St. Alfonso certainly says that a play upon
words is allowable; and, speaking under correction, I should say that he
does so on the ground that lying is _not_ a sin against justice, that
is, against our neighbour, but a sin against God. God has made words the
signs of ideas, and therefore if a word denotes two ideas, we are at
liberty to use it in either of its senses: but I think I must be
incorrect in some respect in supposing that the Saint does not recognize
a lie as an injustice, because the Catechism of the Council, as I have
quoted it at p. 281, says, "Vanitate et mendacio fides ac veritas
tolluntur, arctissima vincula _societatis humanae_; quibus sublatis,
sequitur summa vitae _confusio_, ut _homines nihil a daemonibus differre
videantur_."

3. _Evasion_;--when, for instance, the speaker diverts the attention of
the hearer to another subject; suggests an irrelevant fact or makes a
remark, which confuses him and gives him something to think about;
throws dust into his eyes; states some truth, from which he is quite
sure his hearer will draw an illogical and untrue conclusion, and the
like.

The greatest school of evasion, I speak seriously, is the House of
Commons; and necessarily so, from the nature of the case