Thus the inventive genius of the casuist, bent on dissecting immorality and reducing it to classes; the interrogative ingenuity of the confessor, pruriently inquisitive into private experience; the apologetic subtlety of the director, eager to supply his penitent with salves and anodynes; were all alike and all together applied to anti-social contamination in matters of lubricity, and to anti-social corruption in matters of dishonesty, fraud, falsehood, illegality and violence.

The single doctrine of probabilism, as Pascal abundantly proved, facilitates the commission of crime; for there is no perverse act which some casuist of note has not plausibly excused.
It may be urged that confession and direction, as adopted by the Catholic Church, bring the abominations of casuistry logically in their train.

Priests who have to absolve sinners must be familiar with sin in all its branches.

In the confessional they will be forced to listen to recitals, the exact bearings of which they cannot understand unless they are previously instructed.

Therefore the writings of Sanchez, Diana, Liguori, Burchard, Billuard, Rousselot, Gordon, Gaisson, are put into their hands at an early age--works which reveal more secrets of impudicity than Aretino has described, or Commodus can have practiced--works which recommend more craft and treachery and fraud and falsehood than Machiavelli accorded to his misbegotten Saviour of Society.