COMPENSAZIONE OCCULTA. — Secret compensation consists in taking or withholding, without the debtor’s knowledge, an amount sufficient to recover or compensate what the debtor is obliged to give or repair. It is distinguished from legal compensation, whose measure is determined by law through a judicial sentence, and from arbitral compensation, whose measure is determined by an arbitrator called to decide between the contending parties, because it is effected by private authority. Such an act, which cannot be said to be one of justice but rather of self-interested charity, has not always met with approval in Catholic theology. Even St. Thomas himself is not clear on the matter, treating it only incidentally (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 58, a. 2). Indeed, there were rigorist authors who outright denied its liceity on the principle that it is not lawful to repair an injury with another injury of one’s own authority; and furthermore, basing themselves on a false interpretation of proposition 37a (Denz.-U., no. 1187), condemned by Innocent XI, to proscribe only the abuse in the practice of secret compensation by servants, they deduced that it could not be understood how secret compensation, if licit for others, could be illicit for servants.
Today, authors are unanimous in affirming the liceity of secret compensation, though they acknowledge that in practice its use is highly dangerous. The danger lies chiefly in the extreme ease with which, in exercising the right of secret compensation, one may harm the rights or interests of others. Hence, the use of secret compensation is licit only when certain specific conditions are met.
Ten such conditions are usually enumerated: 1) that the debt be sufficiently certain. This refers to moral certainty, and at least speculatively, a serious probability may suffice; 2) that the debt be owed by strict justice: for if it were owed only by charity, gratitude, etc., these titles not creating a strict “right to the thing,” it cannot be exacted; 3) that the creditor have no other way to compensate himself without manifest danger of serious harm: secret compensation is indeed an extraordinary means, which cannot be used when ordinary means are open, such as private demand, recourse to a judge, etc.; 4) that the right claimed through secret compensation be currently exigible and not future or past and already prescribed. Some theologians, however, admit that secret compensation may be licit when there is grave danger of not being duly compensated in the future and no other recourse is available. In such a case, it must be borne in mind that the one subjected to secret compensation is making an advance payment, and therefore the subtraction made from him must take into account both the “dannum emergens” and the “lucrum cessans” (cf. E. Génicot-J. Salsmans, *Theologiae moralis institutiones*, I, 15th ed., Brussels 1946, no. 504); 5) that secret compensation be made with identical things or of the same kind; if this is not possible, at least with goods to which the debtor is less attached; 6) that secret compensation not be made with goods of the debtor that have been lent or deposited with the creditor, since this would be contrary to the fidelity owed in such contracts; 7) that the act of secret compensation not cause harm to third parties, as would happen if the thing belonged to the creditor but was only held by him as a pledge, in lease, etc.; 8) that no unjust harm be done to the debtor. Harm could occur in two ways: either as material harm, if more than the just amount were taken, in which case theft would be committed, or if the one subjected to secret compensation were exposed to double payment of the debt; or as spiritual harm, inasmuch as the debtor, believing himself not to have satisfied the debt, would remain in bad faith and thus in a state of sin; 9) that no harm be done to oneself, such as the risk, for example, of provoking dismissal if the matter concerns employees, or, especially today, the risk of a charge of embezzlement; 10) that the interests of society and the common good be kept in mind, to which secret compensation exercised on a large scale could be detrimental.
When these conditions are met, secret compensation may be considered licit, for just as it is licit by the law of nature to preserve oneself unharmed against another’s injury, so too is it licit to take back what is one’s own when no other means is available.
Given, however, the innate covetousness of the human heart, in secret compensation it is necessary to proceed with prudence and the advice of conscientious and impartial persons.