COMPENSATIONISM. - This is the most recent in chronological order of the moral systems proposed to resolve on a practical level those technically insoluble doubts concerning the lawfulness of an action. It was first proposed by the Sulpician Laboux (De actibus humanis, Paris 1862) and the Dominican Potton (De theoria probabilitatis, ibid. 1874). According to this system, the principle "the doubtful law does not bind" lacks a solid foundation: it is necessary to return to a safer rule, which in practice is the principle of equiprobabilism (standing for the law unless the reasons for freedom are more probable), with a moderation. The novelty lies in the fact that when the law is truly doubtful, one may also be free to act against it, provided that the risk of violating the law is compensated (hence the name) by good reasons proportionate to the gravity of the law and its degree of probability. In fact, compensationists argue, a certain law produces a certain obligation, whereas a doubtful one produces an uncertain obligation, for which reasons of lesser gravity are required to consider oneself excused from the second than from the first.
At bottom, the system is nothing other than an application of the principle regarding the lawfulness of material cooperation or of the double-effect cause (v. IMPUTABILITÀ DEGLI EFFETTI), which however, according to opponents, would in this case be applied out of place, because it is not a question of an action good in itself from which an evil effect may also follow, which is at most permitted; rather, it is a question of an action whose lawfulness is doubtful and the evil, if present, is not only permitted, but committed.
Not to mention that the system is not of practical application, because not many people are able to properly weigh the gravity of the law, the nature of the doubt, and the value of the excusing cause.
The system has not had and does not have many supporters. Mention may be made of: D. M. Prümmer (Manuale Theol. mor., I, 6th-7th ed., Freiburg i. Br. 1931, pp. 227-28, 235-37; nn. 344, 351); A. Tanquerey (Synopsis theol. mor. et past., II, 6th ed., Tournai 1921, nn. 415-17); M. K. Cruysberghs (Quomodo intelligendum venit principium probabilismi: lex dubia non obligat?, in La vie diocésaine, 12 [1923], pp. 24-26; cf. id., De conscientia, Malines 1928, pp. 77-78; id., Parallelismus Compensationismu inter et Probabilismum, in Coll. Mechlin., 3 [1929], pp. 581-84).
Some associate with compensationism the system proposed by Card. G. D'Annibale (Summula th. mor., I, 3rd ed., Rome 1908, pp. 246-49, 259, nn. 260-62, and 269) and before him with lesser authority by G. V. Bolgeni (d. 1811), which could be called "possessionism", but others classify at least D'Annibale among the equiprobabilists (cf. A. Lanza, Theologia moralis, I, Rome 1949, p. 385, n. 367).