COMPENSATIONISM. — It is the most recent in chronological order of the moral systems proposed to resolve, on the practical level, doubts that are insoluble on the speculative plane regarding the lawfulness of an action. It was first proposed by the Sulpician Laboux (De actibus humanis, Paris 1862) and by the Dominican Potton (De theoria probabilitatis, 1874). According to this system, the principle “a doubtful law does not bind” does not have a solid foundation: one must return to a more secure rule, which in practice is the principle of probabilism (to side with the law unless the reasons for freedom are more probable), with a qualification. The novelty lies in this: when the law is truly doubtful, one may even 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 to its degree of probability. Indeed, the compensationists argue that a certain law produces a certain obligation, whereas a doubtful law produces an uncertain obligation, so that less weighty reasons are required to believe oneself dispensed from the latter than from the former.
At bottom, the system is nothing other than an application of the principle of the lawfulness of material cooperation or of the cause with a double effect (v. IMPUTABILITY OF EFFECTS), though, according to its opponents, it would be misapplied in this case, since it is not a question of an action that is good in itself from which an evil effect may follow (which at most is permitted), but rather of an action whose lawfulness is doubtful and the evil, if there is any, is not only permitted but actually committed.
Moreover, the system is not practically applicable, since few are able to weigh properly the gravity of the law, the nature of the doubt, and the value of the excusing cause.
The system has never had many supporters. Among those who have espoused it are: D. M. Prümmer (Manuale Theol. mor., I, 6th–7th ed., Freiburg im Br. 1931, pp. 227–28, 235–37; nn. 344, 351); A. Tanquer (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 Compensationisum inter et Probabilismum, in Coll. Mechlin., 3 [1929], pp. 581–84).
Some scholars associate with compensationism the system proposed by Cardinal G. D’Annibale (Summula th. mor., I, 3rd ed., Rome 1908, pp. 246–49, 259, nn. 260–62, and 269) and, before him with less authority, by G. V. Bolgeni (d. 1811), a system that might be called “possessivism,” though other authorities at least include D’Annibale among the equiprobabilists (cf. A. Lanza, Theologia moralis, I, Rome 1949, p. 385, n. 367).