COMPENSATIONISM. - It is the most recent in time of the moral systems proposed for resolving on the practical ground those doubts that are insoluble by specialized means, concerning 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, ibid. 1874). According to this system the principle: "a doubtful law does not oblige," has no solid foundation: one must return to a surer rule, which in practice is the principle of the most probable (stand by the law, unless the reasons for freedom are more probable), with a tempering. And the novelty lies in this, 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 to its degree of probability. Indeed, say the compensationists, a certain law produces a certain obligation, a doubtful one an uncertain obligation, so that less weighty reasons are required to consider 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 twofold effect (v. IMPUTABILITÀ DEGLI EFFETTI), which, however, according to its opponents, would in this case be applied out of place, because it is not a question of an action good in itself from which a bad effect may also follow, which at most is permitted; but it is a question of an action whose lawfulness is doubtful and the evil, if there is any, is not only permitted but committed.
Not to mention that the system is not of practical application, because there cannot be many who know how to weigh well 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. The following are remembered: D. M. Prümmer (Manuale Theol. mor., I, 6th-7th ed., Freiburg im Br. 1931, pp. 227-28, 235-37; nos. 344, 351); A. Tanquery (Synopsis theol. mor. et past., II, 6th ed., Tournai 1921, nos. 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 bring close to compensationism the system proposed by Card. G. D'Annibale (Summula th. mor., I, 3rd ed., Rome 1908, pp. 246-49, 259, nos. 260-62, and 269) and before him, with lesser authority, by G. V. Bolgeni (d. 1811), and 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, no. 367).