Fidelity

FIDELITY. - It derives from fides and has the sense of serving fidem. It is a virtue very akin to truthfulness, of which indeed it may be said to form a part, and it is concordantly defined by moralists as the virtue that induces a person to carry out with due sincerity and exactness whatever he has said and promised. Although akin, fidelity is distinct from truthfulness. By the latter is meant only the perfect equation between what one thinks and what one manifests externally by words, signs or deeds, prescinding from the factor of promise, which may even be absent, whereas it is indispensable in fidelity. It agrees nonetheless with truthfulness inasmuch as the perfect equation between the promise made and the execution of what is promised is proper to fidelity. Therefore truthfulness divorced from fidelity is conceivable, but not fidelity divorced from truthfulness. From what has been said it follows that fidelity is intimately united to the promise (v.) and consequently follows its fortunes as regards the obligations it produces. Given this particular intimate relation between fidelity and the promise, and the dependence of the former on the latter, various species of fidelity must be distinguished which, although all agreeing in the factor of equality between what is promised and what is done, come to differ appreciably according as the various promises differ among themselves.

Now there is a promise that is proper to every contract, which is indeed connatural to it and inseparable from it; from this promise there results an obligation of commutative justice; and it is obvious that in this case the obligation of fidelity is perfectly equal to the obligation of justice and therefore the one and the other constitute one and the same thing. This occurs not only in cases of explicit and formal contracts, such as a sale, an exchange, marriage (the term conjugal fidelity is very well known, a most grave burden of justice of the one toward the other spouse); but also in implicit ones constituted by quasi-contracts (v. quasi contract) taken in the strict sense, as happens in the various professions that have direct and indirect relations with one's neighbor: the professional obligations of doctors, notaries, magistrates, parish priests, etc., carried out with due care create a true virtue of professional fidelity. In all these cases we are in the field of justice.

A certain obligation of fidelity also arises in other cases analogous to quasi-contracts, although not invested with the same characteristic qualities. In these cases, however, the obligation of fidelity does not constitute, at least ordinarily, a burden of commutative justice, nor, when violated, does it impose particular burdens of reparation for damages due to infidelity. Thus any charge or task, taken in a very broad sense, if carried out with exactness and adequate care, is said to be carried out with fidelity. It is not difficult, however, that in these cases an obligation of fidelity due by strict commutative justice may arise.

Both in the case of a true contract or quasi-contract, and in these latter cases, fidelity is not taken in its own specific sense. It is in fact admitted by moralists that the term fidelity indicates precisely an obligation different from that of commutative justice. And in this latter sense, which then entered commonly into the usage of all peoples, the notion of fidelity is perfectly verified, taken precisely as the execution of what has been spontaneously promised out of pure liberality and not as the rendering of a service received. It is the case of the pure and simple promise, from which the obligation of justice is excluded either by the express will of the person or by the very nature of things. One must therefore hold that fidelity, rather than an obligation of justice, serves to indicate an obligation merely moral and of conscience to make what must then be put into effect coincide with the promises made.

Also as regards the obligation of conscience in the execution of what has been promised, the preceding observations must be kept in mind. Therefore, while in the first case (contracts, quasi-contracts) there is always an obligation of justice to stand by what has been promised or is due, and in the second (cases analogous to those of the first) such an obligation can very easily follow; in the last (a mere promise, pure and simple), with some very rare exception, due more to the intervention of extrinsic circumstances than to the very nature of the promise, the obligation to stand by the promises made is always one of fidelity alone (to the exclusion of that of justice). A grave consequence that enormously distances the one from the other fidelity is that while in the fidelity that coincides with the virtue of commutative justice the obligation deriving from it is grave or light according as the matter is grave or light, in simple fidelity, that is, in fidelity in its more technical sense, it is always light; and therefore while in the first two cases there is the obligation of reparation for damages eventually occurring because of infidelity, such a burden does not exist in the last even if the infidelity to the promise is inexcusable and entirely unmotivated.

The reason for this assertion, so grave in appearance, lies in the fact that in the one to whom the promise is made there is no strict right to the thing promised, since it belongs to the one who promises it, nor does the transmission of the right occur solely through the promise having been made. This is proved by the fact that generally the one who promises intends only to obligate himself lightly: and it is he alone who can give rise to the one or the other obligation according as he intends: and secondly by the fact that a grave obligation is not required of necessity by the common or social good, which on the contrary is procured enormously more by the light obligation alone: it is obvious in fact that if for every purely liberal promise a grave obligation of conscience had to arise, many would refrain from making it, especially those who, being more delicate of conscience, practically observe it even when furnished with only a light obligation.

Lorenzo Simeone