PERICULUM ANIMAE ET SCANDALI. - In its common theological meaning it is (cc. 1131 § 1, 1935 § 2) the possibility that an exterior act may furnish one's neighbor with the occasion of a sin and of spiritual ruin. This act is the first condition required for scandal to be recognized, and it can consist of words, of gestures, or of an omission, even a merely verbal one: «convenienter dicitur quod dictum vel factum minus rectum praebens occasionem ruinae sit scandalum» (Sum. Theol., q. 43, n. 1).
There is therefore scandal every time it is foreseeable, with a certain probability, that an omission or an action minus recta, occurring in public, may drive one's neighbor, who has witnessed it, to a sin that he would otherwise not have committed. Scandal is active and passive: the first takes concrete form in the exterior act that occasions a sin, the second in the person who witnesses it. If one then takes into account the intention that provoked it, it can be direct or indirect. The one occurs when the author of the action directly and with express will intends to furnish the other with the occasion of sin by means of persuasion or advice, or else by means of fully deliberate bad example; the second, that is the indirect, is possible in many circumstances, and practically every time that an act in itself indifferent or having the appearance of evil risks publicly driving others to sin (for example: abandonment of the faith or of religious practices). Passive scandal is the sin of one's neighbor: it is an occasioned sin and stands in relation to active scandal as the effect to the cause. Evidently it varies according to the quality of the subjects and the circumstances of the scandal. If this has been public, the reparation must be equally public. Thus he who has convinced others to accept false doctrines in matters of faith or morals is obliged to retract his errors publicly; one who has notoriously lived in concubinage must renounce the sinful relationship by publicly approaching the Sacraments. Precisely in order to avoid the possibility of scandal the Church has instituted special forms for the celebration of Matrimony, such as the so-called "Marriage of conscience" (v.), and has determined certain laws for convalidation.