RESPONSIBILITY. - I. LAW
It may be defined as the subjection to the reaction which the legal order links to harm (v.). The legal effect of this consists in a reaction operating in the opposite direction to that in which the harm itself operates; this serves to distinguish it from any other legal effect, just as it serves to characterize harm within the system of legal facts.
The aforesaid reaction, considered from the perspective of the subject designated to bear it, gives rise to a situation of disadvantage, constituting responsibility. The purpose of the reaction, namely the repression of harm, is pursued by the law by transferring the burden of the harm from the subject who suffered it (the injured party) to another subject; this subject is subjected to the reaction of the law and finds itself under a legal necessity to bear it, independently of its own will, and this condition precisely represents responsibility.
It must be firmly held that the purpose of the reaction against harm consists solely in the repression of the harm itself. Indeed, harm can be repressed, but it cannot be erased from the world of facts (*quod factum est, infectum fieri nequit*). Nor, even in the hypothesis in which the advantage gained by the responsible party through the infliction of harm exceeds the harm caused, does the reaction of the law aim at obtaining anything more than the repression of the harm; that the aforementioned advantage exceeds the harm constitutes an irrelevant circumstance, incapable of modifying, to its detriment, the reaction against the harm.
The reaction against harm takes the form of a legal obligation between the responsible party and the injured party, by virtue of which the former is bound to compensate the latter.
The passive subject of this relationship, the responsible party, is the author of the act producing the harm; but not exclusively so: indeed, alongside responsibility for harm caused by one’s own act (the so-called direct responsibility), there exists responsibility for harm caused by another’s act (the so-called indirect responsibility). This finds particular application with regard to harms caused by the intentional acts or the negligence of so-called auxiliaries of performance (Civil Code, art. 1228) and of domestic employees and employees (art. 2049). Auxiliaries of performance are third parties whose work the debtor employs in fulfilling the obligation.
Article 1228, while requiring that the act of the auxiliary be intentional or negligent, does not condition the debtor’s responsibility on the debtor’s negligence in choosing or supervising the auxiliary. The reason may be found in the desirability of not separating the harmful effects from the beneficial effects of the appointment of auxiliaries, with regard to the debtor (*cujus commoda eius et incommoda*).
In turn, masters and employers are responsible for harms caused by domestic employees and employees, independently of their own fault. Here too the reason for the norm is to be found in the inseparability of harmful effects from beneficial effects: whoever benefits from the work of a domestic employee or employee ought to answer, independently of personal fault, for the harm caused by them.
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II. MORAL
Even before the legal sphere, there is the moral sphere. Christian morality teaches that, independently of the fact of the evangelical law, every man by natural right is responsible before the legitimate authority—even if it concerns societies constituted by private act—over his actions within the scope of the various attributions of each of them; consequently, while, for example, on the one hand the citizen (speaking of his relations with civil society) is bound toward it also morally, i.e., in conscience; on the other hand, the State itself, even if it wished to, cannot disregard this, inasmuch as by the same natural law it is bound to procure the common social good and the private good of individuals, which can be obtained in no other way than through the existence of true responsibility. In other words, responsibility exists by natural law, and the State cannot completely eliminate it among its subjects, though it can, as is obvious, restrict it more or less by narrowing the field of actions for which a person must render account, by reducing the mass of laws that are not indispensable (i.e., not essential or extremely useful or of natural law) to the common good.
1. **Moral responsibility and moral-legal responsibility.** - Setting aside the very improper, not to say erroneous, concept that attributes it to any cause, even of an exclusively physical order, responsibility is proper to the person, i.e., to a subject that is not determined by internal coercion (due to lack of freedom) or by necessary natural causes that place the action, but only by free choice. In this more proper sense, Christian morality recognizes various kinds of responsibility: for which the individual is responsible before God and in part before the Church (excluding others), for all that concerns the action considered under the formal aspect of moral violation, i.e., of sin (moral responsibility); before the Church and the State insofar as the action perverts the respective legal order, which may occur in crimes and offenses that violate both legal orders (moral-legal responsibility); before ecclesiastical or civil society insofar as the laws and norms violated concern exclusively one or the other order (likewise moral-legal responsibility).
2. **Subject of responsibility.** - Just as every action is imputable to the subject that performs it, so too, indeed more so than any other, man ought to be responsible. However, given the ordinary meaning, it is almost natural that a man is said to be responsible only for what he does wrong by violating laws (inasmuch as society does not demand an account from the subject if he has observed them); responsibility denotes in practice, together with the state of subjection to others, also the state of violation of the norm or at least the inquiry into the possible violation of the same. For this reason, every person can be called to account (whether to God, the Church, or the State) for every action that has elements of good and evil to be judged. It thus becomes logical the exclusion already noted of responsibility in too broad and equivocal a sense attributed to necessary causes, inasmuch as these are not capable or do not have the possibility of discerning good from evil. Consequently, responsibility must be referred to actions that are morally, if not always legally, imputable to the person. Therefore, in addition to all causes devoid of freedom in principle, all persons who are not capable in fact of human acts, i.e., acts that are deliberate and free, are excluded from responsibility; and only during moments of the use of reason are those who ordinarily lack it, or lack it occasionally or under any circumstances, or are otherwise deprived of it due to accidental circumstances: among these, for one reason or another, are to be numbered the insane, imbeciles, idiots, the feeble-minded, the hypnotized, the intoxicated, and those with psychic deficiencies in general, except insofar as the necessary conditions for responsibility in causa are met.
Referring to individual persons, whether physical or moral:
a) Only God is absolutely incapable of responsibility, whether moral or juridical. His perfect independence from any other being does not even allow for the possibility of responsibility in Him; nor could it have any purpose, since He is absolute perfection and the very norm of morality from which responsibility derives. In Him, the perfect conformity between the norm itself and His operation cannot but coincide. Moreover, God is incapable of moral evil.
b) The Church, as such—that is, as a public and perfect society of divine-positive right—is capable, in the present order of divine providence, of responsibility only toward God. The State, and even more so private individuals, have no right to judge actions falling within the scope of the Church’s juridical order, nor does the Church have a moral or juridical obligation to render account to them. However, individual persons, whether physical or moral, may be subject to responsibility even with regard to civil societies to which they belong by their private actions, and the obligation is both juridical and moral.
c) The person of the Supreme Pontiff is, however, excluded by right, even apart from the contingent fact of his sovereignty under international law. These statements regarding God, the Church, and the Pope must not be interpreted as if their actions were not imputable. In them, all the conditions for imputability are perfectly fulfilled, and thus they themselves are subjects of imputability.
d) With regard to civil society by divine positive right, it must be held that the State is morally and juridically responsible not only before God for its actions—responsibility which extends to the physical persons through whom it acts—but also, in the manner and terms established by the Divine Redeemer, to the Church. This holds true even apart from the responsibility that every private person owes to the Church as a member.
3. Special Observations
Despite what has been said, both ecclesiastical and civil society may, in their juridical relations, lawfully limit or render void the responsibility of their subjects when it cannot be identified or can only be identified with extreme difficulty. In such cases, it would be more accurate to say that responsibility, though existing even in the external forum, cannot, due to extraneous circumstances, be perfectly recognized by the authority and thus it refrains from considering II. For, as is easily understood, it is in accordance with natural law that both perfect societies—the Church and the State—sometimes, either in fact or in principle, disregard determining the responsibility of their respective subjects. This is due to the often evident impossibility of ascertaining the extent of responsibility and when all the necessary elements for it are actually present. The means at the disposal of the two societies, at least in considering the external forum, do not allow for a perfect examination of every responsibility. However, in disregarding it, they do not eliminate responsibility in the subjects: it remains intact, as noted, before God and partially before the Church in its power of the internal forum.On the other hand, it must also be noted that both the Church and the State, in their external relations, may require their subjects to render account for their actions even if, objectively speaking, responsibility is lacking in them due to intangible factors. In such a case, as is obvious, the responsibility for the violation of the law attributed to the subject does not exist before God or conscience. Nevertheless, it remains certainly unjust for society to attribute responsibility to someone who has been proven incapable of it, either by right or in fact.
In this regard, it is also appropriate to recall that society has the right to prove responsibility only by lawful means. It is never permissible, not even for the State, to resort to means contrary to nature or to common civil sensibility to prove the possible responsibility of its subjects, even if such means might establish it with certainty.