Dear Paul:

Well, I think, Paul, that there is some confusion over the issues. In your scenario you say, "he will let her go if the man commits adultery". This is not an act of adultery. Adultery is a deliberate act of choosing to have sex with someone not one's spouse. This is not a deliberate act and it is not an act of choice. This is an act under duress. There is no consent. We must consent to sin. Without consent, there is no mortal sin.

The Church teaches that mortal sin must have three required elements:

1) an act of grave sin
2) knowledge that the act is grave
3) complete consent

As the Catechism (1859) explains: "It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice."

There is no "personal choice" in your scenario. The Church teaches that one can have diminished responsibility for an act that would otherwise be culpable sin.

This notion of diminished responsibility is mentioned in the Catechism:

1735 Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors.

In your scenario there is most certainly "duress" from the aggressor and "fear" for his wife's life.

1860 Unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense. But no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man. The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest.

In your scenario there is most certainly an "external pressure".

So, we have a lack of consent, duress, fear, and external pressures that all serve to make the situation lacking in any sinfulness on the part of the man.

In addition, is the doctrine of double-effect that I believe may be argued here:

Double-effect requires four conditions in order for an act to be morally permissible.

1) the action contemplated must be in itself either morally good or morally indifferent

2) the person may not positively will the bad result but may merely permit it. If he could attain the good result without the bad result, he should do so. The bad result is sometimes said to be indirectly voluntary.

3) The good result must flow from the action at least as immediately (in the order of causality, though not necessarily in the order of time) as the bad result. In other words, the good effect must be produced directly by the action, not by the bad result. Otherwise, the person would be using a bad means to a good end, which is never allowed.

4) The good result must be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the allowing of the bad result. In forming this decision many factors must be weighed and compared, with care and prudence proportionate to the importance of the case. Thus, a result that benefits or harms society generally has more weight than one that affects only an individual; a result sure to occur deserves greater consideration than one that is only probable; a result of a moral nature has greater importance than one that deals only with material things.

In the first requirement the man's action is to save his wife's life. This is a moral good.

In the second requirement the bad result (the sex with the woman) ispermitted but not directly intended by the man, but rather is being forced upon him by the aggressor.

In the third requirement the good result (his wife's life being saved) is not a direct causal effect of the bad result (the sex under duress with the woman). The wife's life is directly saved, rather, by the choice of the aggressor choosing not to kill her.

In the fourth requirement the good result (the saving of the man's wife) is certainly proportionately greater than the bad result (sex, under duress, with the woman).

Thus, I believe that the doctrine of double-effect succeeds in this case scenario.

Other cases of double-effect include defending oneself against an aggressor that unintentionally results in the aggressor's death in the application of defense. Another example is in the unintended killing of a unborn baby in a tubal pregnancy. The killing of the baby is not directly intended but is an indirect result of medical procedure to save the mother's life (in which without the procedure both mother and baby will die).

None of this contradicts the precept of "the ends does not justify the means" because in this precept the means must be intended and deliberately chosen, regardless of what means was taken to achieve the good end. This is an act of deliberate and direct choice to justify evil means.

The precept restated as an "evil can never be done to bring good from it" is not a contraction here either as direct evil is not committed by the man because he does not directly intend the act, is not freely consenting to it, is under duress and fear to commit the act, and has the proportionally greater intention of saving the life of his wife.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary