The opinions of Augustine and Liguouri on what constitutes Venial Sin in the performance of the Marriage Act are well known.
It is difficult to see how Jone does justice to those venerable opinions in his treatment of what is permissible and prohibited in this area.
Yes, it is a delicate issue.
But that's no answer to a valid question.
What's this all about, anyway?
Pre-Vatican II moral theologians with fine reputations scandalizing the post-Vatican II remnant flock?
Jone could rightly be accused of representing the very devil of all that was wrong with moral theologizing before Romanist moral theologians rediscovered Jesus Christ and Human Dignity somewhere in the 1940s and 1950s.
In a sense, Jone was a fraud and a hack, parading around as a disciple of the Galilean and the Umbrian.
He was a lazy Aristotelian slob.
"Here, boys! Here's the nuts-and-bolts logic of it all and now you go wash it in the blood of the Lamb if you can! Good luck and Ave, um, Maria!"
Thus far Father Jone. In my opinion.
But having said that....
Laymen should be very, very slow to think that there could be something so VERY wrong with the opinions of a moral theologian who was a big noise in the days of Pope Pius XII. The fact that Jone's work was permitted means that it cannot be along the lines of, say, Chuckie Curran's.
Is Father Jone wrong on the point at issue?
It would be false to say that he COULD not be wrong on this point.
That's the kind of point on which "trained clerics" are not often honest when they give pious ruffled-feather lectures about how much laymen don't know and can never know etc... etc...
And that very clericalistic dishonesty is part of the system in which the Jones of this world were operating.
Jone COULD be wrong. Jone COULD have gone too far and allowed a certain laxism to creep into his high and mighty opinionating.
Which means that he could also be a bit of a sicko.
But we have to allow that the point is debatable. It's just not Catholic reality to pretend that it isn't. If you don't get the moral logic of the issue and don't see how Jone COULD be right you really should keep away from all moral theology textbooks.
They're the pits. Always. Because the human heart is. The pits.
The antidote is the Spotless Lamb.
"Be ye perfect... From within him will come Living Water..."