child to religion. Such a vow put no obligation on the child, but the parents were bound by it to give the child the opportunity of entering religion if he desired to do so. There are also instances of communities who have jointly taken a vow to observe a certain day as a fast or a feast. Thus the Romans, in the year 1703, vowed to observe as a fast day the vigil of the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary in thanksgiving for being preserved from an earthquake. The successors of those who took such a vow are bound to fulfil it, much in the same way as they are bound to pay interest on the National Debt. Their predecessors had the power to bind themselves and their successors, for the community remains the same moral entity.
We saw above that the matter of a vow must be something which is physically and morally possible. It may happen that he who took the vow may be able to fulfil it in part only and not wholly. He will be bound to do at least this when the matter is capable of being divided and is usually so treated, for the obligation of the vow then falls on the whole and on its several parts. Otherwise he will not be bound, nor will he be bound to do something which was a mere accessory of the substance of the vow, even if it be possible. And so one who should vow to fast for a week, if he found this impossible, would not be excused from fasting on the days that he could do so. But if he had vowed to build and decorate a church and afterwards found this to be impossible, he would not be bound to build a portion of it, nor to decorate some other church.
4. A vow may cease to bind for intrinsic or for extrinsic reasons. It will cease to bind intrinsically if the matter cease to be a better good or become impossible. Thus if a young man had vowed to enter religion, but his parents afterward became dependent on him so that he could not leave them without a violation of duty, his vow would cease to bind as long as the same conditions lasted. Or if a wealthy man vowed to spend a considerable sum of money in charities every year, if he became poor his vow would no longer bind him. And generally a vow, like any other promise, will cease to bind if circumstances supervene which at the outset would have prevented the vow from being taken. A vow ceases to bind extrinsically if it is annulled or dispensed or commuted. We will treat of these extrinsic causes of the cessation of a vow in the following paragraphs.
5. The annulment of a vow may be direct or indirect. By
