Burns suggests that in 255 the Africans were more concerned with what was going on in rival
laxist communities (those who had broken away from the mainstream churches because they supported the easy readmission of all who had lapsed during the Decian persecution), which predominated in Africa, rather than in rigorist communities (those who, like the Novatianists, had broken away from the mainstream churches because they rejected the readmission to communion of anyone who had lapsed), which predominated in Rome.
The "wide faith" thesis of Estrix was condemned by the Holy See in 1679 as Proposition 23, part of a series of 65 "
laxist" propositions (DS 2123).
Both accused the other of
laxist attitudes, the Catholics attacking the Lutherans for their seeming opposition to integrity, the Lutherans denouncing Catholics on the sufficiency of attrition (in contrast to contrition) within the sacrament.
There is an ambiguity in the evidence for the stance taken by the predecessors of Miltiades at Rome on the matter of those Christians who had lapsed during the persecution: did Marcellus and Eusebius favour a
laxist or rigorist policy on the question of readmission to the church?
For instance, last year we saw Julia Fleming's noteworthy manuscript on the probabilist Juan Caramuel, long dismissed as an irrelevant
laxist. Fleming studied in detail how Caramuel actually wrestled with doubt and judgment on the issues of his day.
Once he responded: "If I have to go out and I see someone committing a sin, I pass on my way without reproving him."(30) But Poemen was no
laxist. As he said on another occasion, his tolerance sprang from a spiritual rationale: "At the very moment when we hide our brother's fault, God hides our own and at the moment when we reveal our brother's fault, God reveals ours too."(31)
(132) Critics also find the law too
laxist since the Swedish penal code carries a maximum sentence of four years imprisonment for sexual intercourse with a minor under the age of 15.
The ultimate failure of the
laxist community in Carthage occurred because those who had been supporting the rebellious clergy, unlike those clergy themselves, did not want to see the establishment of a rival community; they wanted to be reconciled to the community to which they had belonged.
Sullivan writes that both Gutierre and King Pedro "ate egregiously mistaken in their actions [...] but the richness of Calderon's critique lies in the portrayal of the exculpation of a moral rigorist by a moral
laxist [...].
Supported by the papacy (which in 1679 condemned some
laxist propositions) and by a minority network of Jesuits, he developed a new system called "probabiliorism": a more rigorous method to discern the solution for ethical issues.
"Let me remind the prime minister that the war being waged against France today is being waged by Islamist fundamentalists bottle-fed by a
laxist, sectarian Socialist Party," she said.
(20) Mariana criticized the
laxist laws on the alteration of money precisely on the grounds that these government interventions violated the basic legal order (ius) and the property rights of the citizens derived from this order.