Religion: When Is a Cig a Sin?

If cigarettes really are cancer-breeding coffin nails, is it a sin to smoke them? Last week, in Notre Dame's Ave Maria magazine, a top-ranking canon-law expert, the Very Rev. Francis J. Connell, dean of the School of Sacred Theology at Washington's Catholic University, sifted ashtrays in a search for moral wrong. Nonsmoker Connell's canonical conclusion: it takes a lot of puffing to make a cig a sin—generally three packs a day.

Theologian Connell started from a different point than Pope Pius XII who last month condemned smoking by members of religious orders as self-indulgence (TIME, Sept. 30). Arguing that because he is...