casuist

Indeed, for at least a decade, the media landscape has been littered with casuist puff-pieces with headlines like:

Had poor Peter been—what he certainly was not—a most accomplished casuist, he might have been puzzled by the ingenious complexity of some of those embarrassments.

Nicuesa was the better talker, having been brought up at court, while Ojeda was no great casuist.

All sins whatever, quoth the abbess, turning casuist in the distress they were under, are held by the confessor of our convent to be either mortal or venial: there is no further division.

He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that ‘the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book in our Universities was a disgrace to the national character.’