Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/193

Rh sheep; to offer sacrifice for them; and, by the preaching of the divine word, by the administration of the sacraments, and by the example of all good works, to feed them; to have a fatherly care for the poor and for other distressed persons, and to apply themselves to all other pastoral duties; all which [offices] cannot be rendered and fulfilled by those who neither watch over nor stand by their own flock, but, after the manner of hirelings, abandon it; the sacred and holy synod admonishes and exhorts, that, mindful of the divine precepts, and made ensamples to the flock, they feed and rule in judgment and in truth. And lest those things which have been already elsewhere holily and usefully sanctioned, concerning residence, under Paul III., of happy memory, may be wrested to meanings alien from the mind of the sacred and holy synod, as if by force of that decree it were lawful to be absent during five continuous months; the sacred and holy synod, adhering to those [decrees], declares, that all persons who are, under what name and title soever, even though they be cardinals of the holy Roman Church, set over any patriarchal, primatial, metropolitan, and cathedral churches whatsoever, are obliged to personal residence in their own church, or diocese, where they shall be bound to discharge the office enjoined them; and may not absent themselves save for the causes and in the manner below stated. For whereas Christian charity, urgent necessity, due obedience, and the evident utility of the Church, or of the commonwealth, require and demand that some at certain times be absent, this same sacred and holy synod ordains, that these causes of lawful absence are to be approved of in writing by the most blessed Roman Pontiff, or by the metropolitan, or, in his absence, by the oldest resident suffragan bishop, who shall also be bound to approve of the absence of the metropolitan; except when such absence happens on account of some employment and office in the state attached to the bishoprics; the causes of which absence being notorious, and sometimes sudden, it will not be necessary even that these be notified to the metropolitan. To the same, however, it shall belong, conjointly with the provincial council, to judge of the permissions granted by