Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/416

Rh be offered on the occasion of suffrages, or any parochial function,— as if the ministers of the Church were to be noted with the crime of shameful abuse, whilst according to the received and approved custom and usage of the Church, they use the right promulged by the apostle of receiving temporals from those to whom they minister spirituals: False, rash, detrimental to ecclesiastical and pastoral right, injurious to the Church and its ministers.

LV. Likewise that in which it professes a desire that some measure might be found of removing the petty dergee (by which name he designates the degree of the lower orders) from cathedral and collegiate churches, by providing otherwise, namely, by honest laymen of somewhat advanced age, by assigning a suitable stipend to the ministry of serving masses and other offices, as acolytes, &c., as used to be done formerly, it says, when such offices were not reduced to the mere show for receiving higher orders, in as much as it finds fault with the institution by which it is provided, that the functions of the lesser orders should be performed or exercised by those only who were appointed or assigned to them (Concil prov. iv. Mediol), and that according to meaning of Trent (Sess. xxiii c. 17), that the functions of holy orders, from the deaconship to the beadleship, laudably received in the Church from the apostolic times, and in many places for some time intermitted, may be revived according to the sacred canons, and may not be misrepresented by heretics as idle: A suggestion rash, offensive to pious ears calculated to disturb the ecclesiastical ministry, and to impair the decency which should be observed as far as is possible in celebrating the mysteries, injurious to the offices and functions of minor orders, and also injurious to discipline approved by the canons, and especially by Trent, favouring the reproaches and calumnies of heretics against it.

LVI. The doctrine which lays down that it seems befitting in canonical impediments which result from misdemeanour, expressed in law, that no dispensation is to be admitted: Detrimental to equity and canonical moderation