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 CENSURES

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CENSURES

faithful in communion with her were inscribed in a certain register; these names were read in public gatherings, and from this list were excluded those who were excommunicated, i. e. put out of the com- munion. These registers were called diptychs or canons, and contained the names of the faithful, both living and dead. The Canon of the Mass still preserves traces of this ancient discipline.

Excommunication was then the generic term for all coercive remedies used against delinquent members of the Church, and there were as many kinds of ex- communication as there were grades of communion in the Christian society, either for the laity or for the clergy. Thus some of the grades of the laity in the Church were the expiatores and pctnitentes, again sub- divided into consistentes, substrati, audientes, and flentes or lugentes. Then also, as now, some goods of tli'' Church were common to all its members, e. g. prayer, the sacraments, presence at the Holy Sacri- fice, and Christian burial. Other goods again were proper to the various grades of clerics. Whoever was deprived of one or all of these rights, came under the general designation of excommunicated, i. e., one placed outside of the communion to which his grade in the Church entitled him, either wholly or in part. (Berardi, Com. in Jus Eeel., II, pt. II, diss. 3, cap. 5.) In earlier ecclesiastical documents, therefore, ex- communication and similar terms did not always mean censure or a certain species of censure, but sometimes meant censure, sometimes poena, as ex- plained below, and very often penance. In the later Roman legal terminology (Codex Theod., I, tit. I, 7 de off. rector, provinc.) we find the word cen- sure used in the general sense of punishment. Ac- cordingly, the Church, in the early ages, used this term to designate all her punishments, whether these were public penances, excommunications, or, in the case of clerics, suspension or degradation. In her ancient penal legislation the Church, like the Roman State, looked on punishment as consisting, not so much in the infliction of positive suffering, as in the mere deprivation of certain goods, rights, or privi- leges: these in the Church were spiritual goods and graces, such as participation with the faithful in prayer, in the Holy Sacrifice, in the sacraments, in the general communion of the Church, or, as in the case of clerics, in the rights and honours of their office.

Some centuries later, however, in the period of the Decretals, we note a great advance in legal science. In the schools and in the courts a distinction was made between internal and external forum, the former referring to matters of sin and conscience, the latter to the external government and discipline of the Church. The different kinds and the nature of punishments were also more clearly defined by com- mentators, judges, and doctors of law. In this way, from the beginning of the thirteenth century, though not expressly so stated in the Decretals, the term censure became the equivalent of a certain class of ecclesiastical penalties, i.e. interdict, suspension, and excommunication. Innocent III, who in 1200 (cap. 13, X De judiciis, II, 1 • had used the term for punish- ment in general, at a later date (1214), answering a query as to tin' meaning of ecclesiastical censure in pontifical document ■ distinguished (cap.

20, X De verb, signif. Y, 10) censure from any other ecclesiastical penalty (respondemus quod per cam non solum interdicti, sed suspensionis et excom- municationis sententia valet intelligi), thereby au- thentically declaring that by ecclesiastical censure were meant the penalties of interdict, suspension, and excommunication. Furthermore, in accordance with the internal nature oi these three penalties, glossators and commentators, and. in their wake, later canonists introduced and maintained the distinct ion, still univer- sally recognized, between medicinal or remedial pun- ishments (censures) and vindictive punishments.

The primary scope of the former is the correction or reformation of the delinquent ; this being properly ac- complished, they cease. Vindictive punishments (pcence vindicativee), while not absolutely excluding the cor- rection of the delinquent, are primarily intended to repair violated justice, or to restore the social order of justice by the infliction of positive suffering. Such are corporal and pecuniary punishments, imprisonment and seclusion for life in a monastery, depriva- tion of Christian burial, also the deposition and deg- radation of clerics, as well as their suspension for a definite period of time. (Suspension latir sentential. e. g. for one or for three years, is a censure according to St. Alphonsus, Th. Mor. VII, n. 31 4.) Confession penances are vindictive punishments, their chief pur- pose being, not reformation, but reparation and sat- isfaction for sins. The irregularity arising from a crime is not a censure, nor is it a vindictive punishment; in fact it is not a punishment, at all, properly speaking, but rather a canonical impediment, an inability to support the honour of the sacred ministry, which forbids the reception of orders and the exercise of those received.

The matter of censures was seriously affected by the Constitution "Ad vitanda" of Martin V in 1418. Prior to this constitution all censured persons, known to be such by the public, were to be avoided (vitandi), and could not be communicated with in divinis or in humanis, i. e. in religious or in civil intercourse. A censure, being a penal withdrawal of the right of par- ticipating in certain spiritual goods of the Christian society, was of course something relative, that is, it affected the person thus enjoined and also those who participated with him in the use of these goods. In this way the sacraments or other spiritual services could not be accepted from a suspended cleric. But, by virtue of the Constitution of Martin V, only those censured persons were in future to be considered and treated as vitandi who were expressly and specifically by name declared to be such by a judicial sentence. The S.Cong. Inquis. (9 Jan. 1S84) declared this formali- ty unnecessary in the case of notorious excommunicates vitandi for reason of sacrilegious violence to clerics. Nor is the validity of the denunciation restricted to the locality where it takes place (Lehmkuhl, II, n. 884). On the other hand, Martin V expressly declared that this relaxation was not in favour of the censured party, so that the tolerati really gained no direct privilege, but was only in favour of the rest of the faithful, who could henceforth communicate with tolerated ex- communicates, and, as far as the censure was in question, could deal with them as not-censured per- sons — all this on account of the grave changes in social conditions. (See Excommunication.) In 1869 Pius IX modified seriously the ecclesiastical discipline in the matter of censures by his Constitution "Aposto- lica? Sedis Moderationi" (q. v.), which abrogated many lata sententia censures of the common law, changed others (thus reducing their number), and made a new list of common law censures lata « ntia.

Nature of the Penalties. — If every human society has the right to protect itself by laying down conditions according to which men can be and remain members and enjoy the benefits of such society, it is easily conceivable how necessary such a righf is for the

Church, being a society founded mi ral principles,

aiming at higher ends, and dispensing spiritual bene fits, in view of the eternal welfare of her members. '1'hi' power to enforce these conditions the Church receives from Christ. It is certain that the Church has the right to make disciplinary laws to govern her subjects. This right would be meaningless if she had no way of enforcing the observance of her laws. Christ Himself gave her this power when He gave to Peter the power to govern the whole Church (John, xxi, L5 sqq.). He meant as much when He said of the offending brother that "if he will not hear the