Page:Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils.djvu/217

Rh hereditary rights in accordance with the civil law, and their testimony is not to be accepted. Those who already are clerics are to remain in whatever order they are, but are not to be promoted to higher orders. Urban II (1088-99) forbade the ordination of the illegitimate sons of clerics, unless they became members of approved religious orders.

The present council, following earlier decisions, permits promotion to the ministry of the altar in case such candidates should choose the religious life of approved orders. The irregularity incurred ex defectu natalium is obliterated by religious profession. Moreover, the solitude and environment of the religious life, as well as the protection it offers, are a sufficient guarantee that they will not follow in the sin-stained footsteps of their fathers. From ecclesiastical benefices and from all ecclesiastical honors and dignities they are forever excluded. Religious profession opens the way to sacred orders, but it does not unseal the gateway to dignities or even to regular prelacies.

'Text. ''Since among other things there is one that chiefly disturbs the Church, namely, false penance, we admonish our confrères (that is, the bishops) and priests that the minds of the people be not deceived by false penances, lest thus they should run the risk of being drawn into hell. A penance is false when it is performed for one sin only and not also for the others, or when only one is avoided, and the others are not. Hence it is written: "Whoever shall observe the whole law but offend in one (point), is become guilty of all," so far as eternal life is concerned. For as one guilty of all sins will not enter the gate of eternal life, so also if one be guilty of only one sin. A penance, moreover, is false when the penitent does not resign a curial or commercial occupation, the duties of which he cannot perform without committing sin, or if he bears hatred in his heart or does not repair an injury or does not pardon an offense, or if he carries arms in contravention of justice. '''

Comment. This canon is practically a verbatim repetition of canon 16 of the Synod of Melfi (1089), presided over by Urban II, and is directed ___