165. Excommunication on Account of Violation of Enclosure

1. Since a certain nun violated enclosure for an evil end, and the case is occult, the bishop of the place asks whether he can absolve the aforesaid nun by virtue of the Tridentine faculty, Cap. Liceat.

R. The difficulty in the Case is from a certain Declaration of Gregory XIII, by which he decreed that the bishop cannot absolve a nun breaking enclosure from an occult excommunication reserved to the Pontiff on account of the Bull of St. Pius V. St. Alph., l. 6, n. 594. The difficulty likewise is from the Responses of the Holy Office, July 18, 1860, where it is also affirmed that the reserved case of the enclosure of nuns is not comprehended in the aforesaid Tridentine faculty. G. 645, 646. But, notwithstanding these things, it seems that at present the bishop can absolve even from that occult case by virtue of the Tridentine faculty. For this faculty, by virtue of the Constitution Apostolicae Sedis, persists unmoved as regards all cases simply reserved to the Roman Pontiff in the same Constitution, excepting only those which in the aforesaid Constitution are reserved in a special mode to the Supreme Pontiff. But the violation of the enclosure of nuns is reserved in that Constitution only simply. Therefore it must be said that the bishop, in the Case, can absolve the nun. Cf. Bertagna, de Casuum reservatione, pag. 100 seqq. and the authors cited there; Thesaurus, de Poenis, p. 1, c. 23, Dico VI; Commentar. de Censur. n. 6; Commentar. de C. Apostolicae Sedis n. 51 seqq.; I. M. 801, 1101, 1188.