Section I: Of Penalties in General

§ 1. The native and proper right of the Church, independent of any human authority, is to coerce delinquents subject to her by penalties both spiritual and also temporal.

§ 2. But let there be kept before the eyes the admonition of the Council of Trent, sess. XIII, on reform, chap. 1: 'Let Bishops and other Ordinaries remember that they are pastors, not strikers, and that they ought so to preside over their subjects that they do not lord it over them, but love them as sons and brothers and labor by exhorting and warning to deter them from illicit things, lest, when they have offended, they be compelled to coerce them with due penalties; yet if through human frailty they should happen to sin in anything, that precept of the Apostle is to be observed by them, that they reprove, entreat, rebuke them in all goodness and patience, since often benevolence does more toward those to be corrected than austerity, exhortation more than threat, charity more than power; but if, on account of the gravity of the delict, there will be need of the rod, then rigor with meekness, judgment with mercy, severity with gentleness are to be employed, so that without harshness discipline, salutary and necessary for peoples, may be preserved, and those who have been corrected may be amended, or, if they have refused to become wise again, the rest, by the salutary example of animadversion upon them, may be deterred from vices.'