Title II: Of the Rights and Privileges of Clerics

Clerics alone can obtain the power either of order or of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and ecclesiastical benefices and pensions.

All the faithful owe reverence to clerics according to their different grades and offices, and they stain themselves with the delict of sacrilege if at any time they inflict a real injury upon clerics.

§ 1. Clerics must be summoned before an ecclesiastical judge in all cases, whether contentious or criminal, unless provision has been legitimately made otherwise for particular places.

§ 2. Cardinal Fathers, Legates of the Apostolic See, Bishops even titular ones, Abbots or Prelates nullius, supreme Superiors of religions of pontifical right, and major Officials of the Roman Curia, for matters pertaining to their office, cannot be summoned before a lay judge without the permission of the Apostolic See; the rest who enjoy the privilege of the forum cannot be summoned without the permission of the Ordinary of the place in which the case is conducted. This permission, however, the Ordinary is not to deny without a just and grave cause, especially when the plaintiff is a lay person, and most of all when he has given effort in vain to composing the controversy between the parties.

§ 3. If nevertheless they are summoned by one who has had no prior permission, they can appear by reason of necessity, in order to avoid greater evils, yet the Superior from whom permission was not obtained must be informed.

All clerics are immune from military service, from duties, and from public civil offices alien to the clerical state.

For clerics who are compelled to satisfy creditors, those things which are necessary for their honorable sustenance, according to the prudent judgment of an ecclesiastical judge, are to be left intact, while nevertheless their obligation of satisfying creditors as soon as possible remains firm.

A cleric cannot renounce the privileges just mentioned; but he loses them if he is reduced to the lay state or is punished with perpetual privation of the right of wearing ecclesiastical dress, according to the norm of canons 213, Sec. 1, and 2304; but he recovers them if this penalty is remitted or he himself is again admitted among clerics.