Chapter III — On the reservation of cases

I. The power of reserving certain more atrocious crimes, as Trent, session 14, chapter 7, declares, is called into hazard by no one. To reserve sins belongs to those to whom it belongs to confer the power of jurisdiction. These are the Supreme Pontiffs in respect of the universal Church, bishops in respect of inferior presbyters, and regular superiors in respect of their subjects. Reservation here renders absolution invalid, and not merely unlawful.

II. Venial sins are not reserved, because such reservation would be useless, since these sins can be blotted out without the sacrament. That internal mortal sins can be reserved the graver theologians teach — Suárez, Soto, Sylvius, Vásquez, and others: because these mortal sins are in fact subjected to the interior forum of the Church, and are remitted by a judicial sentence. Therefore they can be reserved. Such reservation nevertheless is by no means expedient. Nor hitherto have either the Roman Pontiffs or bishops ever reserved such internal sins.

III. The cases reserved to the Roman Pontiff are contained in the Bull In Coena Domini, which for brevity's sake I do not transcribe. Clement VIII also reserved to himself the six following cases: 1. Of the violation of ecclesiastical immunity within the terms of the constitution of Gregory XIV of holy memory, whose beginning is Cum alias nonnulli. 2. Of the violation of the enclosure of nuns for an evil end. 3. Of those provoking to and fighting a duel, according to the decree of the sacred Council of Trent and the constitution of Gregory XIII of holy memory beginning Ad tollendam. 4. Of those laying violent hands upon clerics, according to the canon Si quis suadente, and so forth. 5. Of real simony knowingly contracted. 6. Of beneficial confidence.

IV. Other Pontiffs also have reserved to themselves certain other cases. An excommunication reserved to the Supreme Pontiff is incurred by him who hears the confession of an accomplice in some base and dishonest sin committed against the sixth precept of the Decalogue. Benedict XIV in his constitution Sacramentum Poenitentiae, published in the year 1741, deprives confessors of jurisdiction of absolving from this crime. The same constitution he confirmed by another constitution published in the year 1745, whose beginning is Apostolici muneris partes. He declared nevertheless that in the article of death it is not forbidden to priests to hear a confessing person who is an accomplice, and to absolve her when duly disposed, provided nevertheless there be not present another priest, who, if he can be had without scandal, even though he be a simple priest, ought to receive the whole confession. Nay, the partner of the crime ought to take care that another priest be found who may hear such confession, when this can be done without scandal. Otherwise, if the priest who is a partner of the outrage shall have been negligent in taking care that another confessor be found, and himself hear the confession, the absolution will indeed be valid in respect of the penitent accomplice; but the confessor who is an accomplice incurs the excommunication laid down in the said constitution.

V. He who by apostolic indult absolves from the fault in these cases to which excommunication is annexed absolves also from the censure. The aforesaid cases are reserved even in the time of a Jubilee, unless they be expressly excepted.

VI. Concerning the cases which bishops can reserve to themselves, it is not ours to bring forth judgment. They are wont to reserve to themselves only those more atrocious crimes which greatly disturb the discipline of the Church and bring in a grave scandal.

VII. QUESTION I. Whether ignorance excuses from the reservation of cases? ANSWER. All subjects of the superior reserving are subject to the reservation. To the proposed question someone answers that he who is ignorant either of the reservation or of the censure, or he who while he actually sins does not advert to it, incurs neither. This opinion is to me false. For those who sin from an impotent lust or stirred by anger think nothing of the reservation. Those who are ignorant of a censure do not incur it, because it is laid down against the contumacious. But contumacy cannot be had without knowledge. Reservation on the contrary is a subtraction of the power of absolving from certain sins. Some distinguish a medicinal and a penal reservation. They assert that the former, but not the latter, is incurred by the ignorant. This distinction is vain and arbitrary. For every reservation is both medicinal and penal.

VIII. In few words I refute this opinion. Reservation is a subtraction of jurisdiction from the confessor, as all teach, in respect of reserved crimes. Does the ignorance of the penitent confer jurisdiction upon a confessor not having it? Is a penitent approaching ignorantly and in good faith a confessor not approved by the superior validly absolved? Does a confessor ignorant of a reserved case validly absolve? All deny it. The confessor's ignorance does not hinder the case from being reserved. Therefore neither does the penitent's ignorance take away that the confessor is deprived of the faculty of absolving from reserved cases.

IX. When a case is reserved upon the effect following, as the procuring of abortion or homicide, if the effect do not follow the case is not reserved. If a man administer poison, or mortally wound, and confess before the effect succeed, the case is not reserved, and he is validly absolved, provided the confessor oblige the penitent that, if the effect follow, he present himself at the tribunal of the superior for absolution from the reservation. Otherwise those procuring abortion and administering poison could elude every reservation by confessing the sin immediately after the poison was given. Wherefore it is to me more probable that, the effect following, these should approach confessors who have the faculty of absolving from reserved cases.

X. QUESTION II. Whether sins are understood to be reserved when there is doubt concerning their reservation? ANSWER. Doubt is twofold. One of right, as if a man should doubt whether this or that sin be reserved. For then he would doubt of jurisdiction, and then the confessor could not absolve. Since when it is certainly established that the sin is matter of reservation, and it is doubted whether the superior has reserved it, jurisdiction is doubted. But with doubtful jurisdiction a confessor cannot absolve, as has been shown above. Besides, Clement VIII forbade all confessors dwelling in Italy that any of them under pretext of privileges should absolve from any one of the cases certainly or doubtfully contained in the Bull In Coena, or otherwise in any manner whatsoever reserved or to be reserved to the Apostolic See. From which it is inferred that in all sins reserved to the Apostolic See there are included also doubtful cases. But in a doubt of fact authors commonly teach that a simple confessor can absolve. The sin of drunkenness is reserved: you doubt whether you fell into true drunkenness: this doubt is called of fact.

XI. When a man is absolved from a doubtful sin by an inferior priest, if he afterwards detect it to be certain, he is bound to approach a confessor endowed with the power of absolving from reserved cases, whatever some say to the contrary.

XII. QUESTION III. Who can absolve from reserved cases? ANSWER. All who can reserve can also absolve; besides, all those who have jurisdiction delegated by a superior. In a twofold manner jurisdiction can be delegated. First, directly, when the Ordinary delegates this or that confessor to absolve from reserved cases. Second, indirectly, when the Ordinary grants a faculty to some penitent that he may choose for himself some confessor by whom he may be absolved from reserved cases.

XIII. Pilgrims coming in good faith, and all fraud being removed, from a diocese in which a sin is reserved to a diocese in which that sin is not reserved, can be absolved by a simple confessor. Otherwise if in each diocese it were reserved, or if it were reserved in the diocese in which the confession must be made.

XIV. Bishops can absolve their own subjects in their own diocese from all occult cases, even those reserved to the Apostolic See, either by themselves or by a Vicar specially deputed for this. But from occult heresy only by themselves in the forum of conscience, as Trent, session 24, chapter 6, declares. Under the name of bishop do not come abbots or regular prelates, although very many affirm it.

XV. This faculty nevertheless granted by Trent to bishops of absolving from occult heresy has been revoked by the Bull In Coena, and the contrary opinion is proscribed by Alexander VII, no. 5. It is therefore certain that from occult heresy neither bishops nor regular prelates can absolve their own religious subjects, much less laymen. Clement VIII and Urban VIII expressly forbade regular prelates to absolve from the cases in the Bull In Coena. But they can only do in respect of their subjects what bishops can with their own subjects. Condemned also is the opinion which defended that mendicants could absolve from cases reserved to bishops, the faculty not having been obtained from the bishop.

XVI. A superior, the reserved cases being heard, cannot sacramentally absolve a penitent by remitting him to another confessor for absolution from the non-reserved. Nor can confessors lacking power over reserved cases directly absolve from non-reserved and indirectly from reserved. Absolutions of this kind would be invalid. Nay, neither can he who lacks power over reserved cases absolve from the non-reserved alone. For the confession must be whole.

XVII. He who in the time of a Jubilee makes a void confession is not absolved from reserved cases. Similarly he who confesses with the mind of gaining a Jubilee, afterwards changes his will and refuses to fulfil the works: if in that confession he omit by inculpable forgetfulness some reserved sin, he cannot, when he remembers it, be absolved by any priest whatsoever: because the Pontiff takes away the reservation in respect of those who in fact intend to gain the Jubilee. Therefore if he of his own accord refuses to gain the Jubilee, by that very fact he refuses the privilege of the reservation.

XVIII. If in the time of a Jubilee absolution be deferred to an indisposed penitent, and after the Jubilee has elapsed he fall into a reserved sin, he cannot be absolved by any confessor whatsoever, but only by him who is endowed with the faculty of absolving from reserved cases. But he can be absolved from reserved sins perpetrated before the Jubilee and invincibly forgotten, if he gave his labour to the gaining of the Jubilee.

XIX. Those who have the faculty of absolving from cases reserved to the Supreme Pontiff can also absolve from censures. He who in the article of death confesses to a priest not approved, or excommunicated, is absolved even from reserved cases, if he be disposed; nor is he bound, if he recover, to approach the superior: because, as has been said, in the article of death there is no reservation, unless it be otherwise disposed by the superior, as happens in sins having a censure annexed, and chiefly those contained in the Bull In Coena. Authors dispute on either side whether a dying man can be absolved by one excommunicated and not tolerated, or by a heretical priest. Many affirm it, and many deny it. Since the resolution of this depends upon the sole authority of the Church, bishops are to be consulted, that a true and safe decision may be had. St. Raymond, Book 3, § 16, dissuades the faithful from such a confession.

XX. A priest who, being destitute of the power, inadvertently absolves from reserved cases ought, if he can, to admonish the penitent. If, all diligence being employed, he is ignorant, he is excused before God, says St. Antoninus, part 1, title 17, chapter 4. The penitent also is absolved, if he invincibly is ignorant of the reservation. I said above that a reservation is contracted even by one ignorant of it. For the rest, since reservation is of human law, there can be given an invincible ignorance of it both in the penitent and in the confessor. But in a case of necessity there is no reservation. And what greater necessity than inculpable forgetfulness and invincible ignorance?

XXI. There would have to be treated here of the cases which regular prelates can reserve to themselves. But these cases are known to all Regulars from the decree of Clement VIII and of Urban VIII. And the many disputations which some stir up upon these I pass over as superfluous.