Chapter VII — On the things which clerics ought to perform, and on those from which they ought to abstain

I. QUESTION I. Do clerics sin mortally who wear neither the clerical garb nor the tonsure? ANSWER. The graver theologians affirm it; innumerable Councils command under penalty of excommunication that clerics wear the tonsure and the clerical habit openly, and that they nourish not long hair. The probabilists define all things otherwise. Fr. Claude La Croix, Book 4, no. 1371, reports the opinion of Gobat denying that it is mortal, if scandal and contempt be absent. The same opinion concerning a cleric nourishing hair he reports at no. 1373, and writes that it is more common and more probable that such a cleric does not sin mortally, although bishops and synods threaten such men with excommunication: because, he says, a threat does not always indicate a grave precept. Synods and bishops therefore perpetrate an injustice, threatening a most grave penalty for a light fault. Even if a grave threat did not always indicate a grave precept, does it therefore not indicate one in this case? And so it will be said in another case. And by these little distinctions the most salutary sanctions of synods and bishops are eluded. Casuists of this kind are to be asked by what right they wrest the decrees of synods and bishops to their own petty thoughts. Who conferred authority upon them so frequently to extenuate ecclesiastical and divine laws and to accommodate them to human appetitions? What of this, that the graver probabilists do not excuse such clerics from grave fault, as the most learned presbyter Bonus Merbesius adverts, dissertation 6, question 15, saying: And indeed those casuists themselves, most of whom are versed nothing in unrolling the sacred letters, nothing in reading the holy Fathers and the Councils, but, trusting to I know not what, have all faith in all things, have gone over to that part, that they should reckon the neglect and omission of the tonsure and of the clerical habit among mortal sins; and moreover should assert that men conscious of such an omission are struck, or to be struck, with the anathema of excommunication.

II. QUESTION II. Do clerics sin who accommodate the clerical habit to the form of the lay habit, and wear borrowed and curled hair sprinkled with odoriferous powder, the tonsure scarcely appearing? ANSWER. What shall I mutter against the torrent, and indeed the foaming torrent, of human custom? Shall I send forth the sound of my voice against a common and prevailing corruption? Shall I blush at the doctrine of the Councils and of holy mother Church and at the Gospel of Christ? God forbid. The clerical state shines among all ecclesiastical orders, whose Patriarch is not a man but Christ himself, who called the Apostles and their successors. The clerical and monastic habit fights in hostile fashion with luxury, display, and worldly vanity. What if cloistered men should accommodate the monastic garment to the form commonly called the new fashion? What if curled, long-haired, crisped, wide-sleeved, they should wear hair sprinkled with Cyprian powder? All would cry out: What monsters are these? Have the cloistered gone mad? The exclamations and wonderings would be most just. But is not the clerical state itself excellent and eminent? Therefore it ought to stand further from the vanity, luxury, and pomps of the world. The Tridentine Fathers and the other theologians laboured so greatly that they might maintain against the innovators that the clerical garb is distinct from the lay; and very many clerics now by deed deny the doctrine defined in Trent. Nay, in some places laymen wear the clerical garb and clerics the vain pomps of laymen. What does it matter that the garment be black, if the form and the ornament breathe vanity? Although several wear not a black but a shining and gilded one, chiefly when they go into the country and make journeys. Let us hear the Tridentine Fathers, who cry out, session 14, chapter 6 On Reformation: But so great today has grown the rashness of some, and the contempt of religion, that, holding of small account their own dignity and clerical honour, they wear even publicly lay garments, setting their feet in different places, one in divine things, the other in carnal.

III. But what is to be said of those confessors who absolve clerics of this kind — sleek, brawny, bearded, long-haired, crisped, and curled — everywhere rattling with display, venery, and satanic pomp, and send them to the altars to sacrifice? With what conscience and religion (says Merbesius in the place cited) do confessors bestow upon them the benefit of absolution, being about to experience the extreme punishments with clerics of this kind preserved?

IV. QUESTION III. Do clerics sin mortally who accept a benefice with the mind of forsaking the clerical state if opportunity should occur? ANSWER. Theologians commonly affirm it, because those clerics circumvent the Church in a grave matter, and steal the sacred revenues, since they have not been called into the lot of the Lord. Some affirm that these sin mortally if the care of souls be annexed to the benefice, otherwise if the benefice be simple. The distinction is vain, because in either case the Church is circumvented in a grave matter, although more enormously in the one case than in the other.

V. QUESTION IV. From what things ought clerics to abstain? ANSWER. The Council of Milan enumerates several things from which clerics are bound to abstain: 1. They ought not to mingle themselves in profane businesses; 2. To abstain from the art of measuring; 3. From businesses and merchandise; 4. From renting estates for the sake of gain; 5. From undertaking the guardianship or care of others; 6. From going surety for others; 7. From service to be furnished to women; 8. They are bound to abstain from games of dice and from clamorous hunting. That I may begin from these last.

VI. QUESTION V. Do secular presbyters sin who serve as handmaids to matrons? ANSWER. The present-day corruption, by which presbyters serve lay families, and under pretext of educating children transact the affairs of the family, serve mistresses and matrons, and hold out consecrated hands by which they support them as they walk, is monstrous and horrid. These presbyters disfigure the priestly dignity, and hold cheap their own character, and profane the sacred grade. Bishops with an evangelical breast ought to keep presbyters of this kind from the altar and to interdict them from sacred things.

VII. QUESTION VI. Whether trade is interdicted to clerics? ANSWER. All absolutely affirm it. For St. Paul says, 2 Timothy 2: No man being a soldier to God entangleth himself with secular businesses. Not a few casuists have devised several opinings, all of which after his manner Fr. La Croix collects, Book 3, part 1, nos. 997 and following. First he asserts that a cleric can buy something to consume, and sell it at an increased price, hoping to buy it more cheaply. For it is, he says, an act of economic prudence. Sacred, or rather profane? He adds there, nos. 999 and following, that Manriquez and Derbenne, on Gobat's testimony, teach that presbyters can buy grapes and sell wine. He adds at no. 1000: Gobat, he says, thinks that in Germany it is lawful in monasteries to sell wine and bread through servants. For this is not properly to keep a tavern or to trade, but to sell one's own to passers-by. This not only in Germany, but also in Italy and elsewhere. Through that particle properly all the canons are eluded which forbid trade and merchandise to clerics, and chiefly to the cloistered. Very many other opinions favouring the trade of clerics Fr. La Croix reports, which I have indicated in Vol. X, Book 2, dissertation 2, chapter 11. Now I pass them over, and let it be enough to admonish the reader that he abstain from those things which are less becoming to a cleric.

VIII. QUESTION VII. Whether hunting is interdicted to clerics? ANSWER. All absolutely affirm it; innumerable are the canons prohibiting the same. Clamorous huntings are forbidden, namely those performed with dogs, birds, and arms, suppose fowling-pieces. But quiet huntings, without dogs and birds and fowling-pieces, but with nets and snares alone, are lawful to clerics, as is gathered from Trent. Fr. La Croix, Book 4, no. 1574, says: “Those prohibitions are now so mitigated that if they be done for the sake of recreation without great clamour, scandal, or contempt, mortal sin is not easily committed. Navarrus, Molina, Turrianus, de Lugo, MS. Suárez, Sá, and Castropalao add that they are excused even from venial, if the hunting be rare and moderate and for the restoring of strength.”

IX. I confess that I am shaken with grave fear and trembling, when on the one hand I see the Supreme Pontiffs, bishops, and sacred synods threatening excommunication to clerics not wearing the clerical garb, and prohibiting merchandise, hunting, and so forth; and when on the other hand I see the cited casuists erecting a tribunal above the Pontiffs, bishops, and Councils, and crying out to clerics that those prohibitions are now so mitigated that violators do not sin mortally. Fr. La Croix subjoins in the same place, no. 1576: “Dicastillo, no. 300, thinks that hunting even with apparatus and clamorous is not forbidden to clerics, unless it be done frequently; and he adds with Cajetan, Navarrus, Sylvester, Bannez, Molina, Tuty, and Diana that, although it be done frequently, he does not dare to condemn it of mortal sin, if it be done for the sake of recreation.”

X. Like interpretations stalk through the whole of theology, and the divine laws themselves are accommodated with limits and little distinctions to the morals of men. What does it profit that sacred Councils, bishops, and Pontiffs frame canons for the reformation of discipline, if very many continually teach clerics and the people that the canons are today so mitigated that they do not oblige under mortal sin, nay not even under venial, if the things forbidden be done for the sake of recreation? Assuredly all clerics will confess that they hunt, play, and trade for the sake of recreation, and several other things which I pass over in silence. Why do we wonder if we see discipline, both ecclesiastical and monastic, never reformed but on the contrary daily relaxed? Whether very many casuists be the cause, and whether it is to be forbidden them to dare to mitigate the sacred canons, let the wise judge.

XI. QUESTION VIII. Whether games of dice are forbidden to clerics? ANSWER. Not only ancient but also recent canons forbid to clerics games of dice, or of fortune and chance. The Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III, canon 16, says: Let clerics not play at dice and knucklebones, nor be present at games of this kind. The Gloss adds several things, and cites Novel 123, chapter 10, where these things are had: But we interdict most holy bishops, presbyters, deacons, subdeacons, lectors, and all others … to play at tables, or to become partakers or spectators with others playing, or to come to any spectacles whatsoever for the sake of beholding. The Council of Trent, session 22, chapter 1 On Reformation, among the several things which it prescribes concerning the life and honesty of clerics, inculcates these: The holy Synod establishes that the things which have been otherwise abundantly and salutarily sanctioned by the Supreme Pontiffs and by the sacred Councils concerning the life, honesty, culture, and doctrine of clerics to be retained, and likewise concerning luxury, revellings, dances, DICE, GAMES, and any crimes whatsoever, and concerning secular businesses to be fled, be in future observed under the same or greater penalties to be imposed at the Ordinary's arbitration; nor let an appeal suspend this execution, which pertains to the correction of morals.

XII. Fr. La Croix, Book 4, no. 1570, reports Salas, Molina, Rebello, Aversa, and Castropalao interpreting that the custom of playing is forbidden, but by no means one or another occasion. Nay, he adds that Sá and Valentia excuse even the custom of playing from mortal sin, if it be not done for the sake of gain but for the sake of recreation. Nay, he says, Salas thinks that the prohibition of these games does not extend to lay religious, because the text has it only of clerics. But the common opinion holds the opposite, he concludes.

XIII. Clerics reading these things, and forestalled by the allurements of Probabilism, begin, supported by the authority of the cited casuists, to play one and another time. From repeated occasions a custom is made, and then, with Sá and Valentia patronizing them, they say that they play for the sake of recreation and not for gain. For this is something accessory. At last, with Salas patronizing them, they conclude that this custom does not extend to lay religious. Since, they say, the cited authors are grave, upright, and classic. But do thou, reader, figments of this kind being dismissed, seriously bend thy mind to the doctrine of the Councils, chiefly of Trent, and abstain altogether from games of dice. Do not begin, unless thou wilt pursue and contract a depraved custom. Scarcely have I read any one of the cited casuists who with fervent zeal and diligent study promotes the observance of the sacred canons; but they direct their endeavours and studies through almost the whole of theology to mitigating, softening, tempering the laws and canons, and accommodating them to human frailty. But whether this be so, be thou thyself, reader, the judge.

XIV. Clerics walking about masked sin mortally. Diana, Vol. VII, tract 5, resolution 6, says: I think there is no receding from the common opinion of the Doctors, namely that in such a case secular and regular clerics commit a mortal sin.

I. God repels from the priesthood those ignorant of holy Scripture. Because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will reject thee, that thou shalt not do the office of priesthood to me. Osee 4. And the Evangelist Matthew, chapter 23, cries out: Woe to you, blind guides.

II. All affirm that knowledge is required in those to be ordained; but few explain what kind of knowledge is necessary. The knowledge which the Prophets and Evangelists inculcate is the knowledge of holy Scripture. St. Paul, 1 Timothy 3, says: All Scripture divinely inspired is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice: that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work. First therefore the study of holy Scripture is necessary, that the true image of the Christian spirit may be formed. Instructed with this divine knowledge, you will be able with unstumbling foot to read the moral authors also: because then you will know how to discern the true from the false. Not only the divine Scriptures themselves, but all the Councils and Fathers inculcate the study of the divine law dictated by God himself to the sacred writers. The Second Nicene Council, canon 2, says: The substance of our Hierarchy is the divinely delivered eloquences, and the true knowledge of the divine Scriptures. Again, distinction 38, chapter Cum ignorantia, these things are had: Let priests therefore know the holy Scriptures and the Canons. God will reprove thee for the neglect of the Scriptures; and he will judge according to the mandates of his law described in holy Scripture. It pleases me to transcribe hither the words of the distinguished theologian Louis Habert, On the Sacrament of Order, part 2, chapter 8.

III. “Away therefore with those modern moral theologians who in the books published by them establish the doctrine of morals by petty reasonings and probable — not to say sophistical — arguments, and scarcely remember the sacred Scriptures, save that they may bend their sense to preconceived opinions; and they proceed so far as to pronounce as suspected in the faith those who assert that, as the dogmas of faith, so moral conclusions are to be sought from the sacred Writings, from the canons of the Church, and from the writings of the holy Fathers. It would be worth the labour that hierarchical men should have collected in their possession the propositions excerpted in great number from books of this kind, and censoriously noted both by the Supreme Pontiffs and by bishops in various places, and chiefly by the Gallican ones in the years 1655 and 1700, and also by distinguished Academies.”

IV. But if in clerics to be ordained, if in parish priests, if in confessors the study of the Scriptures is required, what shall be said of bishops? These, since they are the teachers of the Christian people, ought much more deeply than the other subaltern ministers to be skilled in the Scriptures, the canons, and the Fathers, that they may be able to imbue others with sound doctrine, and to assume into their own help those worthy and apt for the profit of the Church, but to keep off and repel the unworthy and unfit from the ministry.