Chapter II — On the fault on account of which a censure can be passed, and what causes excuse from censures

I. QUESTION I. Whether for the passing of a censure a proper fault and contumacy be required? ANSWER. A censure is an ecclesiastical penalty; therefore it supposes a fault against the precepts of the Church. Wherefore delicts against natural or divine right, unless they be at the same time forbidden by the Church, do not lie subject to censures. Because censures are passed for the repressing of contumacy against the Church. Hence a censure cannot be inflicted for a sin altogether past or present, unless it have a successive course, by force of which someone can be called contumacious. No one can be bound with censures for another's fault. A general interdict does not touch the innocent immediately, save inasmuch as they have a connexion with the guilty.

II. The lesser excommunication can be passed for a venial fault, and in fact is inflicted for civil communication with an excommunicate to be shunned, which unless it be done in contempt, or in the crime for which the censure has been contracted, or in sacred matters, does not exceed a light fault. But the greater excommunication, suspension, and interdict, since they are most grave penalties, cannot be inflicted save for a mortal fault. A fault can be light in itself, but grave in order to the end. It is the part of superiors to judge whether such an action, the circumstances being regarded, be grave in respect of the end. Wherefore when superiors forbid something by an express precept, a censure being added, the transgression is mortal, and the censure is incurred. For an internal act a censure cannot be passed. Wherefore for a merely internal heresy excommunication cannot be passed, unless it be manifested by an external sign; but it suffices that a man alone in his chamber manifest it, because then it is external, though occult. On the contrary, if anyone exercise an external act of heresy or of idolatry without an interior act, he does not incur excommunication in the interior forum; although in the exterior forum he would be held as excommunicated, if it became known. When an internal act is connected with an external action, as attention of mind with vocal prayer, then he who should omit the internal act, although he posited the external, would be obnoxious to the censure: since although the Church lacks direct power over interior acts, yet while she commands external ones, she indirectly enjoins the internal which are necessarily conjoined with the external. By this reason the Church punishes interior simony connected with an exterior largess; she excommunicates Inquisitors who out of hatred or love of gain do or omit anything, provided this hatred or love break forth into external acts. The exterior sin on account of which a censure is inflicted ought in its own kind to be consummated: as if stuprum be forbidden under a censure, consummated copulation is understood, unless the law express the attempt also.

III. QUESTION II. Whether a censure passed against the executors of a crime comprehends also those commanding and counselling? ANSWER. The common opinion denies that those commanding and counselling are comprehended, unless in some clause they be expressly or implicitly included, because in merely penal matters odious things are to be restricted. When a censure is passed against those counselling or commanding homicide, even if the man be prepared for the homicide, those who counsel or command incur the censure, whatever some say to the contrary.

IV. What if the counsellor revoke his counsel, and the one commanding his mandate, before the execution of the work? Some distinguish between a counsellor and a mandatary. Others reject this distinction in this business. But they dispute whether they incur the censure when the revocation becomes known to the mandatary or counsellor, made with a sincere mind, not languid but efficacious and valid, by the one commanding and counselling. The first opinion denies it. The other affirms it; and the arguments of this second opinion seem the more urgent. What if the revocation, efficacious and validly made, do not become known to the mandatary or counsellor? That even then the revokers incur the censure the Salmanticenses with very many others defend. But this opinion is false.

V. QUESTION III. What conditions are required that anyone can be entangled in censures? ANSWER. Several. 1. That he be a wayfarer; 2. That he be a subject; 3. That he be baptized; 4. That he be endowed with reason; 5. That he be a determinate person. This last condition is understood of excommunication, which cannot be passed against a community, city, college, and so forth, as is gathered from chapter Romana on sentences of excommunication, in the Sixth. One person can be struck with several censures, as all teach. He who is excommunicated can be interdicted and suspended. A man can be excommunicated by diverse judges for the same delict — namely by the bishop of origin, of domicile, and by the Pontiff. In practice nevertheless no guilty party is excommunicated for one delict save by a single excommunication.

VI. Authors dispute whether censures are multiplied as often as transgressions against a precept to which a censure is annexed are repeated. And they commonly answer that if the transgressions be formally interrupted — as if someone today should strike a cleric, and after a week again strike the same or another cleric — the censure would be multiplied according to the formal multiplication of the transgressions. When one man strikes three clerics at once, just as he perpetrates three crimes, so he incurs a threefold penalty of censure, as seems the more probable.

VII. QUESTION IV. What causes excuse from censures? ANSWER. Several. 1. Necessity of acting against a precept, just as it excuses from sin, so it excuses from a censure. An excommunication has been passed against those labouring on a feast day. That necessity which renders the work lawful on such a day likewise exempts from the censure. 2. The nullity of the censure; 3. The innocence of the man; 4. Ignorance; 5. Impotence; 6. Fear; 7. The injustice of the cause.

VIII. Ignorance, as has been said elsewhere, is of one kind of right, of another of fact, of another of penalty. One is invincible, another vincible; another gross, affected, or supine. He labours under ignorance of right who is ignorant of a law forbidding or commanding. He labours under ignorance of fact who is ignorant that he whom he beats is a cleric. Ignorance of penalty is when someone is ignorant that a penalty has been appended to such a crime. You know that the beating of a cleric is forbidden; you know that he whom you beat is a cleric; but you know not that a penalty has been appended to this unlawful beating of a cleric. That is invincible which cannot be overcome by human industry; and vincible which can be overcome.

IX. Fr. Viva, question 1 on censures, article 6, no. 7, with the Probabilists distinguishes vincible ignorance into inculpable and culpable. He calls culpably vincible that which a man can overcome, and believes himself bound to employ the diligence by which he may overcome it and acquire the knowledge of the truth. He calls inculpably vincible that which a man can overcome, diligence being employed, but believes himself not bound to employ this diligence, that he may attain the truth. This vincible ignorance void of malice, new and unheard-of, burst into the light after the birthdays of Probabilism, which in Vol. II of the Apparatus I have utterly routed. This vincible ignorance, which is always noxious, is of one kind called affected, when a man studiously wills to be ignorant of what he is bound to know. Another is gross, when from a certain torpor a man neglects the inquiry into truth. Another is called supine, when a man, distracted by various businesses, omits to investigate what he is bound to know. Lastly another is antecedent, which is the cause of the act. Another is concomitant, which is not the cause of the act, but without it the act would be done — as when someone burns so with hatred against a man that, killing him who is truly a cleric but is in fact unknown by him to be so, he would kill the same if he did know it.

X. Ignorance truly invincible, whether of right or of fact, just as it excuses from fault, so it exempts from censure. Ignorance venially vincible excuses from a censure for the incurring of which a mortal fault is required. Ignorance nevertheless is not presumed in the exterior forum unless it be proved, as is said in chapter Ignorantia on the rules of law in the Sixth. Ignorance of fact excuses, but not of law. He who knows that homicide is forbidden by divine right, but is invincibly ignorant of the ecclesiastical law forbidding it under a censure, does not according to very many incur the censure, although he sin against natural and divine right: because, they say, for the contracting of a censure contumacy is necessary, which an admonition ought to precede. For the penalty of censure differs from those penalties passed either by the civil forum or by the ecclesiastical forum, which are contracted even if they be ignored, when the law is known. Wherefore a homicide, from whom the law forbidding it is not hidden, is obnoxious to capital punishment even if he be ignorant of this penalty. Similarly he who knows the ecclesiastical law forbidding such an act would incur irregularity from a delict, although he were ignorant of such a penalty. On the contrary, if he were invincibly ignorant of the ecclesiastical law, just as he would be immune from fault, so he would be free from irregularity from a delict.

XI. Very many and grave theologians teach that invincible ignorance of a censure alone, passed by a universal law of the Church or a universal canon, does not excuse from incurring it him who knows the same law. Fr. Antoine turns over this question at large. I settle the matter in few words. The hypothesis being admitted that the ignorance of the censure were utterly invincible, it would not be contracted, although passed by a universal law or canon. But because it does not so easily happen that ignorance of a censure annexed to a universal law be truly invincible, therefore transgressors of the same law are not easily to be judged exempt from it. Who would judge that man immune from a censure who should commit a duel, knowing it to be forbidden by the Church, because he is ignorant that a censure has been annexed to this prohibition?

XII. When in a law it is said, he who shall knowingly do this, he who shall presume to do it, he who shall rashly do it, then by reason of clauses of this kind authors commonly teach that vincible ignorance excuses from the censure: because by such clauses the law requires a greater knowledge than other laws destitute of these clauses. The Salmanticenses with others contend that even affected ignorance itself excuses from the censure. But this opinion to me is false, because affected ignorance is equivalent to knowledge.

XIII. Grave fear falling upon a constant man excuses from a censure, even from a sin forbidden only by ecclesiastical right. If the thing forbidden be of divine right, under an ecclesiastical censure, it does not excuse from the sin, but from the censure only. He who, struck by grave fear, should kill a cleric, would sin against natural and divine right, but would not incur the censure.

XIV. He who doubts whether a judge has passed a sentence of censure or not, ought to judge that it has not been passed, because in merely penal matters the milder part is to be embraced. He who is certain that a censure has been passed, whether from law or from man, but doubts whether he has contracted it, ought to bear himself as if he were entangled in the censure, until either he lay aside the doubt, or be absolved from the censure.

XV. An innocent man who in the exterior forum is excommunicated according to what is alleged and proved is before God not excommunicated. But in the presence of those who are conscious of the excommunication, if they be uncertain of his innocence, he ought to bear himself as entangled in the censure: because a judge's sentence, valid and lawful although in fact unjust, is to be obeyed, both for the avoiding of scandal and in obedience to the supreme authority. Wherefore it is the more probable that this innocent man ought to abstain from the reception and from the administration of his own Order, even privately, and from external communication with the faithful: whence Clement XI by right disapproved theses 90, 91, and 92 of Paschasius Quesnel.