§ 2. What The Effects Of Irregularity Are

1928. The EFFECTS of irregularity are the following:

1. Incapacity for LICITLY RECEIVING Orders, even first Tonsure; for he prepares himself in vain for Orders, who is prohibited from Orders. - Hence both the irregular himself, who receives an Order, and the Bishop, who confers on him an Order or even tonsure alone, sin gravely.³⁰

2. Incapacity for EXERCISING sacred Orders; whence, an irregular validly indeed, but illicitly, confects or administers the Sacraments. Nor indeed is he deprived "of those actions which do not require the exercise of Order, and which laymen also can exercise, for example to receive the Sacraments, and to sing the Offices, as also to confer Benefices; because these things pertain to the exercise of jurisdiction, not of Order; likewise to assist at Marriage, or to furnish another the license of assisting, to dispense in vows, to absolve from censures, to give the faculty of hearing confessions.³¹

3. Incapacity for receiving Benefices; for a Benefice is given on account of some office; but an irregular is incapable for the office; therefore also for Benefices, which require that office. - Trent agrees (sess. 22, cap. 4, de ref.). Except, if the Benefice had been received in good faith: in which case it would be licit, after dispensation has been obtained, to retain it. Hence "as to benefices obtained before irregularity, it is certain among all that an irregular is not deprived of them; nor is he to be deprived by a judge, if the irregularity supervened on him from the defect of infirmity. But if it is from delict, he must be deprived by sentence of the judge."³² Indeed, meanwhile he must now resign, or obtain dispensation, because no one can retain a benefice whose burdens he cannot licitly exercise³³ (cf. n. 2239, 6).

You will ask. Whether the conferral of a benefice made to an irregular is null by the law itself?

Resp. It is controverted. Some, from the more common and therefore more probable interpretation of the Council of Trent (sess. 14, de ref., cap. 7, and sess. 22, cap. 4), affirm. - But others deny with sufficient probability, saying that the conferral is indeed illicit and to be invalidated by a judge, but not invalid.

Hence it follows: 1. An irregular man and one incapable of the duties of a benefice cannot put himself into possession of it; for no one can with a probable (or little more probable) opinion begin possession of another's thing. - 2. If nevertheless he received the benefice in good faith, and satisfied the burdens through others, he is not bound (on account of the contrary probability) to restitution of the fruits received.¹