§ 4. On Wearing The Habit And Tonsure

2222. • I. All Clerics are held, from canon law, to carry TONSURE and the CLERICAL HABIT. This is established especially from the Council of Trent,³ which nevertheless left it to the judgment of Bishops to determine what garment is congruent. Therefore in this matter one must stand by the various decrees of places.⁴

Furthermore: 1. Beneficiary Clerics or those constituted in Sacred Orders sin gravely who for a notable time lay aside clerical dress, or who from contempt neglect to carry the crown and shorn hair. But what is to be understood here by a notable time cannot easily be defined. The Authors commonly do not condemn of mortal sin a priest who would go about without tonsure for six or eight weeks; but they say that one going about without clerical dress more easily sins mortally, on account namely of the scandal which, especially in certain regions, would arise from such insolence.⁵

2. Clerics constituted in minor Orders do not sin gravely if they neglect to carry the habit or tonsure. Thus commonly the Doctors. Indeed, from the bull Pastoralis of Sixtus V (31 January 1589), he is excused from every fault who receives neither a pension nor other ecclesiastical goods exceeding the value of 60 ducats annually.

2223. • II. Clerics, even those constituted in Sacred Orders, are excused who lay aside the habit either FOR A BRIEF TIME, or FROM A JUST CAUSE of concealing themselves, e.g. to avert some grave harm.⁶ - And hence it is that in certain regions, as in England and in the federated States of America, clerics, from the prudent concession of Bishops, neither wear the crown nor ever carry the cassock in public.

It is ASKED. What PENALTIES do Clerics not wearing the clerical habit incur?

Resp. 1. If they are in Sacred Orders or beneficed, and after the third admonition of the Bishop they do not amend themselves, they immediately lose the privilege of forum and canon⁷ (cf. n. 2234). - Indeed, "if, after they have been warned by their Bishop, they have not carried the habit..., they ought to be coerced through suspension from orders and office, and from benefice and fruits...; and also, if once corrected they offend again in this, even through deprivation of offices and benefices." Thus Trent, sess. 14, cap. 6, de Ref.

Resp. 2. If they are in minor Orders, and neither serve some church by command of the Bishop, nor by his permission are engaged in some school, they lose the privilege of forum even without any admonition.⁸ But where a Cleric, from the disposition of law, loses the privilege of forum, he also loses ipso facto all other clerical privileges, so that he must be considered as a lay person.⁹ Thus from the Declaration of the Sacred Congregation of IMMUNITY, made on 20 September 1860, which nevertheless, according to certain Authors, extends itself only to clerics of the Pontifical Dominion.¹⁰