Article Seven. On Censures Now in Force.

32. Censures now in force. 1. At every time the Church has used the power of inflicting censures because of certain graver crimes, but especially because of the crime of heresy.¹ The mode by which she imposed censures was diverse in diverse times; nevertheless she more frequently used excommunications, of which the first, by common law and reserved to the Roman pontiff, was established by the Second Lateran Council (1139), to which in the course of time several others were added. All these, collected in the form of a bull by the will of the Roman pontiffs, were promulgated every year at Rome in the churches on certain days, especially on Maundy Thursday. Their collection is therefore called the Bull In Coena Domini, which in the passage of time, by the care of the Roman pontiffs, was increased up to twenty censures. Besides the censures which were contained in the Bull In Coena, several others were in force, both those carried by pontifical constitutions and those carried by the Council of Trent. Since the number of censures was growing too much, and some of them, with morals and times changed, seemed less useful, by Pius IX, through the constitution Apostolicae sedis of October 12, 1869, very many censures of a sentence already passed having been abrogated, the most recent law was established with respect to ecclesiastical censures. Wherefore today by common law only those censures of a sentence already passed are in force which are directly or indirectly contained in this constitution, and those which were added to them after its promulgation. But all censures which are contained clearly and certainly in this constitution receive full force of obliging through it, even if before its promulgation they perhaps had fallen into desuetude.

The Pian constitution, which treats only censures, and those of a sentence already passed, changed nothing with respect to censures of a sentence to be passed, nor with respect to censures carried by private law, such as censures carried by bishops or by prelates of regulars against their own subjects, nor with respect to irregularities or other ecclesiastical penalties, nor with respect to ecclesiastical laws. Therefore if by this constitution the censure has been removed from some law, the law itself retains the force of obliging.

2. The censures now in force are:

a. Censures inflicted in express words in the bull itself.

b. Censures inflicted by the Council of Trent and confirmed by this constitution.

It is the common opinion of interpreters that from this constitution only those Tridentine censures have force which the Council of Trent then first inflicted, but not those which Trent only renewed and confirmed from the old law. For the words which the supreme pontiff uses in this constitution designate those censures alone.

c. Censures previously in force and not changed by this constitution from the constitutions: a. for the election of the Roman pontiff; b. for the internal governance of any orders and regular institutes.

d. Censures which were carried after the constitution Apostolicae sedis.

¹ Cf. 1 Cor. 5, 1-5. Kober, Der Kirchenbann, p. 15 ff. Hausmann, Geschichte der papstlichen Reservatfalle (Regensburg: Pustet, 1868), p. 21 ff.