To n. 341. - Appendix VII. Historical Matters Concerning Churches and Oratories

In the first centuries, before 313, at least at Rome, the interior part of certain houses was deputed for carrying out sacred rites, so that churches existed, in this sense, as domestic churches. Those places, since there was no dedication to saints, borrowed their name from the possessor of the house. Outside the City, however, in cemeteries and above the catacombs, in cells not large, the funeral rites of the dead and the anniversaries of death were celebrated. This gave origin to the cult of the martyrs. Moreover, already in the third century buildings destined for sacred things were deliberately constructed.

After the persecutions, these churches evolved into the form of great buildings, which imitated those spacious buildings where the people, safe from the weather, could transact their mercantile or judicial business, and which, from their very splendor, were called basilicas, royal buildings. Then also, because of the growing cult of the martyrs, churches were built in the place where a martyr had lived or had died; and his name was given to the church itself. Later they began to place beneath the altar, or in the altar itself, part of the body or a linen cloth or oil from the sepulcher of the martyrs, so that by the end of the seventh century in every church there were certain relics of the martyrs. Outside the City great sacred buildings were erected over the sepulchers themselves or in a place as near as possible.

A basilica was of rectangular form and consisted of a great hall divided into several naves by columns.

The name church was given from the very assembly of the faithful, ἐκκλησία, according to that saying of Augustine: "The Church is called the place where the Church is gathered" (Quaestiones in Heptateuchum, 3, 57, P. L. 34, 703). From the form often used they were called basilicas; which name then became proper to the greater churches. It was also called Κυριακή, the Lord's house. The appellation house of the Church also occurs, οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας.

The consecration of a church appears already immediately after the persecutions, and indeed with a solemn rite (cf. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., 10, 3).

Already from the fifth century a distinction is shown to have been made between churches, which were the greater sacred buildings, and lesser ones which were called (cf. Council of Chalcedon, year 451, can. 6 and 8, Harduin, II, 603) martyria, ptochia, and which today would be called chapels or oratories. Oratories were chiefly called the chapels of monasteries or those joined to the houses of monks.

Oratories were afterward divided into public and private. The necessity of distinguishing an intermediate genus introduced the word semi-public oratory, which is read in the third doubt proposed in Nivern., and to which a response was given on March 8, 1879 (Decr. authent., n. 3484). But the formal distinction into three species is handed down in a decree of the S. R. C., Jan. 1899 (Decr. authent., n. 4007). Concerning the present juridic notion cf. Summa Novi Iuris, n. 474 and Epitome, II, n. 498.

The prohibition of celebrating in a violated church is urged so severely by canon 1173, §2 of the Code, that if the violation occurs during the time of divine offices, these must cease at once, and the Mass must be dismissed before the Canon or after Communion. If the violation occurs between the Canon and Communion, the Mass must be continued, but only up to Communion.

Nevertheless, in a case of true necessity, for example if on a Sunday the people are already present in the church to hear Mass, and reconciliation cannot be done immediately, approved authors think that it is lawful for the bishop, or, if he cannot be approached, for the rector himself of the church (by which name, for this case, we think that one is here meant who in fact then presides over the church) to permit Mass in the violated church. Cf. Matthaeus a Coronata, n. 29. This will hold by a stronger reason concerning a church simply execrated. Public edification, however, will have to be considered. For the Catholic people could even be offended if they see Mass celebrated in a church not reconciled. How sacred places are violated was stated in the second volume.