Book — Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology

Book IV. On the Sanction of Christian Life, or on Ecclesiastical Penalties

¶1.

(St. Alphonsus, Theologia Moralis, book VII, nn. 1-340; Homo Apostolicus, tract 19, nn. 1-71).1

After in special moral theology we have treated of the due cultivation of virtues and of the principal means of obtaining the graces necessary for exercising this cultivation, there remains to be explained in what way the Church strives to sanction the observance of virtues and of means, or to coerce transgressions of precepts by established penalties. First and by way of preliminary, however, we will speak of those things which the Church punishes, or of delicts; then of the penalties by which she punishes delicts.

1 Wernz, Ius Decretalium, VI; Hollweck, Die kirchlichen Strafgesetze; Chelodi, Ius poenale; Sole, De delictis et poenis; Lega, De delictis et poenis; Noldin-Schoenegger, De poenis ecclesiasticis; Vermeersch-Creusen, Epitome Iuris Canonici, III, n. 382 sq.

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