Violation of Censure

134. A cleric who, bound by censure, solemnly exercises an act of sacred order, becomes irregular.¹

1. He is said to violate censure who, entangled by a censure which prohibits the use of order, exercises order, whether the censure is excommunication, or suspension from order, or personal or local interdict, e.g. one celebrating in an interdicted place.

a. Therefore one who violates another suspension which is not suspension from sacred order does not become irregular; if, for example, a bishop suspended from pontificals celebrates in pontificals, he indeed acts against suspension, but does not become irregular.

b. Since grave fault is required for contracting this irregularity, an excommunicated tolerated person who is requested by others does not become irregular, nor an excommunicated person to be avoided who exercises order in order to avoid grave inconvenience.

2. Act of order: for incurring irregularity, any violation whatever of censure does not suffice, but it must be violated through an act of order. Therefore a cleric who violates censure through reception of a sacrament, even of order, does not become irregular.

There are those who are of the opinion that he becomes irregular who in the very reception of sacred order exercises order. From which it would follow that one who receives the presbyterate always becomes irregular, because he must concelebrate with the ordaining bishop. But this opinion is not to be admitted, because the action placed in the ordination itself is not properly held as the exercise of the order received, but as a ceremony which pertains to the reception of order.²

3. Of sacred order: the law indeed does not distinguish between sacred and minor orders; but authors rightly restrict this censure to sacred orders. For irregularity from delict supposes grave sin; but a cleric who in censure exercises, even solemnly, some order from the minor orders, does not sin gravely, since the office of minor orders is commonly exercised solemnly even by laymen.

4. Solemnly exercises, i.e. from office and with the insignia of the proper order, as we said above.

Therefore a censured bishop who approves confessors, dispenses in vows, or a pastor who in censure assists at marriage without nuptial blessing, does not become irregular, because these are not acts of order, but of jurisdiction or of simple power, the exercise of which does not violate censure.

¹ C. Quum medicinalis 1. C. Is, qui 18. C. Is, cui 20. De sententia excom. in 6. (V. 11).

² Cf. S. C. C., January 31, 1688. Benedict XIV, De synodo l. 12. c. 3. n. 7.

Paulus, believing himself bound by excommunication on account of reading a book prohibited in the Index, done without permission, absolved a penitent who was his accomplice in a shameful sin. When afterward he had occasion of reading the book of a certain heretic championing heresy, he again absolved the accomplice. Is Paulus irregular?

R. Although Paulus believed himself excommunicated by reading a book listed in the Index, in reality he was not excommunicated; and therefore, by absolving the accomplice the first time, he did not incur irregularity, because he does not truly violate a censure. Paulus certainly incurred excommunication by reading the heretical book; wherefore then certainly, when he again absolved the accomplice, he incurred irregularity from violated censure. But Paulus had already before, on another occasion, absolved the accomplice, and because of this also was excommunicated. Wherefore when the second time he absolved the accomplice, he was bound by a double excommunication. Nevertheless he incurs only one irregularity, because all censures forbid the exercise of order with regard to one virtue of religion, on account of reverence for the sacred ministry. But since this irregularity is equivalent to several, "in the petition for dispensation he ought to express this." St. Alph., l. 7, n. 359; I. M. 1325.