XI

STATUS OF THE CLERGY

CONFORMING to the outline of Roman Law adopted by Tribonian and his associates in the Corpus Juris Civilis, the new Codex Juris Canonici divides the whole body of Canon Law into the Law of Persons, the Law of Things, the Law of Actions, and the law of Offenses and Penalties.

Under the law of persons the new Code embraces the Clergy, the Religious, and the Laity. The relative importance which the Papacy attributes to each of the respective groups of persons named appears from the amount of legislation devoted to each. On that basis they rank as follows:

Though the laity in the Roman Church outnumbers both the other groups combined by a ratio probably of several hundred to one, it appears from the foregoing that only about seven per cent of canonical legislation has been enacted for the laity. The term "religious" as used in the canon law and in the writings of Roman propagandists has a technical meaning peculiar to such literature and unknown elsewhere. Clause 7 of Canon 488 of the Code defines it as including "those who have taken vows in any religious community."

It includes all men and women living under either solemn or simple vows in the manifold orders and congregations so active in the Roman Church. The regular clergy are embraced in the scope of the term as so defined. Much of the legislation devoted to the religious pertains, therefore, to the regular clergy and brings the total number of canons which create and define the rights of the clergy up to more than ten times the number enacted for the laity.

So has the clergy, though unknown to the New Testament as a distinct and privileged class, usurped virtually all rights under the canon law and become substantially identical with the Roman Catholic Church as a legal entity. The distinction between clergy and laity appeared early in Church history, and the mighty and continuous medieval struggles between the civil and ecclesiastical powers for supremacy helped to bring the clergy into well defined relief as the embodiment of every ecclesiastical ambition and prerogative.

About the dawn of the sixth century the ceremony of tonsure came into general use as the distinguishing badge and requisite of the clerical state. That ceremony for bringing a candidate into the order of the clergy by shearing his hair continues to our day. Canon 108 of the Code makes this provision:

"Those who have been assigned to the Divine ministry by the first tonsure are called clerics."

Growth of monasticism during the Dark Ages and its wide prevalence in succeeding centuries brought about the distinction between Regular and Secular clergy. In the former class were all clerics living in religious institutions and subject to their regulae, or rules; while in the latter were those living in the world independently of such orders or institutions.

Out of the regular clergy and rising above the rest of its membership are a number of superiors composing a powerful hierarchy distinct from that which rules the secular clergy, except that both culminate in the See of Rome with the Sovereign Pontiff as supreme autocrat. Among the regular prelates or hierarchy the Code enumerates the Abbot Primate, the Abbot President of a monastic congregation or an independent monastery, and the Superior General and Superior Provincial and their vicars.

The hierarchy of the secular clergy also culminates in the Papacy as the supreme autocratic authority ruling the whole Roman Catholic world and assuming to stand as the sole earthly representative of Almighty God. Treating the Roman Church as the one perfect artificial person, or "Society," in harmony with the Code, an able Roman Catholic canonist gives the following definitive statement touching the joint status and relations of the Sovereign Pontiff and the Church of Rome:

"The Church forms a juridical person only in conjunction with the Roman Pontiff, because without him it would lack one of its essential constituents. The Supreme Pontiff (Apostolic See) would form a moral person even if the entire body of the faithful would cease to exist—an unlikely hypothesis, which is here stated merely to illustrate the necessity of a supreme head. Without exaggeration we may say that the Pope is a corporation solely by virtue of his sovereignty, like the King under English law. For this reason the Pope is said to have all laws in venue, i. e., he combines the whole legislative as well as judiciary and coercive power in his own person—"Commentary on Canon Law, Augustine, Volume Il, page 7."

Below the Sovereign Pontiff in the clergy are
the several cardinals, the Curia Romana, or papal court, with its vast and intricate organization of congregations, tribunals and offices, the legates and nuncios representing the pontifical throne as envoys to the civil governments, patriarchs, primates, metropolitans and suffrage bishops, numbering many hundreds enthroned in every part of the world and all deriving their authority solely from the sovereign will of the papal autocrat.

Canon 109 of the Code expressly declares that those elevated to the hierarchy are chosen not by the consent of the people or of the civil authority, but derive their prerogatives solely from their ordination; that the Sovereign Pontiff holds supreme power by virtue of his canonical election and his acceptance; and that prelates of all other grades hold their jurisdiction by delegation from him.

Commentators on the new Code have prudently refrained from translating that canon because of its direct and emphatic denunciation of the American idea embodied in the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed. But the spirit and purpose of the canon sufficiently appears from the following explanatory comment by a leading Roman Catholic authority:

"This canon, the first clause of which is taken from the dogmatic canons of the Council of Trent, is directed against certain innovations which cropped out throughout the history of the Church, but were introduced especially by the so-called reformers of the sixteenth century. The CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE was the favorite cry of Arnold of Brescia and his followers in the twelfth century. It was repeated by Wiclif and Hus, Calvin and Zwingli. Against these the Council of Trent declared it as an article of faith that the people have no voice in the choice of ministers. The CONSENT OF THE CIVIL POWER was favored by Luther, and partly also by Zwingli at the Council of Zurich. Both demands are excluded by the very organization of the Church and its nature as a societas inaequalis."—Commentary on Canon Law, Augustine, Volume II, page 47."

Under claim that it is a perfect society divinely constituted and deriving all its prerogatives from God through the Pope, the Roman hierarchy prohibits any effort to subject any prelate or priest to the jurisdiction of civil courts. That prohibition is expressed in Canon 120, which Woywod translates into English in part in these words:

"All cases against clerics, both civil and criminal, must be brought into the ecclesiastical court, unless for some countries other provisions have been made.
"Cardinals, Legates of the Holy See, bishops, even the titular ones, abbots and prelates nullius, the supreme heads of religious bodies approved by Rome, the major officials of the Roman Curia in reference to business belonging to their office, can not be sued in the secular courts without permission of the Holy See. All others, clerics and religious, who enjoy the privilege of the forum, can not be sued in a civil court without permission of the Ordinary of the place where the case is to be tried. The Ordinary, however, should not refuse such permission, if the suitor be a lay person, especially after his attempts to effect an agreement have failed."

Thousands of prelates, a quarter of a million priests and scores of thousands of "religious" of the papal government encircle the earth, and vast numbers of them enjoy the rights of citizenship in nearly every country. Such rights are totally incompatible with the exemption from civil authority which the canon law accords to them.

Though bound by paramount ties to the Pontifical throne, and subject to canon law which they regard as divinely enacted and which sets aside the whole doctrine of popular sovereignty, they enjoy protection and the ballot under the very law from which they claim absolute exemption.

A hundred enthroned prelates, about twenty five thousand priests and more than two hundred religious orders of men and women, with a vast aggregate membership, are in the United States. More than half of them have foreign names. But they are accorded the rights of citizenship. Hundreds of thousands of them are employed as teachers in the public schools which their law condemns. Many hold public office of great responsibility and power. This condition merits the serious concern of all good citizens.