CENSURES ECCLESIASTICAL

The penalties by which, for some remarkable misbehaviour, Christians are deprived of the communion of the Church, or clergymen are prohibited to execute the sacerdotal office. These censures are, excommunication, suspension, and interdict; or else, irregularity, which hinders a man from being admitted into holy orders. The canonists define an ecclesiastical censure to be a spiritual punishment, inflicted by some ecclesiastical judge, whereby he deprives a person baptized of the use of some spiritual things, which conduce, not only to his present welfare in the Church, but likewise to his future and eternal salvation. It differs from civil punishments, which consist only in things temporal; as confiscation of goods, pecuniary mulcts or fines, and the like; but the Church, by its censures, does not deprive a man of all spirituals, but only of some in particular. This definition speaks of such things as conduce to eternal salvation, in order to manifest the end of this censure; for the Church, by censures, does not intend the destroying of men’s souls, but only the saving them; by enjoining repentance for past errors, a return from contumacy, and an abstaining from future sins.