§ 72. General Assessment of the Qualities of Candidates for the Priesthood

In assessing the qualities that the canons require of those who wish to enter the hierarchy, and equally in judging the various acts that bar entry into it, canon law proceeds by its own particular rules, different from those of civil law, and has regard to the character of the office that the one becoming a member of the hierarchy is to perform. In this, canon law looks above all to the inward side of a given act, insofar as the nature of the person concerned can be learned from it; and even if that act carries no consequence in civil relations, nor was formally established in a court, but the ecclesiastical authority has learned of it by its own means and has become convinced that the act proves a corruption in the nature of the one who committed it, it will on that ground alone regard the same act as a canonical impediment to ordination. For this reason the canons require that the nature of the candidate in question—his inclinations, his habits—be examined exactly, and that the bishop be informed of all this in detail before the ordination is performed;[1] and if it is found upon this examination that the candidate’s nature cannot be reconciled with the priestly office, that he lacks those qualities by which a priest must be distinguished, then judgment will be made as to the weight of this or that notorious act, and how much importance it should carry in deciding whether or not it is to count as an impediment to the candidate’s reception into the hierarchy. Besides this, canon law, in judging the qualities of candidates for the priesthood—where an act has been committed that could be regarded as an impediment to ordination—will take no account whatever of a circumstance that in other cases counts for much: namely, that the person concerned has repented of what he did and has wholeheartedly undergone the prescribed penance. In this case what is taken into account is the publicity of the act and the proof of it; for if the act was publicly committed and proven, then however much the person may repent and however fully the Church may forgive him the fault, the committed act nevertheless remains in the memory of other people and has shaken the good name of the person concerned, so that the ordination of such a person would serve to the debasement of priestly dignity and would stand in opposition to the aims of the priestly office. In view of this, the canons strictly forbid receiving into the hierarchy anyone who, on account of any act whatsoever, stands in ill repute in public opinion.[2]

As regards all the qualities of priestly candidates in general, the canons judge them only with respect to persons who are true members of the Church; hence the various impediments to ordination that may have existed in such persons before they received baptism vanish with baptism, and the Church, in a given case, judges only those impediments that come to light after someone has already become a full member of it.[3] The full rigor of the canons does not extend even to those cases where an impediment to ordination was overlooked and this happened through ignorance, the persons concerned themselves disclosing the same impediment.[4] The right of leniency from the rigor of the canons belongs to the competent ecclesiastical authority. To the same authority belongs also the right of dispensation from certain impediments, where the interest of the Church requires it and where the rigor of certain canonical ordinances is itself conditional, provided the general fundamental rules in this regard are not thereby violated.[5]