HOLY SEE ACTS TO

Bishops warned against illicit consecrations
THE Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, by virtue of a special fa culty granted by the Pope, has issued a decree warning Bishops—including Cardinals and Patriarchs—that they will incur immediate excommunication of the severest form if they confer episcopal consecration upon a priest without the authorisation of the Holy See.
A person receiving such consecration incurs the same penalty.
The main object of the decree, it is believed, is to prevent the consecration of Bishops for the schismatic, anti-Papal "National Catholic Churches" which the Communist reidmes have long been hoping to establish firmly in the Iron Curtain
countries.
In Poland the Red regime has presumed to appoint ecclesiastical rulers of dioceses in the Regained Territories after expelling the administrators appointed by the Holy See, arid have, the Communists claim, induced members of the Hierarchy to give some semblance of validity to these intrusions.
In Czechoslovakia, besides banishing Archbishop Reran from his diocese, the Communists claim to have secured oaths of allegiance from a number of Bishops, and have induced their own nominee as administrator of the Prague diocese to remove the ecclesiastical sentence banning the excommunicated Fr. Plojhar, Minister of Health, from celebrating Mass. But in both countries, and in other Iron Curtain lands, the Communists have not succeeded in having one of Iheir own nominees consecrated. Such a consecration, however illicit, would confer valid episcopal orders even upon an ex-communicated priest, and a number of illicitly consecrated Bishops would be able Co ensure a succession of Bishops to maintain a schismatic Church.
FOUR POINTS
Fr. Joseph Sullivan, N.C.W.C. correspondent in Vatican City, remarks on four provisions in the decree which underline its extraordinary importance: 1. It became effective on the date of its promulgation in the "Ada Apostolicie Sedis "—the Holy See's official bulletin. Normally, laws made by the Holy See take effect three months after their promulgation,
2. The ex-communication Is Incurred automatically and reserved to the Holy See " in a most special manner."
There are only six such penalties in the entire Code of Canon Law. These include the penalties for crimes such as the profanation of the Blessed Sacrament, physical violence against the Sovereign Pontiff, violation of the seal of the confessional, and violation of the Apostolic Constitution governing the election of the Pope. 3. Even Cardinals and Patriarchs —according to canonists in Rome, states Fr. Sullivan—as well as Bishops of both the Latin and Eastern rites are included in the decree.
Normally. Cardinals are exempted from the penal law of the Church.
4. The decree explkkly says that even those "coerced by grave Fear" are subject to the penalty. The present decree, remarks Fr. Sullivan_ recalls the statement of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation of
March 31 after Archbishop Beran had been banished.
This statement pointed out that all those who bring a Bishop before a secular judge, lay hands on a Bishop or interfere with his jurisdiction are subject to ex-communication.
These cases concern the person of the Bishop, his jurisdictional functions or the exercise of his powers of jurisdiction.
The new decree concerns interference with the Bishop's powers of orders and his transmission of the fullness of the priesthood. Quoting canonists in Rome, Fr. Sullivan says that the decree brings up to date the Code of Canon Law, which has never taken cognizance of nor legislated for such cases as mentioned in this instance. Hitherto the nearest legislation in the Code to this matter of unlawful consecration forbids the consecration of a Bishop without receiving the Apostolic mandate, and penalises the consecrators and the consecrated with a suspension from the exercise of their office. but does not excommunicate them.