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Acts, Canonical.—According to the old Roman jurisprudence, acts are the registers (acta) in which were recorded the official documents, the decisions and sentences of the judges. Acts designate in law whatever serves to prove or justify a thing. Records, decrees, reports, certificates, etc. are called acts. Canonical acts derive their name from connection with ecclesiastical procedure. Acts may be public or private, civil or ecclesiastical.
Public acts are those certified by a public notary or other person holding a public office or position. These acts may be judicial, or a part of court-procedure, or voluntary. In contentious trials to secure justice, the acts should be judicial; extrajudicial acts are not contentious but voluntary. Both civil and canon law recognize as public acts those that occur before witnesses, if these acknowledge them before the court, otherwise they are private. Public acts include any action taken by the judge, the authorities he may quote, the proceedings in the court, documents drawn from the public archives. An original document of a community, bishop, or public officer, with the official seal, or a copy of these sent by these persons with due authentication, is a public act. Public acts are determinative against anyone, though at times they may not impose personal obligation on those not participating in them. In old public acts, the presumption is in favour of their being rightly done; to upset their value, the burden of proof is upon him who attacks them or argues that they were not executed with due formalities. Ecclesiastically, an exception is made for alienation of Church property, where, for the validity of a deed, a further requisite may be exacted, such as a clear proof of the authorisation of a bishop, or the consent of the chapter. For these presumption does not suffice.
Private acts are those of one or more individuals they tell against those who executed them, not against absent parties not participating in them. While public acts have force from the day of their date, private acts, whose date is not authenticated, have force only from the day of their public registry. When authenticated, fraud alone can upset them. If the authenticating official overstepped his competency, the act would only be a private act, but yet of private value, unless the law requires for its validity the authentication of an official. Thus, a deed transferring real estate, even signed by the parties, becomes valid for public purposes when authenticated by the official designated by law, though the private agreement may be a basis for redress.
It is not easy to draw precise limits between civil and ecclesiastical acts. While civil acts are mainly of the laity, about secular things, and ecclesiastical acts mainly of ecclesiastics, in connection with spiritual things, yet both easily overlap each other. Acts are civil or ecclesiastical by their relations with the State or the Church, by their emanation from either, by touching upon matters belonging to either, or by affecting the dealings of persons with either. The same individuals are subject to both authorities. Thus ecclesiastics do not cease to be citizens, and all Christian citizens are subject to the authority of the Church as well as of the State. Many things, even linked with spiritual affairs, do not lose their natural character of temporalities. Many acts passing between ecclesiastics are purely civil. An ecclesiastic, though a minister of the Church, is also a citizen; his actions as a citizen are purely civil; those emanating from him as a clergyman are ecclesiastical. If the acts are such as could be properly performed by a layman, they would belong to the civil order; if their performance required the clerical state, they are ecclesiastical. Yet a layman's spiritual duties and exercises are ecclesiastical, coming under the authority of the Church; an ecclesiastic's money matters come under the authority of the State as far as those of other citizens. This is the basis of the distinction between the civil and ecclesiastical forum. The Church by divine right has inalienable control of strictly spiritual things; the State of strictly temporal things. By the goodwill of peoples and governments the Church obtained many privileges for its forum, respecting the temporalities of ecclesiastics, and even of the laity in matters connected with spiritual things. In other matters assigned to her by Divine Law she cannot yield her authority, though for peace sake she may tolerate aggressions upon it. She may yield (and in concordats and in other ways does yield) those privileges which had for centuries become part of her forum.
Acts also designate certain general formalities for the validity of documents, often essential requisites, such as the date, the signature, the qualifications of persons, the accurate names of witnesses, and other similar conditions which may be demanded by civil or ecclesiastical laws or by the custom of a country.—Acts of a council are the definitions of faith, decrees, canons, and official declarations of the council, whose sphere of action is more or less extended according as it is œcumenical, national, provincial, etc.—Acts of the Martyrs are the documents, narrations, and testimonies of the arrest, interrogatories, answers, torments, and heroic deaths of the Christians who sealed their faith by the shedding of their blood in the times of persecution. The documents of the Congregation of Rites connected with the beatification and canonisation of saints are designated as Acts of the Saints. This is also the title given by the Bollandists to their monumental account of the lives of the saints (Acta Sanctorum). Acts-Capitular are the official discussions of the assembled members of the chapter, the name given to the canons of the cathedral who form a corporation established to aid the bishop in the government of the diocese, and to supply his place when the see is vacant.
Wagner, Dictionnaire de droit eccles., v. Actes (Paris, 1901); Santi, Præl. iur. can., II, Lib. XXII, De Fide Instrum. (New York); Smith, Eccles. Law, II, v, Judicial Proofs; D'Avino, Enciclopedia dell' Ecclesiastico (Turin, 1878) v. Atti; Craisson, Man. tot. iur. can., IV, iii, art. 3, De Instrum. (Poitiers, 1880) Pirhing, Sac. Can. Doctrina II, Lib. XXII, De Fide Instrum. (Rome, Propaganda, 1859).
R. L. Burtsell.
Intention
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(Lat. intendere, to stretch toward, to aim at) is an act of the will by which that faculty efficaciously desires to reach an end by employing the means. It is apparent from this notion that there is a sharply defined difference between intention and volition or even velleity. In the first instance there is a concentration of the will to the point of resolve which is wholly lacking in the others. With the purpose of determining the value of an action, it is customary to distinguish various sorts of intentions which could have prompted it.
First, there is the actual intention, operating, namely, with the advertence of the intellect. Secondly, there is the virtual intention. Its force is borrowed entirely from a prior volition which is accounted as continuing in some result produced by it. In other words, the virtual intention is not a present act of the will. but rather a power (virtus) come about as an effect of a former act, and now at work for the attainment of the end. The thing therefore that is wanting in a virtual, as contrasted with an actual, intention is not of course the element of will, but rather the attention of the intellect, and that particularly of the reflex kind. So, for example, a person having made up his mind to undertake a journey may during its progress be entirely preoccupied with other thoughts. He will nevertheless be said to have all the while the virtual intention of reaching his destination. Thirdly, an habitual intention is one that once actually existed, but of the present continuance of which there is no positive trace; the most that can be said of it is that it has never been retracted. And fourthly an interpretative intention is one that as a matter of fact has never been really elicited; there has been and is no actual movement of the will; it is simply the purpose which it is assumed a man would have had in a given contingency, had he given thought to the matter.
It is a commonplace among moralists that the intention is the chief among the determinants of the concrete morality of a human act. Hence when one's motive is grievously bad, or even only slightly so, if it be the exclusive reason for doing something, then an act which is otherwise good is vitiated and reputed to be evil. An end which is only venially bad, and which at the same time does not contain the complete cause for acting, leaves the operation which in other respects was unassailable to be qualified as partly good and partly bad. A good intention can never hallow an action the content of which is wrong. Thus it never can be lawful to steal, even though one's intention be to aid the poor with the proceeds of the theft. The end does not justify the means. It may be noted here in passing, as somewhat cognate to the matter under discussion, that the explicit and frequently renewed reference of one's actions to Almighty God is not now commonly thought to be necessary in order that they may be said to be morally good. The old-time controversy on this point has practically died out.
Besides affecting the goodness or badness of acts, intention may have much to do with their validity. Is it required, for instance, for the fulfilment of the law? The received doctrine is that, provided the subject is seriously minded to do what is prescribed, he need not have the intention of satisfying his obligation; and much less is it required that he should be inspired by the same motives as urged the legislator to enact the law. Theologians quote in this connection the saying, "Finis præcepti non cadit sub præcepto" (the end of the law does not fall under its binding force). What has been said applies with even more truth to the class of obligations called real, enjoining for instance the payment of debts. For the discharge of these no intention at all is demanded, not even a conscious act. It is enough that the creditor gets his own.
The Church teaches very unequivocally that for the valid conferring of the sacraments, the minister must have the intention of doing at least what the Church does. This is laid down with great emphasis by the Council of Trent (sess. VII). The opinion once defended by such theologians as Catharinus and Salmeron that there need only be the intention to perform deliberately the external rite proper to each sacrament, and that, as long as this was true, the interior dissent of the minister from the mind of the Church would not invalidate the sacrament, no longer finds adherents. The common doctrine now is that a real internal intention to act as a minister of Christ, or to do what Christ instituted the sacraments to effect, in other words, to truly baptize, absolve, etc., is required. This intention need not necessarily be of the sort called actual. That would often be practically impossible. It is enough that it be virtual. Neither habitual nor interpretative intention in the minister will suffice for the validity of the sacrament. The truth is that here and now, when the sacrament is being conferred, neither of these intentions exists, and they can therefore exercise no determining influence upon what is done. To administer the sacraments with a conditional intention, which makes their effect contingent upon a future event, is to confer them invalidly. This holds good for all the sacraments except matrimony, which, being a contract, is susceptible of such a limitation.
As to the recipients of the sacraments, it is certain that no intention is required in children who have not yet reached the age of reason, or in imbeciles, for the validity of those sacraments which they are capable of receiving. In the case of adults, on the other hand, some intention is indispensable if the sacrament is not to be invalid. The reason is that our justification is not brought about without our co-operation, and that includes the rational will to profit by the means of sanctification. How much of an intention is enough is not always quite clear. In general, more in the way of intention will be demanded in proportion as the acts of the receiver seem to enter into the making of the sacrament. So for penance and matrimony under ordinary conditions a virtual intention would appear to be required; for the other sacraments an habitual intention is sufficient. For an unconscious person in danger of death the habitual intention may be implicit and still suffice for the validity of the sacraments that are then necessary or highly useful; that is, it may be contained in the more general purpose which a man has at some time during his life, and which he has never retracted, of availing himself of these means of salvation at so supreme a moment. For the gaining of indulgences the most that can probably be exacted is an habitual intention.
JOSEPH F. DELANY
Revocation
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The act of recalling or annulling, the reversal of an act, the recalling of a grant, or the making void of some deed previously existing. This term is of wide application in canon law. Grants, laws, contracts, sentences, jurisdiction, appointments are at times revoked by the grantor, his successor or superior according to the prescriptions of law. Revocation without just cause is illicit, though often valid. Laws and customs are revoked when, owing to change of circumstances, they cease to be just and reasonable. Concordats (q.v.) are revocable when they redound to the serious injury of the Church. Minors and ecclesiastical institutions may have sentences in certain civil trials set aside (Restitutio in integrum). Contracts by which ecclesiastical property is alienated are sometimes rescindable. A judge may revoke his own interlocutory sentence but not a definitive judicial sentence. Many appointments are revocable at will; others require a judicial trial or other formalities. (See BENEFICE; FACULTIES, CANONICAL; INDULTS, PONTIFICAL; JURISDICTION, ECCLESIASTICAL.)
ANDREW B. MEEHAN
Acceptance
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Acceptance, in canon law, the act by which one receives a thing with approbation or satisfaction. The collation of a benefice is not complete till it has been accepted by him on whom it has been conferred. Acceptance is the link between the benefice and the benefited. It is therefore necessary to accept the benefice, to have jus in re; till the acceptance, there is at most a jus ad rem. (See Right.) Acceptance is needed for the validity of an election. If the person chosen be absent, a specified time may be given for acceptance, and a further time may be allowed to obtain the confirmation of the election to an office. Acceptance is of the essence of a gift, which, in law, means a gratuitous transfer of property. Delivery of personal property with words of gift suffices; if delivery is not made, a deed or writing under seal should be executed and delivered. For the transfer of real property, a deed is generally necessary. In all cases acceptance is necessary to make the transfer binding in law.
Acceptance of a law is not necessary to impose the obligation of submission. Even in a democracy, where the organized people may, or should, take part in the preparation and making of the laws, it may not refuse to accept and to obey the laws when made and promulgated. Otherwise the legislative authority would be a mockery, and all governmental power would vanish. We are not now posing the question whether an unjust law is binding; nor are we discussing how far either custom or desuetude may take away the binding force of a law; both may imply the assent of the law-making power. Acceptance by the faithful is not required for the binding force of ecclesiastical laws. The Apostles received from Christ the power of binding and loosing, and the hierarchy (i.e. the Pope, bishops and other prelates) have inherited this power, as has always been recognized in the Church. In the Catholic Church the law-making power established by Christ will ever have the authority to make laws previous to, and independent of, the acceptance of the faithful. If bishops or other prelates should enact a law contrary to the canons, there is the remedy or an appeal to the highest authority of the Church for its annulment. Wyclif attacked this authority when he proclaimed, in the fifteenth thesis condemned by the Council of Constance and Martin V, that "no one was a temporal prince, or prelate, or bishop, who was in mortal sin." Huss (ibid., Prop. 30) declared that "ecclesiastical obedience was an invention of the priests of the Church, and outside the authority of Scripture." Luther, in the proposition condemned (1521) by the University of Paris, taught that neither pope nor bishop nor any one among men has the right to impose on a Christian a single syllable without his full acceptance; anything otherwise done is in the spirit of tyranny. The Jansenists favoured the theory that the authority of the bishops and Pope was representative of the will of the whole body of the Church; hence Clement XI, in 1713, condemned the 90th proposition of Quesnel: "The Church has the power to excommunicate, to be used by the chief pastor, with the (at least presumed) consent of the whole body." Against a natural or divine law, no custom or desuetude can avail for the cessation of obligation. From a merely ecclesiastical law either custom or desuetude may withdraw the obligation, wherever they may properly imply the assent of the lawmaking power in the Church. (See Law, Custom.)
D'Avino, Enc. dell' Ecclesiastico (Turin, 1878); Andre-Wagner, Dict. de droit can. (3d ed., Paris, 1901); Didiot in Dict. de théol. cath. (Paris, 1903), s.v.
R. L. Burtsell.