Laization
As secularization is called in some denominations , including the Roman Catholic Church , the canonical act of delivery of a cleric from the duties and rights of his class, giving it due to the reception of the Sacrament of Orders come.
Delimitation, scope
The consecration itself is irrevocably donated and cannot be reversed. Similar to the sacraments of baptism and confirmation , the sacrament of consecration belongs in the Catholic understanding to the signs of salvation that give the person an indelible mark . Nevertheless, a cleric - without losing the captive character of consecration - can possibly be returned to the lay status . This so-called laicisation must be distinguished from the much rarer cases in which the ordination is invalid from the start and did not come about because the sacrament was administered under wrong or inadequate conditions.
The suspension , the simple prohibition of the exercise of the office of a priest, which the diocesan bishop can pronounce in the Catholic Church , is to be distinguished from the laicisation . Mostly this is a disciplinary measure to prevent further priestly official acts or the unwanted preaching of a cleric. Ordination obligations such as celibacy are not affected.
Legal consequences, forms of laicisation
The laicization therefore only affects the external legal consequences of the ordination: The laicized office bearer loses the ecclesiastical membership position associated with the ordination as a cleric and the right to perform official acts. Official acts performed contrary to this prohibition are generally invalid, but this does not apply to the exercise of the actual powers of attorney, since the person concerned was irrevocably granted the ability to do so with his ordination. Sacramental acts performed by him without permission are therefore forbidden, but usually not invalid (this applies to baptism , the Eucharist , the anointing of the sick and, in the case of bishops, confirmation and ordination).
The latter, however, only applies if the validity of the sacraments is not additionally linked to the condition of their permissibility under canon law. Thus, the sacrament of penance can only be donated validly if the priest has, in addition to his power of ordination, also an official church commission (“delegation”) by the responsible professor . Absolution that is forbidden with the knowledge of the clergyman and the confessor is therefore normally invalid despite the priest's ineradicable authority to ordain. For the sake of the salvation of souls, however, the ecclesiastical legislature has stipulated that laic priests allow the sacrament of penance and the anointing of the sick if the recipient is in danger of death, and thus can also validly donate.
With laicization, the cleric also loses all ecclesiastical offices and services that do not require the power of consecration, which an ordinary layperson with the appropriate mandate should exercise. At the same time, the clergy are usually prohibited from doing certain activities, such as teaching in theological subjects or at church universities and preaching and preaching in worship. With the exception of the obligation to be celibate , which is decided separately, the person concerned is also released from all obligations arising from the clergy (such as the performance of the hourly prayer , dress and other professional regulations).
A secularization can be expressed in two ways: either at the request of the cleric by the Pope in the form of a per rescript granted dispensation from the obligations or consecration - even by the bishop - by dismissal (Dimission) from the clerical state. The latter is considered to be the heaviest church punishment that can be specifically imposed on a cleric. For a long time it was hardly in use and at most intended as a last resort in the event that flexural punishments such as suspension or excommunication have no effect and the cleric stubbornly adheres to behavior that the Church cannot accept under any circumstances. It was intended as a punishment for atonement for the serious offense of solicitation by priests in connection with the sacrament of penance .
Laicization does not cure a previous attempt at marriage by the later laicized cleric, which is invalid according to the teaching of the Church, and as a rule also does not allow a church marriage in the future for a person who has been released from prison. rather, in this case the celibacy obligation is mostly retained. On the other hand, a cleric who is granted laicisation on his voluntary request can also be given permission to enter into a marriage that is valid from the church's point of view, but this must be done by means of a separate dispensation.
If the living conditions of a person concerned change, the laicisation can be lifted by the corresponding church authority, which equates to a reinstatement in the church office.
Legal development, case studies
According to the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica 2007, 69,000 priests gave up their office in the years 1967 to 2006 in order to get married. The number of clerics and women affected mentally, mentally and health goes well beyond these figures. 11,200 returned to office after a separation or after the death of their partner.
In most cases, a laicisation is carried out at the request of the cleric concerned in order to be able to enter into a marriage. After a revision of the guidelines by Pope John Paul II in 1980, the request for laicisation was followed by a test procedure that usually lasted several years. In doing so, the Pope pursued the goal of not making the exemption from the promise of celibacy appear as a mere administrative act. He also wanted to prevent clerics from seeking a quick solution to personal crises in the laization. The impression that the requested laicisation could be an automatism or even a legal claim of the supplicant should be counteracted by the stricter examination. For some time thereafter, priests under the age of 40 had little chance of being restored to the laity. Many applications were not even accepted for consideration.
Since a circular from the then head of the Congregation for the Sacraments, Archbishop Jorge Medina , in June 1997, the process has been made easier in practice and the length of the process has been tightened. As long as the situation with the supplicant himself as well as between him and the local bishop or religious superior as the proponent of his application are not shattered and the reasons or the current life situation of the supplicant make it advisable, the Holy See usually corresponds to the application today.
With the revision of the norms on the prosecution of the most serious of canonical offenses, the investigation and punishment of which Pope John Paul II entrusted the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger , a new phase in the application of the law began. The punishment of dismissal from the clergy (dimission), which was previously only used extremely rarely and under very strict conditions, has now been imposed more frequently and increasingly in the course of dealing with cases of sexual abuse by clerics within the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith . After the major abuse scandals in the USA became known from 2002 onwards, the Vatican relied on tougher punitive measures, which now also included forced laizations. After 2008 in particular, numerous convicted perpetrators around the world were released from the clergy. At the end of 2009, Emmanuel Milingo , an archbishop, was punished for the first time after he joined the Mun sect , got married and then carried out unauthorized episcopal ordinations.
Well-known examples of laicization at one's own request are the 2008 laicized bishop Fernando Lugo , the first laicized bishop ever in church history, who was subsequently elected President of Paraguay , or the former Franciscan and liberation theologian Leonardo Boff , who in 1992 because of his conflict with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith asked for a lay status. In contrast, contrary to popular belief , Eugen Drewermann and Ernesto Cardenal are still clerics, although their respective church sentences prohibit them from exercising clerical rights.
literature
- Rüdiger Althaus: The laicization of priests - an act of grace or justice? In: De Processibus Matrimonialibus. Specialized journal on questions of canonical marriage and procedural law 8/2 (2001), pp. 215–241
- AM Dorn et al. (Ed.): Redaktions Handbuch Katholische Kirche , Munich 1996
- Karlheinz Schmidthüs (ed.): The reorganization of laization procedures (text) , in: Herder-Korrespondenz 25 (1971), pp. 194–197
Individual evidence
- ^ Fritz Leist on the subject of celibacy - confessions of those affected , p. 9 ff, Kindler Verlag Munich, ISBN 3-463-00553-0
- ↑ 69,000 Catholic priests got married. In: NZZ Online . April 20, 2007, archived from the original on September 29, 2007 ; accessed on August 19, 2019 .
- ↑ Newspaper article to facilitate the papal laization process 1997 , accessed in October 2017.
- ^ A Salesian for Pope Benedict. Interview with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone by Gianni Cardinale. In: 30giorni No. 08/2006 (August 2006), accessed on October 18, 2017.
- ↑ a b Patrik Schwarz: Abuse scandal: the church distributes. In: Zeit Online , April 7, 2010, accessed October 18, 2017.
- ↑ Jack Valero: The mob should lay off. The pope is completely innocent. In: The Guardian , April 15, 2010, accessed October 2017.
- ↑ taz report on discharge numbers , accessed on February 17, 2019
- ↑ Pascal Becher: 167 official cases in Trier and Speyer. In: Saarbrücker Zeitung , January 28, 2015, accessed on March 16, 2017.
- ↑ Vatican: Milingo released from the clergy. In: Vatican Radio , December 17, 2009, accessed October 2017.
- ^ The CV of Leonardo Boff in a newspaper article on his 70th birthday in the Tagesspiegel
- ↑ Leonardo Boff's CV in English on his website