Skip to main content

Apostolic Penitentiary

 The Apostolic Penitentiary, formerly called the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary, is a dicastery of the Roman Curia and is one of the three ordinary tribunals of the Apostolic See. The Apostolic Penitentiary is chiefly a tribunal of mercy, responsible for issues relating to the forgiveness of sins in the Catholic Church.


The Apostllic Penitentiary has jurisdiction only over matters in the internal forum (an act of governance made without publicity). Its work falls mainly into these categories:
  • the absolution of excommunication latae sententiae (a latae sententiae penalty is a penalty that is inflicted ipso facto, automatically, by force of the law itself, at the very moment the law is contravened), reserved to the Holy See
  • the dispensation of sacramental impediments reserved to the Holy See
  • the issuance and governance of indulgences
The head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Major Penitentiary, is one of the few Vatican officials who retain their positions sede vacante. If the Major Penitentiary is a cardinal elector he is one of only three persons in the conclave allowed to communicate with those outside the conclave, so that he can continue to fulfill his duties (the other two are the Cardinal Vicar for the Diocese of Rome and the Vicar General for the Vatican City State). The Major Penitentiary is a titular archbishop and normally created as Cardinal. Since September 21, 2013, the Major Penitentiary is Cardinal Mauro Piacenza. The second-highest ranking official in the Apostolic Penitentiary, called the Regent, is Msgr. Krzysztof Jósef Nykiel.

During the Middle Ages, the Apostolic Penitentiary had two major functions. The officium minus related to the spiritual care of Christians, and the ability to listen to confessions and absolve sins of grave nature, whose absolving was reserved to the Pope. The officium minus related to the power to grant grace to those petitioned the Pope in relation to: (1) absolution for breaking the regulations of canon law; (2) dispensations to act against Church regulations; (3) licenses not to observe ecclesiastical norns regarding the exercise of the faith; and (4) official declarations. The Penitentiary developed around the 12th century, with its powers gradually increasing and being expanded by subsequent popes.

Normally, confession of sins are handled at the local level by priests and their bishops and are not heard by the tribunal. The work of the Apostolic Penitentiary involves sin, such as difiling the Eucharist, which are reserved to the Holy See. In late 2006, then Major Penitentiary Cardinal Stafford said this offense is occuring with more and more frequency, by ordinary faithful who receive Communion and then spit it out or otherwise desecrate it. 

The Apostolic Penitentiary also specifies the actions for which indulgences are granted, prescribing the requirements therefore.

x----------x

Picture from Pexels.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Create a Richly Imagined World

For someone who likes fantasy and sci-fi fiction, most of the time, a lot of people ask me about how to create a richly imagined world. Fantasy and sci-fi elements rest heavily on how an author weave the setting and the world in which the heroes dwell in, and it helps to make the novel to be imagined vividly in the readers' minds. A convincing world should be relatable, something that we can associate ourselves with. For us to be associated with a world an author created in his mind, and wrote on the pages of a book, this world has to be close to the real thing. It has to be systematic, real and alive, and very convincing. A real world has certain elements, and an author must consider them in writing a vividly imagined world: Cartography - a fantasy or sci-fi world depend heavily on geography and maps, especially if the plot requires war and the belligerents occupy so much space in the plot. A convincing world has the world separated in territories, and every part of the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Simple Machine

A simple machine is a mechanical device that changes the direction or magnitude of a force. In general, they can be defined as the simplest mechanisms that use mechanical advantage (also called leverage) to multiply force. Usually the term refers to the six classical simple machines that were defined by Renaissance scientists: Lever Wheel and axle Pulley Inclined plane Wedge Screw A simple machine uses a single applied force to do work against a single work load. Ignoring friction losses, the work done on the load is equal to the work done by the applied force. The machine can increase the amount of the output force, at the cost of a proportional decrease in the distance moved by the load. The ratio of the output to the applied force is called the mechanical advantage. Simple machines can be regarded as the elementary "building blocks" of which all more complicated machines (sometimes called compound machines) are composed. For example, wheels, levers, and pulleys are all use...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ohm's Law

 Ohm's law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the voltage across the two points. Introducing the constant of proportionality, the resistance, one arrives at the usual mathematical equation that describes this relationship:  I = V / R where I is the current through the conductor, V is the voltage measured across the conductor, and R is the resistance of the conductor. More specifically, Ohm's law states that the R in this relation is constant, independent of the current. If the resistance is not constant, the previous equation cannot be called Ohm's law, but it can still be used as a definition of static / DC resistance. Ohm's law is an emperical relation which accurately describes the conductivity of the vast majority of electically conducive materials over many orders of magnitude of current. However, some materials do not obey Ohm's law; these are called non-ohmic. The law was named after the German physicist...
Post a Comment
Read more