Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/87

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ON REFORMATION
55

TOUCHING CONFIRMATION.

Canon i. If any one shall say, that the confirmation of those who have been baptized is an idle ceremony, and not rather a true and proper sacrament; or that it was formerly nothing more than a kind of catechism, whereby they who were near years of discretion,[1] declared an account of their faith in the face of the Church; let him be anathema.

Canon ii. If any one shall say, that they who ascribe any virtue to the sacred chrism[2] of confirmation, do an injury to the Holy Ghost; let him be anathema.

Canon iii. If any one shall say, that the ordinary minister of holy confirmation is not the bishop only, but any simple priest soever; let him be anathema.

DECREE CONCERNING REFORMATION

The same sacred and holy synod—the same legates also presiding—purposing to prosecute, unto the praise of God, and the increase of the Christian religion, the work which it hath begun respecting residence and reformation, has thought good to ordain as follows; saving always, in all things, the authority of the Apostolic See.

CHAPTER I.

Who is capable of the Government of Cathedral Churches.

No one shall be assumed unto the government of cathedral churches, but one that is born of a lawful wedlock, is of mature age, and endowed with gravity of manners, and skill in letters, agreeably to the constitution of Alexander III., which begins, Quum in cunctis, promulgated in the Council of Lateran.

CHAPTER II.

They who hold several Cathedral Churches are commanded to resign all but one, in a given Manner and Time.

No one, by what dignity, grade, or pre-eminence soever distinguished, shall presume, contrary to the institutes of the sacred canons, to receive and to hold at the same time several metropolitan or cathedral churches, whether by title,

  1. Adolescentiæ proximi
  2. I. e. unction, anointing.