Question Four. Whether there is any Penalty for those who Repeat the Sacrament of Confirmation

70. Further the question is asked whether there is a penalty for those who repeat this sacrament.

71. I reply:

The canonists say just what was said about the repetition of baptism, distinction 6 [nn.177-179].

72. They prove this by argument from similarity, through Gratian Decretum p.3 d.5 chs.8-9, Gregory IX, Decretals I tit.16 ch.1, and the gloss I tit.16 ch.1.

73. But I say in another way that universally no canonical penalty that is not inflicted by the Pope establishing the law is incurred by that law.

74. Nor is anyone bound to such penalty on account of the arguments of those who expound the Canons, whether by similarity or by contrary sense; because the glossators can expound the law that is established but cannot by their expositions establish a new law.

75. Hence Innocent IV, who however was Pope, although he had, in expounding the Canon Law, produced a large work,Commentary on the Five Books of the Decretals: “Innocent IV composed this book not so that he would be credited.. .he did not want these his glosses to make law.” ⁶⁵ when he was asked by others what force he wanted the tractate to have, said that he did not wish it to be authentic but only magisterial.

76. So since there is not found in Canon Law expressly a punishment of irregularity inflicted for repetition of confirmation, it follows that ipso facto punishment is not incurred.

77. And this is most of all apparent because penal constitutions are to be restricted not amplified [Boniface VIII, Decretals book 6, V tit. 12, “It is becoming for hatreds to be restricted, and favors to be amplified”]; and if the legislator had wanted to have such punishment inflicted for repetition of confirmation as of baptism, he could have expressed it here just as there.

78. And it is also confirmed by the chapter in Gratian, Decretum, p.3 d.5 ch.8, where no punishment is inflicted on a bishop doing a confirmation again, but not on the receiver either, save that “to serve God most religiously, in regular or clerical habit, has been decreed by the sole God.” Now this does not intimate a penalty of irregularity, but rather the opposite, namely exercise of the clerical office, for in the execution of [clerical] orders, and especially in the consecration of the Eucharist, a cleric most religiously serves his God.

To whom be glory for ages of ages. Amen.