a. About the Removal of Impediments

186. About the first: impediments to what it is to confect in the ordained way are either guilt alone, or penalty alone, or neither guilt nor penalty.

187. The impediment of guilt, namely how someone in a state of mortal sin cannot confect, was spoken of in d.9 n.25.

188. And the impediment that is neither guilt nor penalty, namely that one is not fasting with the fast of nature, was spoken of in d.8 nn.170-183.

189. It remains here, then, to see precisely about the impediment that is penalty. Now no such penalty is natural, whether in body or soul, because such penalty simply does not impede, but only a canonical penalty, or a natural penalty on which can be founded a canonical penalty. And a canonical penalty (to speak briefly) is some prohibition on exercising an act or receiving a degree that would belong otherwise to someone not prohibited.

190. Now of such penalties there are many not founded on any natural penalty or defect, as degradation, irregularity, the greater excommunication, suspension from execution of things belonging to Orders, simony, infamy - and certain things of the sort reducible to these, as that under infamy can be included public sin (this includes much, as public fornicator, public usurer) and things such as drunkenness.

191. But some canonical penalties are founded on natural defects, for the Church did not wish defective persons of any sort to minister at the altar. And rightly, because in the Old Law, Leviticus 21.17, a law is set down for a man “who hath a blemish, not to offer bread to his Lord, nor advance to his ministry.”

192. Now these defects are those in which, if such a person defective in nature were to serve as minister, there would be scandal to the weak. And reasonably, because whatever can be omitted without mortal sin is to be avoided if the exercising of it cause scandal to the weak. Such scandal would arise if those with notable natural defects, as the mutilated or those infirm with some horrible infirmity (as leprosy and the like) were to minister at the altar.

193. Therefore has the Church reasonably affixed to such natural defects canonical penalties and prohibitions against ministering, because of reverence for the sacrament and to avoid scandal of the weak. And these prohibitions are plain in Decretum p.1 d.25 and Decretals I tit.20.

194. Required, therefore, in one who confects in the way ordained is the removal of all these impediments, because, if he who has any of them confects, he does so against the prohibition of the Church, and consequently not in the way ordained.