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VIII JUST AS THE SACRILEGIOUS VIOLATOR OF A VIRGIN, SO ALSO THE PROSTITUTOR OF A SPIRITUAL SON MUST BE DEPOSED BY LAW Now I meet you face to face, carnal man, whoever you are. Do you ever refuse to confess to spiritual men what you have committed because you fear giving up your ecclesiastical rank? But how much more salutary was it to endure temporary shame in the sight of men, than to be subject to eternal punishment before the tribunal of the supreme Judge? Perhaps you say to me, "If a male falls with a male through femoral fornicationonly, he should indeed do penance, but in the interests of pious humanity he should not be cast irrevocably from his rank." I ask you: if someone risked acting sacrilegiously with a virgin, will he in your judgment remain in his rank? But you would without doubt judge that such a person be deposed. Therefore, it follows that what you reasonably assert in the case of a consecrated virgin, you must also admit of a spiritual son. So what you seem to assert of spiritual fathers, you must determine equally for clerics. Yet, while maintaining these distinctions, an act is judged to be all the more serious to the extent that it is shown to be against nature because of the identity of the sexes involved. Besides, in law we always turn to the criminal's will when judging excesses; one who pollutes masculine thighs would have done with a male through the insanity of unrestrained lust everything that is done with women if nature had permitted it. He did what waspossible, and so, arriving at what nature 45 46 Book of Gomorrah has denied, he unwillingly fixed the limit of the crime, where the necessity of nature set the unbreachable limit of the faculty. Therefore, since it is the same law for both sexes,42 for consecrated men and for clerics, we conclude that just as the sacrilegious violator of a virgin is deposed by the law, so the prostitutor of a spiritual son must also be barred from his [ecclesiastical] office by every means available. 42 Perhaps an adaptation of the Council of Compiegne (A.D. 757), canon 4, "There is one law for men and for women" (A. Boretius, Capitularia, no. 15). See Peter Damian, Opusc. 16 (PL 145, 374B, 375C); Opusc. 18.1 (PL 145, 393A). ...

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