CONSULTORS OF THE SACRED CONGREGATIONS
Every Sacred Congregation, for the study of matters of greater importance, has a body of consultors: prelates, religious, and exceptionally laymen, to whom it requests reasoned votes or opinions. The consultors are appointed by the Supreme Pontiff through a signed note by the Cardinal Secretary of State, upon the proposal of the Cardinal Prefect or Secretary of the respective Congregation. This appointment is, in itself, for life. Consultors normally must reside in the curia. They bear a great part of the Congregations' business, and many of their opinions have had very great scientific-canonical and practical importance. They do not, as a rule, receive any pecuniary compensation.
Some are consultors by right:
Indeed, the *Codex Iuris Canonici* (CIC) establishes, for example, that the following are consultors of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation: the Assessor of the Holy Office, the Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, and the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries; the Assessor of the Holy Office, in turn, is a consultor of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries (CIC can. 248 § 2 and 256 § 2).
In general, consultors write their opinions and send them without appearing in person (though sometimes they intervene in the congress or even in the plenary session of the Congregation): for the Holy Office, however, only the "qualifiers" do so in this way; the consultors instead all meet every Monday in the so-called "consulta," preparing the material that will then be used for the meeting of the cardinals, which takes place the following Wednesday, and on which the Assessor reports to the Pope in the weekly audience on Thursday. The consultors of the Sacred Congregation of Rites are distinguished according to the three sections to which they belong; the theological consultors (I Section) give their written opinion and participate in the ante-preparatory, preparatory, and general Congregations before the Pope, for the treatment of causes of beatification and canonization; the liturgical consultors (II Section) are called upon to give their opinion, case by case, on particular liturgical questions; the historical consultors (III Section) give their written opinion and participate in the plenary sessions of the Historical Section in historical causes of beatification and canonization, and also give their opinion, case by case, on individual questions of a critical-historical, hagiographical, and liturgical nature.