INSTRUCTIONS OF THE SACRED CONGREGATIONS. - The Roman Congregations (v.) are invested with a threefold power: legislative (which, at least in a broad sense, cannot be denied them), doctrinal and administrative. Their decisions bear the generic name of decrees, which, according to the case, have specific names: praecepta, rescripts and declarations, decisions, or resolutions, general or particular decrees and finally instructions.
The instruction (i.) in itself indicates a simply declaratory norm, which requires, more than observance ad litteram, the following of a determined directive. In other words, it gives to the persons to whom it is directed the norm by which they can and must govern themselves, without thereby constituting for them a universal or particular law.
The purpose of these instructions is well indicated by Benedict XV in the motu proprio of 16 Sept. 1917 Cum iuris: "The ordinary office (of the Holy Congregations) will be to see that the prescriptions of the Code are religiously observed and to issue instructions, if the case arises, that render the prescriptions of the Code clearer and more efficient and appear almost as a commentary on them" (AAS, 9 [1917], p. 483). The purpose of the instructions is thus reduced to fixing the interpretation of the law and ensuring its observance in particulars.
The interpretation is given not because the law is doubtful (that, in the case of the canons of the CIC, would belong to the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation), but in order to give it greater efficiency and almost to integrate it with more extensive clarifications, such as the bare and skeletal text of the law could not give.
The instructions cannot, however, derogate from the law which they have the office of completing in the aforesaid manner, and if some provisions of the instruction do not accord with the law itself, the latter, although earlier, is to be preferred. The instructions enter into force immediately, without any vacatio, since they are not laws but a complement of the law. Therefore, once the law falls, the instructions also cease to have value, since the accessory follows the principal. The instructions contain not only matter of counsel but also of precept, when this appears from the tenor of the words or when in the instructions prescriptions of divine or ecclesiastical law, universal or particular, are called to mind.
Numerous are the instructions issued after the promulgation of the CIC, such as the Instructio of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office de manitione secumenica, 20 Dec. 1949 (AAS, 82 [1950], p. 142), the Instructiones of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, 3 Nov. 1921, on the second year of novitiate (ibid., 13 [1921], p. 539 ff.) and of 6 Feb. 1924 on papal enclosure (ibid., 16 [1924], p. 96 ff.); the Instructiones of the Sacred Congregation of the Sacraments, 4 July 1921, on the proof of free status and the denunciation of a contracted marriage (ibid., 13 [1921], p. 348 ff.), that of 27 March 1929 on the celebration of Holy Mass and distribution of Holy Communion (ibid., 21 [1929], p. 631 ff.), that of 1 July
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1929 to the Ordinaries of Italy for the execution of art. 34 of the Concordat with Italy (ibid., 21 [1929], p. 351 ff.), that of 15 Aug. 1936 on the norms to be observed by diocesan tribunals in cases of nullity of marriages (ibid., 28 [1936], p. 313 ff.); that of 26 May 1938 on the custody of the Most Holy Eucharist (ibid., 30 [1938], p. 198 ff.), that of 29 June 1941 on the investigations to be carried out before marriage (ibid., 33 [1941], p. 297 ff.), that of 1 Oct. 1949 on indults for the domestic oratory, the portable altar, the celebration of Holy Mass without a server, the custody of the Most Holy Eucharist in private chapels; the instruction of the Sacred Congregation of the Council, 10 June 1929, for the administration of benefice and ecclesiastical property in Italy, etc.
Bibliography4 works
Pietro Palazzini