INSTRUCTIONS OF THE SACRED CONGREGATIONS. — The Roman Congregations (v.) are invested with a threefold power: legislative (which, at least in the broad sense, cannot be denied them), doctrinal, and administrative. Their decisions bear the generic name of decrees, which, according to the circumstances, have specific names: praecepta, rescripts and declarations, decisions, or resolutions, general or particular decrees, and finally instructions.
An instruction in itself indicates a merely declaratory norm, which requires, rather than observance ad litteram, that a particular directive be followed. In other words, it gives the persons to whom it is addressed 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 September 1917 Cum iuris: «The ordinary duty (of the Sacred Congregations) will be to ensure that the prescriptions of the Code are religiously observed and, when necessary, to issue instructions that render the prescriptions of the Code clearer and more effective and appear almost as a commentary on them» (AAS, 9 [1917], p. 483). The purpose of instructions is therefore limited to establishing the interpretation of the law and ensuring its observance in particular matters.
The interpretation is given not because the law is doubtful (for, when the canons of the CIC are concerned, that would belong to the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation), but in order to give it greater effectiveness and almost supplement it with more extensive explanations, which the bare and skeletal text of the law could not provide.
Nevertheless, instructions may not derogate from the law which they are intended to supplement in the aforesaid manner; and if some provisions of an instruction do not agree with the law itself, the latter, although earlier, is to be preferred. Instructions enter into force immediately, without any vacatio, since they are not laws but supplements to the law. Therefore, when the law ceases to exist, the instructions also cease to have force, since the accessory follows the principal. Instructions contain not only advisory material but also precepts, when this appears from the wording or when the instructions recall universal or particular prescriptions of divine or ecclesiastical law.
Numerous instructions were issued after the promulgation of the CIC, such as the Instructio of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office de manitione secumenica, 20 December 1949 (AAS, 82 [1950], p. 142), the Instructiones of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, 3 November 1921, on the second year of the novitiate (ibid., 13 [1921], pp. 539 ff.), and that of 6 February 1924 on papal enclosure (ibid., 16 [1924], pp. 96 ff.); the Instructiones of the Sacred Congregation of the Sacraments, 4 July 1921, on proof of free status and the reporting of a contracted marriage (ibid., 13 [1921], pp. 348 ff.), that of 27 March 1929 on the celebration of Holy Mass and the distribution of Holy Communion (ibid., 21 [1929], pp. 631 ff.), that of 1 July
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ITALIA – Map of I. by Giacomo Angelo of Florence (1472) – Vatican Library, cod. Urb. lat. 277, fols. 124–125.
[The instruction] of 1929 to the Ordinaries of Italy for the implementation of art. 34 of the Concordat with Italy (ibid., 21 [1929], pp. 351 ff.), that of 15 August 1936 concerning the norms to be observed by diocesan tribunals in cases of matrimonial nullity (ibid., 28 [1936], pp. 313 ff.); that of 26 May 1938 concerning the custody of the Most Holy Eucharist (ibid., 30 [1938], pp. 198 ff.), that of 29 June 1941 concerning the investigations to be carried out prior to marriage (ibid., 33 [1941], pp. 297 ff.), that of 1 October 1949 concerning indults for the domestic oratory, the portable altar, the celebration of Holy Mass without an assistant, and the custody of the Most Holy Eucharist in private chapels; the i. of the S. Congr. of the Council, 10 June 1929, concerning the administration of benefice and ecclesiastical property in Italy, etc.
