SEMINARISTICO

SEMINARISTICO. – It is the levy that the Ordinary may impose on the income of all diocesan ecclesiastical entities in order to provide for the material needs of the Seminary.

The Council of Trent, in establishing the seminaries, had made provision for their budgets by allowing them to incorporate simple benefices and authorizing a special tax on all ecclesiastical entities (sess. XXIII de Ref., can. 18). The Council had minutely described the revenues subject to the tax, but many doubts were clarified only subsequently by the apostolic constitution *Credite* of Benedict XIII and especially by the extensive jurisprudence that followed.

The *Codex Iuris Canonici* has reopened this source, though leaving it optional for the bishop’s initiatives (can. 1355), and has resolved every question by establishing secure criteria for compiling the lists of contributors. Indeed, by the provision of can. 1356, the following are obliged to pay the levy, notwithstanding any contrary custom or privilege: the episcopal table, all benefices—whether regular or of patronal right (including parishes or quasi-parishes even if sustained solely by the offerings of the faithful), hospices, associations of the faithful canonically erected, and church fabricae with their own income; and finally, all religious houses, unless they live solely on alms or maintain a training college for teachers or pupils for the common good of the Church, such as, for example, a missionary institute. The rate of the levy may in no case exceed five percent of the assessed taxable income, and since it must be equal for all, neither progressive nor regressive taxation is permitted; nor is exemption allowed for any of the categories envisaged, because the levy is general. The assessment of the taxable income is made net of burdens and necessary expenses, and for canonical benefices, the daily distributions or the third of income corresponding to them are deducted. The offerings of the faithful are also exempt; and if these constitute the entire parochial benefice, one-third is immune from the tax. However, among burdens and necessary expenses, those for food, clothing, and lodging of the beneficiary and dependents are not included, nor in general the personal expenses that the parish priest or any beneficiary incurs for health care, maintaining servants, books, and travel, etc. On the other hand, taxes imposed by civil authority, sums necessary for the maintenance of the house and of beneficed lands, for cultivation of fields, harvesting of crops, payment of laborers, purchase of seed, and upkeep of tools are deductible. Mass stipends are not to be reckoned among the revenues subject to the levy. No appeal may be lodged, nor may any contrary custom or privilege be invoked (can. 1356). For civil recognition and so that the levy may be counted as a reduction of taxable income, it is necessary that the episcopal decree be recognized by a presidential decree.

**

SEMINARIO MESSICANO PER LE MISSIONI ESTERE. – It was begun following the vote expressed by the 1st National Congress of the Missionary Union of the Clergy, held in Guadalajara in 1948. By decree of 15 March of the same year, Propaganda granted the faculty to erect it, and in fact it began to function from the following September. Saverio Paventi

SEMINARIO PER LE MISSIONI ESTERE DI YARUMAL. – It was opened on 3 July 1927 through the initiative of Msgr. Michelangelo Builes.

Its purpose is to undertake missionary work in certain regions of Colombia. On 29 June 1937 Propaganda placed it under its jurisdiction, and on 20 June 1943 it provisionally approved its constitutions, similar to those of other missionary institutes without vows. At present it has 72 priests and 20 brothers, and two missions are entrusted to II. Saverio Paventi

There was a kind of mystical fatalism among the so-called "yellow writers," who, lacking familiarity with Augustinian metaphysics, failed to grasp a doctrine of grace that was framed within the complex of a system encompassing the universal economy of the world and of Redemption. Remaining on the plane of practical life and the fulfillment of concrete virtue, they feared that an excessive exaltation of divine grace would end up nullifying every merit of man; they were unable to rise to the supreme laws by which free will mysteriously integrates with God’s plans and according to which our destiny is realized and unfolds only toward the end assigned to it by God from all eternity. Predestination is nothing other than the application to each individual case of the great principle of providence (St. Augustine, *De praedestinatione Sanctorum*, II, 35). It is beyond doubt, moreover, that in his later books St. Augustine’s conception of human destiny appears more severe and more pessimistic.

At bottom, however, whatever the controversy regarding the initiative of grace or predestination, the central problem always remained the condition of man: it was a question, in fact, of knowing whether man had preserved or lost his integrity after the fall of Adam; whether original sin had completely perverted our will, left our freedom intact, or merely weakened it; and if it had weakened it, to what extent.

II. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONTROVERSY

The semi-Pelagian objections are known, albeit indirectly; they appear rather timidly in the *Collationes* of Cassian and then in the sharper complaints attributed to Vincent of Lérins. They were at times quite serious, as they provoked a letter of reproach from Pope Celestine (Ep., 21: PL 30, 530) forbidding any criticism whatsoever of the memory of St. Augustine. It is rather the writings of St. Prosper of Aquitaine that provide precise information on the stance of his adversaries: the letter to Rufinus, the *Poema de ingratis* (on the ungraced), and the *Liber contra Collatorem* (PL 51). In his dry and ingenious, though often cutting, critique, Prosper defended Augustinian theses; with a subtle vein of partiality, he highlighted the concordance, in his eyes, between the theories of Cassian and Vincent and the essential principles of Pelagianism. To Prosper’s polemical works must be added a dogmatic treatise of Roman origin, the *Hypomnesicon* (written around 435), and a collection of semi-official character: the *Sedis Apostolicae Episcoporum auctoritates*, the *Capitularia Celestiniana* (PL 51, 205–12), which contain the broad outlines of Catholic theology on grace (cf. a letter to Demetria: *Cum splendidissimae* [PL 55, 162–80], which most likely belongs to St. Leo the Great).

Despite this constant affirmation of Roman doctrine, the great religious center of Provence, the abbey of Lérins—the nursery that produced the finest bishops of Gaul—remained throughout the fifth century refractory to Augustinian influence; in 473–75, Faustus, bishop of Riez, not content to reject the fatalist theses of the heretic Lucidus, denied the existence of *gratia specialis*, that is, of an actual grace suited to our particular needs, extolled the effects of free will, and drew very close to Pelagius’s initial positions (*De gratia Dei*, I, 11).

Around the year 519, an unexpected reaction arose from the Scoti monks, Eastern theologians led by John Maxentius, and especially from the African bishops in exile, with St. Fulgentius of Ruspe (v.) at their head, a follower of the strictest Augustinianism. The debate widened, and the exposition of Gaul was again divided: a council of bishops from the Rhône region, gathered at Valence, seemed to have rather supported the principles of Faustus. It was then that St. Caesarius, bishop of Arles, in agreement with Rome, decided to issue a solemn declaration.

III. THE COUNCIL OF ORANGE (529)

On the occasion of the dedication of the basilica at Orange, in the presence of the patrician Liberius and thirteen bishops, St. Caesarius proclaimed the Catholic doctrine of grace. After adducing some of the most convincing texts of St. Augustine and Prosper, St. Caesarius drew the following conclusions:

1) the free will, disoriented and weakened by Adam’s sin, is no longer sufficient for man to rise to the love and service of God unless grace and mercy impel him; 2) the righteous of the Old Testament owe their merits solely to the grace of God, not to any natural good; 3) the grace of baptism enables all Christians, with the aid and cooperation of Christ, to fulfill the duties necessary for salvation, provided they have the will to attain it sincerely; 4) in every good action, the first impulse comes from God: it is this impulse that prompts one to seek baptism and, always with God’s support, to fulfill our duties. The Council explicitly rejected the idea of a “predestination” to evil.

The declarations of Orange, laboriously elaborated, a new redaction and correction of an original draft whose text has been recovered (Mansi, VIII, 722), constitute a theological document of high value, ratified by the Pope (Boniface II). With them, the theories of Pelagian inspiration, founded on the inviolable autonomy of free will and on the substantial merit of our personal actions, are definitively set aside; they proclaim the priority and supremacy of divine grace in the work of salvation, while at the same time affirming the efficacy of baptism for the restoration of free will; they also inculcate the personal responsibility and obligations of each individual in the observance of divine law. Finally, they oppose both the mystical or desperate fatalism of predestination and the Pelagian or semi-Pelagian naturalism. It is indeed an abuse committed by certain seventeenth-century theologians to base themselves on the preliminary considerations of the Council of Orange and to treat it almost as the Magna Carta of Jansenism.