Active and Passive Voice
The term refers to the right belonging to members of a society to cast a vote on matters concerning the society itself, and above all the right to elect and be elected to its offices. This right, subject to certain conditions, pertains to members of all ecclesiastical moral persons, such as chapters and councils, but holds particular importance in religious institutes (v. RELIGIONE).
In these institutes, as a matter of practice, it arose from the very origins of cenobitic life, but found its full development in monasticism, since monks received the right to elect their own abbot (*Regula s. Benedicti*, chap. LXIV).
Subsequently, the right of active and passive voice extended to all religious institutes, gradually gaining ever greater importance and legal precision, until it acquired its own distinct character.
In current legislation, the granting and regulation of the right of active and passive voice, as well as its renunciation and deprivation in religious institutes of pontifical right, fall under the competence of the Holy See, through the provisions of the *Codex Iuris Canonici* (CIC) and the constitutions of individual institutes. According to canon 578, the CIC grants the right of active and passive voice only to perpetually professed members, unless the constitutions expressly extend it to temporally professed members. However, both from general law and from the constitutions of individual institutes, the actual exercise of this right is subject to many other conditions, such as age, priestly ordination, and levels of education, depending on the case.
A religious, like any other member of a moral person, may be deprived of the right of active and passive voice as a penalty for some offense. The following must be deprived by judicial sentence:
1) Religious who have conspired against the Roman Pontiff, his Legate, or their own Ordinary (can. 2331 § 2);
2) Those who have directly cooperated in the enactment of laws injurious to the rights of the Church or have impeded the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction by appealing to secular authority (can. 2334, n. 2; 2336 § 1);
3) Those who have enrolled in Masonic sects or similar groups condemned by the Church (can. 2335; 2336 § 1);
4) Those who have introduced women of any age into the papal enclosure of regular orders (can. 2342, n. 2);
5) Those who have forged letters, decrees, or rescripts of the Holy See, or have used such documents knowing them to be false (can. 2360 § 2);
6) Those who have committed the crime of solicitation in confession (can. 2368 § 1);
7) Those who have gravely violated the common life and, after being warned, have not amended their conduct (can. 2389).
The following are deprived of active and passive voice *ipso facto*:
1) Those who have apostatized from the religious institute, even after returning (can. 2384);
2) Electors who have invoked the illegitimate intrusion of laypersons in elections reserved to religious (can. 2390 § 3);
3) A college of religious that knowingly elected an unworthy candidate (can. 2391 § 1);
4) Those who have committed the crime of simony in the granting of offices, benefices, or dignities (can. 2392, n. 2);
5) All those who, having the right to elect, have failed to request the prescribed confirmation of the elected from the competent ecclesiastical authority when required (can. 2393);
6) Chapters, convents, and all religious who have accepted those presented or nominated to any office or benefice without first awaiting the letters of confirmation from the competent ecclesiastical authority (can. 2394, n. 43);
7) Those secularized (can. 640 § 1, n. 1);
8) Electors who have not submitted the request for confirmation of their electoral rights within the prescribed time (can. 181 § 2).
The following cannot exercise the right of active and passive voice:
1) Religious incapable of human acts (can. 167 § 1, n. 1);
2) Religious who have incurred a censure or the infamy of law, following a condemnatory sentence.
Those who have incurred the penalty of removal from ecclesiastical acts, whether by sentence or by a *latae sententiae* penalty, are also deprived of active and passive voice. Due to their particular status, cardinals and bishops—even titular ones—are deprived of this right, except by dispensation of the Holy See, even if, after leaving their office, they return to the religious house (can. 629 § 2), as well as those excluded during the period of indult (can. 639, 640).
The particular law of individual religious institutes may deprive a member of the right of active and passive voice as a penalty, provided the offense is grave and is established through a serious process, at least administrative (cf., e.g., *Constitutiones Societatis Verbi Divini*, Rome 1944, art. 332). That a major superior of a religious institute may have the power to punish, at least temporarily and in specific cases, even by depriving a guilty religious of this right, seems to be affirmed on the basis of canons 2291 and 2298, according to which deprivation of active and passive voice is listed among the vindictive penalties that religious superiors may impose.