Decreed that the illegitimate children of clerics should be incapacitated from obtaining any kind of a benefice in the Church where their fathers held one; from rendering any service in said church; and from receiving any pensions on the revenues of the paternal benefice. This law is not established and laid down as a punishment for the person to whom it is applied. It safeguards the honour and dignity of Holy orders. The clerical state which has the dispensing of the mysteries of God must be beyond reproach. No stain should be upon it, no blame possible. Therefore the Church raises the barrier of illegitimacy before the entrance to the priesthood. Thus the crime of the parents is held up to just reprobation, and is condemned even in the lives of their offspring. The danger of the father's incontinence being continued in the life of the son is greatly lessened, for strong indications of purity of life must be given before the door of God's ministry can be opened.

The defect of illegitimate birth may be cured in four ways: (1) By the subsequent marriage of the parents; (2) By a rescript of the pope; (3) By religious profession; (4) By a dispensation.

(1) The subsequent marriage of the parents of an illegitimate has, by a fiction of law, a retroactive power which carries the marriage back to the time of the birth of the offspring and covers it with lawful wedlock. In order that the fiction of law may produce this effect, the parents, at the time of the conception or, at least, at the birth of such offspring, must have been capable of contracting lawful marriage. Therefore, this more of legitimation is applicable only to natural illegitimates. And these, though legitimized by the subsequent marriage of the parents, or even by an Apostolic dispensation, are forever excluded from the dignity of the cardinalate. (2) A rescript of the pope confers legitimacy in so far as it is required for spiritual affairs throughout the universal Church. (3) Religious profession in an approved order cures the defect of illegitimacy. Religious profession is the taking of the solemn religious vows; but the simple vows taken after the noviciate in some orders produce a like effect. This mode of legitimation only renders illegitimates capable of ordination. It cannot be extended to dignities or even to regular prelacies. Hence, illegitimates thus legitimized are still debarred from the position of abbot; and women of illegitimate birth, for like reasons, cannot hold the position of abbess or prioress. (4) A dispensation granted by a lawful superior removes the defect of illegitimate birth, but only for some express purpose. It is not a mode of absolute legitimation. The purposes for which it is granted must be specified; as for promotion to minor orders, to major orders, to a specified benefice.

A dispensation of this kind runs counter to the common law. It is of strict interpretation, and therefore cannot be extended from like to like or from greater to less, unless the one is included in, and presupposes, the other. Such is the case when a dispensation is conceded to an illegitimate to receive Holy orders. Such orders require a title, and this title is, in canon law, a benefice. The pope is the lawful superior for the universal Church, and as such he can dispense in all cases where a dispensation is possible. Bishops and other prelates having quasi-episcopal jurisdiction can dispense their own subjects, in this matter, for first tonsure, minor orders, or a simple benefice; but not for major orders, even though the illegitimacy be occult. This episcopal, or quasi-episcopal, jurisdiction does not extend to a benefice which was immediately possessed by the father of the person seeking the dispensation, nor to a benefice which by custom or privilege requires its possessor to be in major orders.