CANON IX.

IF any presbyters have been advanced without examination, or if upon 

examination they have made confession of crime, and men acting in 

violation of the canon have laid hands upon them, notwithstanding 

their confession, such the canon does not admit; for the Catholic 

Church requires that [only] which is blameless.

NOTES.

ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON IX.

Whoever are ordained without examination, shall be deposed if it be 

found out afterwards that they had been guilty.

HEFELE.

The crimes in question are those which were a bar to the priesthood--

such as blasphemy, bigamy, heresy, idolatry, magic, etc.--as the 

Arabic paraphrase of Joseph explains. It is clear that these faults are 

punishable in the bishop no less than in the priest, and that 

consequently our canon refers to the bishops as well as to the 

 presbuteroi   in the more restricted sense. These words 

of the Greek text, "In the case in which any one might be induced, in opposition to the canon, to ordain such persons," allude to 

the ninth canon of the Synod of Neocaesarea. It was necessary to pass 

such ordinances; for even in the fifth century, as the twenty-second 

letter to Pope Innocent the First testifies, some held that as baptism 

effaces all former sins, so it takes away all the impedimenta 

ordinationis which are the results of those sins.

BALSAMON.

Some say that as baptism makes the baptized person a new man, so 

ordination takes away the sins committed before ordination, which 

opinion does not seem to agree with the canons.

This canon occurs twice in the Corpus Juris Canonici. Decretum Pars 

I. Dist. xxiv. c. vij., and Dist. lxxxj., c. iv.