729. It cannot be denied that the office of parish priest even with the exemption from the ordinary is altogether accessory, and a heavy responsibility superadded to the religious estate. For in order that they might administer in the said form, an apostolic dispensation has been necessary which is founded on grave reasons--and that with attention to only what the religious estate demands from him who has entered it, according to what is taught by common law and the doctrine of the saints. If that method of administering with exemption from the ordinary is changed, and the regular who has charge of a parish should as such become subject to the correction and visitation of the ordinary, and in other respects to the heads of his order, it is certain that it would be an innovation so great that they would be quite changed in their respect for public opinion, and in their mode of life; and the religious would be like a man cleft in two, those in some houses being subject to one superior and those in others to another, all of different hierarchies, and with the dangerous consequences that will be stated. Will the piety of the pope bind the religious to so great a cross? 730. Let us suppose (as is feasible) that the bishop were to become displeased with any order, or with any missionary. In such case he could maintain or remove the missionary against the will of his provincial by very specious pretexts. If necessary, he could even threaten the latter with censures, in order to make him submit to his authority. How fecund a source of perdition and total ruin that would be for the orders, any one can conceive; but only those who have experience in those islands could perfectly comprehend it. Let the regulars of América tell how they have to tolerate it through compulsion. If a religious is found lacking, and the offense has the appearance on one side of belonging to morals and life and on the other to the office of cura, the poor missionary is left in the sane position as those goods which the law styles mostrencos [i.e., goods which have no known owner], and shall belong to the first one who seizes them; and even he is in much worse condition, because of the contests that must necessarily ensue. For, if the provincial commences to form a process and it comes afterward to the notice of the ordinary, the latter will issue an act--and, if it should be necessary, a censure--ordering the said provincial to quash the entire process, to deliver it to him, and to desist from the cause by saying that he alone has the power to try it. The provincial appeals to the judge delegated by his Holiness and he, as he has entire jurisdiction of the case, commands the ordinary with the warning of censure to leave the cause alone and deliver up the acts. The latter not obeying, the matter may be carried to such an extreme that two ecclesiastical prelates excommunicate each other, and threaten each other with interdict and the cessation of divine service.