The fifth reason: If a regular who is a parish priest transgresses, and on account of secret faults becomes unworthy of continuing in his ministry, yet if he remains in it his salvation may incur a very special peril. The provincial has secret knowledge of the case. Here justice demands two things: one, the punishment of the fault; the other, that the delinquent shall not be rendered infamous. Charity, (and even justice itself) demands also that the provincial shall, because of his office, remove his subordinate from that risk. If this regular who acts as parish priest were administering his functions without canonical institution or subjection to the ordinary, as is done in the Filipinas Islands, the provincial could with the greatest ease settle the whole matter, and justice and charity be satisfied, without disgrace to the delinquent and without a stigma on the religious order. But when the regular who is a parish priest is subject to the ordinary, the provincial cannot remove him by his own authority alone; and it is necessary for him to resort to that very ordinary and to the vice-patron, and that the two agree on the removal of the offender. And, in such case, what has the provincial to say to them? If it be answered that by keeping the case entirely secret the provincial becomes a sharer in the guilt of his subordinate, he and the superiors of the religious orders declare, with all submission and humility, that they refuse to put in practice such a form of theology. Can the ordinary acting alone, can the governor, the father, and the master, each alone, punish and correct the fault--of a priest, of a citizen or a soldier, of children, of servants--without the least injury to the culprit's honor; and a provincial, who can in innumerable ways do the same with any subordinate of his, be obliged to leave the offender in disgrace with the heads of the community, ecclesiastical and secular? The religious orders would sooner remove [from the islands], to transplant themselves to Europa, than submit to so heavy a burden. If it be said that the provincial need not state the offense, but in general terms assert only that he has cause for removing the cura, even that would not avoid the difficulty: First, because the authorities may think that the provincial says so, in order to carry a point for a custom of long standing. Second, even though the cause for removing him is not a fault, it will be readily said [that it was one]; and if the person himself does not make further explanation, in such case the result will be that the fault will be made public by his silence. And finally, one's honor is a very delicate thing, and is usually much injured by rumors and suspicions alone. And since God renders the religious exempt from the secular judges, and the Apostolic See from the ordinaries, the regulars represent that, as they have not professed to be curas, they do not feel courage to fill that office with so many risks and burdens.