118
ON THE CONSTITUTION
Priests, and fourteen Cardinal Deacons.[1] The first popular misapprehension in regard to these dignitaries is that their rank is an ecclesiastical one. The Cardinalitian title, properly speaking, is not a grade in the Church, but merely a dignity in the Court of Rome. The Cardinal is a high personage in the Pope's Court, which being strictly ecclesiastical, it is incumbent on all who are members thereof to conform, for as long as they continue so, to the garb and fashion of an ecclesiastical character.[2] For the Cardinal, as such, there is no specific ordination;
- ↑ It adds much to the confusion on this subject, that this division into categories is often only nominal, a Cardinal being put. by favour, or for other reasons, into an order he does not belong to. The present Dean of the College, Cardinal Mattei, for a long time figured as a Cardinal Deacon, although he had taken priest's orders. More perplexing is it to find Cardinal Priests who have never taken these orders. Such was the case with Cardinal Dandini, who, when merely a deacon, was made in 1823 a Cardinal Priest and Bishop of Osimo. 'Only nine years later,' says Moroni, 'did he take priest's orders, having in the interval taken part in three Conclaves as a Cardinal Priest, without really having that character.' Nor is this all. Moroni speaks of persons having ranked amongst the six Cardinal Bishops when they had never been more than deacons.
- ↑ This is the position of the lay Monsignori so plentiful in Rome. They are merely functionaries wearing the priestly dress as a uniform, and debarred from having a legitimate wife as long as they remain in their posts.
