enign pontiff oblige them to
stay therein if he knew those circumstances fully?

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 America 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 shoul