Annotatio CCLI

”She is fallen, and shall no more rise, the virgin of Israel.” — Amos 5:2

Strabus, in the glosses of this passage, seems to be in the opinion of those who think that sinners, after penance, cannot be restored into their former dignity.¹ For thus he says: “The Prophet does not deny that Israel can rise again; but ‘it shall not rise,’ he says, ‘the virgin of Israel’; because [Israel], once going astray, even if it be carried back on the shoulders of the shepherd, has not so great a glory as [that] which never erred.” This opinion the canon of the Council of Ilerda [Lérida] seems to confirm, which is cited by Gratian in the fifteenth distinction of the decree, in these words: “They who serve the holy altar, if suddenly, by the frailty of the flesh to be bewailed, they are corru-” ### ANNOTATIO CCLI (concluded)

“She is fallen, and shall no more rise, the virgin of Israel.” — Amos 5:2

(the canon of Lérida concludes:) “…are overtaken, and, the Lord looking upon [them], have worthily done penance — let them so receive the places of their offices that they cannot be promoted further to higher offices.” St. Thomas, in the third volume of the Theological Summa, explaining the sayings of these [authorities], says² that a twofold dignity is lost by sinners: the one before the Church, the other before God; and that this [former] is double — one chief and primary, by which the just, by the gift of divine grace, are numbered among the sons of God; and this is restored to penitents, of which the proof is that prodigal son, to whom, [when] returning to his senses, the father commanded the stole of the lost dignity to be given back.³ But he says that the other, before God, is a secondary dignity — that is, innocence, which no one, however penitent, can recover; although sometimes he may be able to attain far greater honors, just as Gregory, in the homily on the hundred sheep, shows by the example of a soldier who, after flight, bravely returning to the battle, deserved greater praise and more excellent rewards from his leader than he who neither ever gave [his] back [in flight], nor ever did anything boldly. Concerning the glory, therefore, of this latter dignity, the words of Strabus are to be interpreted.

There is also, after these two, an ecclesiastical dignity, concerning which Thomas thinks that the canon of the aforesaid Council is to be understood — by which the higher grades of honors are denied, not to all penitents simply, but only to those who have done public penance. For also to Peter, as Arnobius on psalm 38 says, after the threefold denial a greater grade is restored to the penitent than had been taken away from the denier; and it was given to him by Christ, that he should be the bishop of all bishops.