Sacrilege
SACRILEGE
Any profanation or abuse of things peculiarly sacred to God; such as robbing the house of God, or making it a den of thieves, Mat 21:12,13 ; 1Ch 2:2 .
Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary
Sacrilege
See Robbers of Churches.
Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
SACRILEGE
The crime of profaning sacred things, or things devoted to God. The ancient church distinguished several sorts of sacrilege.
The first was the diverting things appropriated to sacred purposes to ther uses.
2. Robbing the graves, or defacing and spoiling the monuments of the dead.
3. Those were considered as sacrilegious persons who delivered up their Bibles and the sacred utensils of the church to the Pagans, in the time of the Dioclesian persecution.
4. Profaning the sacraments, churches, altars, &c.
5. Molesting or hindering a clergyman in the performance of his office.
6. Depriving men of the use of the Scriptures or the sacraments, particularly the cup in the eucharist. The Romish casuists acknowledge all these but the last.
Fuente: Theological Dictionary
sacrilege
(Latin: sacer, sacred; legere, to purloin)
The violation or irreverent treatment of sacred persons, places, or things. To be a sacrilege, this violation or irreverent treatment must touch that formality in the object by which it is sacred. Sacrilege is a sin opposed to the virtue of religion, and as such is a grave sin in grave matter. The definition suggests the threefold division of sacrilege; viz., personal, an irreverent treatment of sacred persons, such as the violent laying of hands on clerics or religious; local, a violation of a sacred place, such as committing certain crimes, as homicide in a church; real, a violation of sacred things, such as the unworthy reception of a sacrament of the living, or simony.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Sacrilege
(Lat. sacrilegium, robbing a temple, from sacer, sacred, and legere, to purloin.)
Sacrilege is in general the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred object. In a less proper sense any transgression against the virtue of religion would be a sacrilege.
Theologians are substantially agreed in regarding as sacred that and that only which by a public rite and by Divine or ecclesiastical institution has been dedicated to the worship of God. The point is that the public authority must intervene; private initiative, no matter how ardent in devotion or praiseworthy in motive, does not suffice. Attributing a sacred character to a thing is a juridical act, and as such is a function of the governing power of the Church.
It is customary to enumerate three kinds of sacrilege: personal, local, and real. St. Thomas teaches (Summa, II-II, Q., xcix) that a different sort of holiness attaches to persons, places, and things. Hence the irreverence offered to any one of them is specifically distinct from that which is exhibited to the others. Suarez (De Religione, tr. iii, 1-3) does not seem to think the division very logical, but accepts it as being in accord with the canons.
Personal Sacrilege. Personal sacrilege means to deal so irreverently with a sacred person that, whether by the injury inflicted or the defilement caused, there is a breach of the honour due to such person. This sacrilege may be committed chiefly in three ways:
by laying violent hands on a cleric or religious. This constitutes an infraction of what is known as the privilege of the canon (privilegium canonis), and is visited with the penalty of excommunication; by violating the ecclesiastical immunity in so far as it still exists. Clerics according to the old-time discipline were entitled to exemption from the jurisdiction of lay tribunals (privilegium fori). The meaning, therefore, is that he who despite this haled them before a civil court, otherwise than as provided by the canons, was guilty of sacrilege and was excommunicated; by any sin against the vow of chastity on the part of those who are consecrated to God — such are those in sacred orders (in the Latin Church) and religious, even those with simple vows, if these are perpetual. The weight of opinion amongst moralists is that this guilt is not contracted by the violation of a privately-made vow. The reason seems to be that, while there is a breach of faith with Almighty God, still such a vow, lacking the indorsement and acceptance of the Church, does not make the person formally a sacred one; it does not in the juridical sense set such an one apart for the worship of God. It need hardly be noted that the partners of sacred persons in sins of this kind are to be adjudged equally guilty of sacrilege even though their status be a purely lay one.
Local Sacrilege. Local sacrilege is the violation of a sacred place. Under the designation “sacred place” is included not only a church properly so-called even though it be not consecrated, but merely blessed, but also public oratories as well as cemeteries canonically established for the burial of the faithful. Four species of this crime are ordinarily distinguished:
the theft of something found in and specially belonging to the church; the infringing of the immunity attaching to sacred places in so far as this prerogative still prevails. It should be observed that in this case the term “sacred place” receives a wider comprehension than that indicated above. It comprises not only churches, public chapels, and cemeteries, but also the episcopal palace, monasteries, hospitals erected by episcopal authority and having a chapel for the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice, and also the person of the priest when he is carrying the Blessed Sacrament. To all of these was granted the right of asylum the outraging of which was deemed a sacrilege; the commission within the sacred precincts of some sinful act by which, according to canon law, the edifice is esteemed polluted. These acts are homicide, any shedding of blood reaching to the guilt of a grievous sin, any consummated offence against chastity (including marital intercourse which is not necessary), the burial within the church or sacred place of an unbaptized person or of one who has been excommunicated by name or as a notorious violator of the privilege of the canon; the doing of certain things (whether sins or not), which, either by their own nature or by special provision of law, are particularly incompatible with the demeanour to be maintained in such a place. Such would be for instance turning the church into a stable or a market, using it as a banquet hall, or holding court there indiscriminately for the settlement of purely secular affairs.
Real Sacrilege. Real sacrilege is the irreverent treatment of sacred things as distinguished from places and persons. This can happen first of all by the administration or reception of the sacraments (or in the case of the Holy Eucharist by celebration) in the state of mortal sin, as also by advertently doing any of those things invalidly. Indeed deliberate and notable irreverence towards the Holy Eucharist is reputed the worst of all sacrileges. Likewise conscious maltreatment of sacred pictures or relics or perversion of Holy Scripture or sacred vessels to unhallowed uses, and finally, the usurpation or diverting of property (whether movable or immovable) intended for the maintenance of the clergy or serving for the ornamentation of the church to other uses, constitute real sacrileges. Sometimes the guilt of sacrilege may be incurred by omitting what is required for the proper administration of the sacraments or celebration of the sacrifice, as for example, if one were to say Mass without the sacred vestments.
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SLATER, Manual of Moral Theology (New York, 1908); RICKABY, Moral Teaching of St. Thomas (London, 1896); BALLERINI, Opus theologicum morale (Prato, 1899); D’ANNIBALE, Summula theologi moralis (Rome, 1908); SPELMAN, The History and Fate of Sacrilege (London, 1888).
JOSEPH F. DELANY Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIIICopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, February 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, D.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Sacrilege
(, to rob a temple, Rom 2:22; so the noun , robber of churches, Act 19:37), the violation or profanation of holy places, persons, or things. Though the word sacrilege is not used elsewhere than as above in our version of the canonical Scriptures, yet we find the crime itself often alluded to; e.g. profaning the sanctuary (Lev 21:22), profaning hallowed things (Lev 19:8), profaning the covenant (Mal 2:10). The first sacrilegious act we read of is that of Esau selling his birthright (Gen 25:33), for which he is called profane by Paul (Heb 12:16). Instances of this under the Mosaic economy (which sternly forbade it [Exo 25:14]) were the cases of Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10), the men of Bethshemesh (1 Samuel 5), Uzzah (2 Samuel 6:67), Uzziah (2 Chronicles 26). The Jews at a later period of their history were eminently guilty in this particular, inasmuch as they withheld the tithes and offerings which God required of them (Mal 3:8-10), and converted his holy temple into a market (Mat 21:12-13). This profanation is forbidden in the Talmud (Lightfoot, ad loc.). SEE TEMPLE.
Yet they pretended to be punctiliously scrupulous in their reverence for the interior building (Mat 26:61). So the grand accusation against Stephen was that he spoke disrespectfully of the Temple (Act 6:13). An uproar was excited against Paul in Jerusalem on the charge that he brought Greeks into the Temple and polluted the holy place (Act 21:28-29), though daily profanations were committed by the affected zealots with impunity. At length, in the closing scenes of Jerusalem, such were the multitude and the magnitude of the sacrileges that Josephus says if the Romans had not taken the city of Jerusalem he would have expected it to have been swallowed up like Sodom, or have had some other dreadful judgment. The jealousy of the Almighty respecting things dedicated to him, and his punishment of the profanation of them, are alluded to by Paul (1Co 3:17): If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. We read but little else in the N.T. pertaining to sacrilege except Paul’s rebuke of the Corinthians for their profane conduct at the celebration of the Lord’s supper (1Co 11:29). In that early period of the Christian Church, it had not been able as yet regularly to establish sacred places and things; but as soon as circumstances permitted, we shall find in the Church history of every nation a due respect for consecrated things, and laws for their preservation. Even the heathens, particularly the Greeks and Romans, were not without their rules concerning sacrilege, the penalty of which was usually death. Thus it was held sacrilege for the polluted to pass beyond the porch of the temple, to spit or wipe the nose in a temple, to cut down consecrated trees, to build upon or till any spot of ground where a thunderbolt had fallen, to suffer a man to witness the ceremonies of the Bona Dea, or Good Goddess, or to suffer a woman to enter the temple of Diana in the Vicus Patricius in Rome, to suffer a birth or death to occur in the holy isle of Delos, to steal anything belonging to a temple, to approach a sacrifice without being sprinkled by the priest with the lustral water, to consecrate a blemished man to the priesthood (compare with the Jewish law, Lev 21:21), and many other instances which will occur to the classical reader.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Sacrilege
sakri-lej: For commit sacrilege in Rom 2:22 (the King James Version and the English Revised Version margin), the Revised Version (British and American) has rob temples, which more exactly expresses the meaning of the verb (hierosuleo; compare Act 19:37, robbers of temples (which see)). The noun occurs in 2 Macc 4:39 (the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American)) for the corresponding form hierosulema.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Sacrilege
Profaning holy things.
Forbidden
Lev 19:8; 1Co 3:17; Tit 1:11; 1Pe 5:2
Instances of:
– Esau sells his birthright
Gen 25:33
– Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire
Lev 10:1-7; Num 3:4
– Of Uzzah
2Sa 6:6-7
– Of Uzziah
2Ch 26:16-21
– Of Korah and his company
Num 16:40
– Of the people of Beth-Shemesh
1Sa 6:19
– Of Ahaz
2Ch 28:24
– Of money changers in the temple
Mat 21:12-13; Luk 19:45; Joh 2:14-16
– Of those who profaned the holy eucharist
1Co 11:29
Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible
Sacrilege
* For SACRILEGE see ROBBER, No. 2, Rom 2:22