CHAPTER IV
THE SUBJECTS OF LAW
i. ALL those are subject to the law and bound to yield it obedience who live under the authority of the legislator. And so, inasmuch as the natural law is derived from the eternal law of God, and is nothing else than the rule of action suited to human nature as such, all who participate in human nature are subject to the law of nature. Infants and madmen who do something forbidden by the law of nature are indeed excused from formal sin for want pf knowledge, but anyone who wilfully provokes them to such actions commits sin by their means in so doing.
2. Human law is intended to be a guide for reasonable human beings, and so the habitual use of reason is required in order to be subject to human law. Imbeciles and children who have not yet attained the use of reason are not subject to positive law. Regularly the Church presumes that at seven years of age children attain the use of reason, and inasmuch as the law provides for what ordinarily happens we may say that at seven years children begin to be obliged to hear Mass and to fulfil the other duties of the Christian life (Can. 12). It is well that they should be accustomed to obey such laws as those of hearing Mass and abstaining even earlier. There are special reasons for deferring the obligation of fasting, and sometimes for deferring for a time that of receiving Holy Communion (Can. 859).
Drunken people remain subject to the Church's law, for habitually they have the use of reason.
3. Men become subject to the Church by Christian baptism, and so all baptized persons, and these alone, are subject to the laws of the Church. Heretics and schismatics who are validly baptized are per se subject to the Church's laws, but a probable opinion teaches that it is not the Church's intention to bind them by such of her laws as proximately regard the sanctification of individual souls rather than the public good. Such are the laws of keeping certain days holy, of abstaining, of fasting, of hearing Mass on Sundays. Harm rather than good would follow from intending these laws to bind heretics and schismatics.
