of mixed causes can also be reduced the suppression of heresy, where Church and State cooperate with each other for the maintenance of the integrity or the faith and the preservation of the civil peace. Finally, many causes, of their nature civil, are accounted mixed by canonists, either because the State relinquished them to the Church's tribunals or custom gradually caused them to be relegated to the ecclesiastical forum, such as the recognition of last wills and testaments, the care of the poor, etc. Punishments The punishments which may be inflicted by the external ecclesiastical forum are not only spiritual as excommunication, but also temporal or corporal. As regards the infliction of the death penalty, canonists generally hold that ecclesiastical law forbids inferior church tribunals to decree this punishment directly, but that the pope or a general council has the power, at least indirectly, in as much as they can demand that a Catholic state inflict this punishment when the good of the Church requires it. Finally, they hold that there is no valid argument to prove that the direct exercise of this power does not fall within the competence of the ecclesiastical forum, although it was the custom of the latter to hand over the criminal to the secular arm for the infliction of the death penalty. The encroachments of the civil power on the Church's jurisdiction have in our days, practically though unwarrantly, restricted the ecclesiastical forum to spiritual causes only. Oriental and Latin canon law The distinction between the internal forum and the external forum is recognized in Canon 980 §1 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, which states and in Canon 130 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which states "Internal forum solution" The term "internal forum" is sometimes used in connection with the controversial so-called "internal forum solution" claimed to justify reception of Holy Communion by someone who is convinced that a former marriage was invalid, but who cannot prove this externally so as to obtain a declaration of nullity. This is not a canonical solution. See also Priest–penitent privilege Note on the importance of the internal forum and the inviolability of the Sacramental Seal References Bibliography Further reading John P. Beal, James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green, New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law (Paulist Press 2002 ) Sacramental law Apostolic Penitentiary Penal canon law Confession (Catholic Church) Catholic