Title IX: Of Vindicative Penalties

Vindicative penalties are those which tend directly to the expiation of a delict, so that their remission does not depend on the cessation of the delinquent's contumacy.

From inflicted vindicative penalties there is given appeal or recourse in suspensive effect, unless another thing is expressly provided in law.

Excepting the penalties of degradation, deposition, privation of office or benefice, and unless the necessity of repairing scandal urges, it is remitted to the prudence of the judge, if the accused is such that for the first time after a life laudably completed he has offended, to suspend the execution of an ordinary penalty inflicted by condemnatory sentence, with this condition nevertheless, that if the accused within the next three years commits another delict of the same or of another kind, he pay the penalty owed for each delict.

A vindicative penalty is ended by its expiation or by dispensation granted by him who has legitimate power of dispensing according to the norm of can. 2236.

§ 1. In more urgent occult cases, if from the observance of a latae sententiae vindicative penalty the accused would betray himself with infamy and scandal, any confessor can in the sacramental forum suspend the obligation of observing the penalty, with the burden imposed of recurring at least within a month by letter and through the confessor, if this can be done without grave inconvenience, the name being withheld, to the Sacred Penitentiary or to the Bishop furnished with faculty, and of standing by his mandates.

§ 2. And if in some extraordinary case this recourse is impossible, then the confessor himself can grant dispensation according to the norm of can. 2254, Sec. 3.