Title IV: Of the Notion, Species, Interpretation, and Application of Penalties

An ecclesiastical penalty is the privation of some good, inflicted by legitimate authority for the correction of the delinquent and the punishment of the delict.

In the Church delinquents are punished:

1° By medicinal penalties or censures.

2° By vindicative penalties.

3° By penal remedies and penances.

§ 1. A penalty is called:

1° Determinate, if it has been taxatively established in the law or precept itself; indeterminate, if it has been left to the prudent judgment of the judge or Superior by either preceptive or facultative words.

2° Latae sententiae, if a determinate penalty has been added to a law or precept in such a way that it is incurred by the very fact of the committed delict; ferendae sententiae, if it must be inflicted by a judge or Superior.

3° From law, if a determinate penalty is established in the law itself, whether it is latae sententiae or ferendae sententiae; from man, if it is borne by way of particular precept or by a condemnatory judicial sentence, even if established in law; wherefore a ferendae sententiae penalty added to a law, before a condemnatory sentence, is only from law, afterwards from law and at the same time from man, but it is considered as from man.

§ 2. A penalty is always understood to be ferendae sententiae, unless it is expressly said to be latae sententiae or to be contracted by the fact itself or by the law itself, or unless other similar words are employed.

§ 1. In decreeing penalties, equitable proportion with the delict is to be observed, with account taken of imputability, scandal, and damage; wherefore there must be attended not only the object and gravity of the law, but also the age, knowledge, training, sex, condition, state of mind of the delinquent, the dignity of the person who is offended by the delict or who commits the delict, the intended end, the place and time in which the delict was committed, whether the delinquent acted from an impulse of passion or because of grave fear, whether he repented of the delict and himself tried to avoid its evil effects, and other similar things.

§ 2. Not only those things which excuse from all imputability, but also those which excuse from grave imputability, equally excuse from any penalty, both latae sententiae and ferendae sententiae, even in the external forum, if for the external forum the excuse is established.

§ 3. Mutual injury is compensated, unless one party must be condemned on account of the greater gravity of the injury brought by the same party, the penalty being diminished if the case bears.

§ 1. In penalties the more benign interpretation is to be made.

§ 2. But if there is doubt whether a penalty inflicted by a competent Superior is just or not, the penalty is to be observed in both forums, except in the case of appeal in suspensive effect.

§ 3. It is not permitted to extend a penalty from person to person or from case to case, although an equal reason, indeed a graver one, is present, with nevertheless the prescription of can. 2231 preserved.