Title V: Of the Superior Having Coercive Power

§ 1. Those who have the power of making laws or imposing precepts can also attach penalties to a law or precept; those who have only judicial power can only apply legitimately established penalties according to the norm of law.

§ 2. The Vicar General without a special mandate does not have the power of inflicting penalties.

Those having legislative power can, within the limits of their jurisdiction, strengthen with a congruous penalty not only a law borne by themselves or by predecessors, but also, because of peculiar circumstances of things, a law, whether divine or ecclesiastical, borne by a superior power and in force in the territory, or aggravate a penalty established by law.

§ 1. Although a law has no sanction attached, nevertheless the legitimate Superior can punish its transgression, even without a previous threat of penalty, by some just penalty, if perhaps scandal has been given or the special gravity of the transgression bears it; otherwise the accused cannot be punished unless he had first been warned with a threat of a latae or ferendae sententiae penalty in the case of transgression, and nevertheless violated the law.

§ 2. Likewise the same legitimate Superior, although it is only probable that a delict was committed or the penal action of a certainly committed delict has prescribed, has not only the right but also the office of not promoting a cleric whose suitability is not established, and, for avoiding scandal, of prohibiting to the cleric the exercise of sacred ministry or even of removing the same from office according to the norm of law; which things in the case do not have the character of a penalty.

§ 1. In applying penalties a judge cannot increase a determinate penalty, unless extraordinary aggravating circumstances require it.

§ 2. If a law in establishing a ferendae sententiae penalty uses facultative words, it is committed to the prudence and conscience of the judge to inflict it, or, if the penalty was determinate, to temper it.

§ 3. But if the law uses preceptive words, ordinarily the penalty is to be inflicted; but it is committed to the conscience and prudence of the judge or Superior:

1° To defer the application of the penalty to a more opportune time, if from too hasty punishment of the accused greater evils are foreseen as about to come.

2° To abstain from inflicting the penalty, if the accused has been perfectly amended and has repaired scandal, or has been sufficiently punished or is foreseen to be punished by penalties sanctioned by civil authority.

3° To temper a determinate penalty, or to employ in place of it some penal remedy or impose some penance, if a circumstance is given notably diminishing imputability, or if amendment of the accused or chastisement inflicted by civil authority is indeed had, but the judge or Superior besides considers some milder punishment opportune.

§ 4. To declare a latae sententiae penalty is generally committed to the prudence of the Superior; but either at the instance of an interested party, or when the common good so requires, a declaratory sentence must be given.

§ 1. Ordinarily there are as many penalties as delicts.

§ 2. If nevertheless, because of the number of delicts, there would be an excessive accumulation of penalties to be inflicted, it is left to the prudent judgment of the judge either to inflict the graver penalty of all, with some penance or penal remedy added if the matter bears it, or to moderate the penalties within equitable limits, with account taken of the number and gravity of the delicts.

§ 3. If a penalty has been constituted both for an attempted delict and for a consummated delict, once this has been admitted, only the penalty established for the consummated delict must be inflicted.

If a penalty is declared or inflicted by judicial sentence, the prescriptions of the canons concerning the pronouncement of judicial sentence are to be observed; but if a latae or ferendae sententiae penalty has been inflicted by way of a particular precept, it is ordinarily to be declared or imposed in writing or before two witnesses, with the causes of the penalty indicated, with the prescription of can. 2193 preserved.