Title XXXIII: Of the Manner of Proceeding in Inflicting Suspension from Informed Conscience

§ 1. It is permitted to Ordinaries from informed conscience to suspend their subject clerics from office either in part or even in whole.

§ 2. It is not permitted to employ this extraordinary remedy if the Ordinary can without grave inconvenience proceed against the subject according to the norm of law.

For imposing this suspension neither judicial forms nor canonical warnings are required; but it is enough if the Ordinary, with the prescription of the canons which follow observed, declares by simple decree that he imposes the suspension.

A decree of this kind is to be given in writing, unless circumstances require another thing, with the day, month, and year designated; and in it:

1° It is to be said expressly that the suspension is imposed from informed conscience or from causes known to the Ordinary himself.

2° The time of duration of the penalty is to be indicated; but the Ordinary is to abstain from imposing it in perpetuity. It can indeed be imposed also as a censure, provided that in this case the cause on account of which the suspension is imposed is made known to the cleric.

3° The acts which are prohibited are to be clearly indicated, if the suspension is imposed not in whole but in part.

§ 1. If a cleric has been suspended from an office in which another must be substituted in his place, as, e.g., an administrator in the care of souls, he who is substituted is to receive wages from the fruits of the benefice, to be determined according to the prudent judgment of the Ordinary.

§ 2. A suspended cleric, if he has felt himself burdened, can petition diminution of the pension from the immediate Superior who in the judicial way would be the judge of appeal.

The Ordinary who imposes suspension from informed conscience must from completed investigations have collected such proofs as render him certain that the cleric truly perpetrated the delict and indeed one so grave that he must be coerced by a penalty of this kind.

§ 1. To suspension from informed conscience a just and legitimate cause is furnished by an occult delict according to the norm of can. 2197, n. 4.

§ 2. For a notorious delict suspension from informed conscience can never be imposed.

§ 3. For a public delict to be able to be punished by suspension from informed conscience, it is necessary that one of the circumstances which follow occur:

1° If upright and grave witnesses indeed make the delict known to the Ordinary, but by no reason can be induced to bear testimony about it in judgment, nor can the delict be proved by other proofs in judicial process.

2° If the cleric himself by threats or by other means employed impedes a judicial process from being instituted or one begun from being completed.

3° If impediments to preparing the judicial process and rendering sentence arise from adverse civil laws or from grave danger of scandal.

Suspension from informed conscience is valid if, out of several delicts, only one was occult.

It is left to the prudent judgment of the Ordinary to disclose or to keep silent to the cleric the cause of the suspension, or the delict, with pastoral solicitude and charity nevertheless employed, so that, if he has judged that the delict should be made manifest to the cleric, the penalty, from the paternal warnings which he has interposed, may serve not only for the expiation of fault, but also for the amendment of the delinquent and for eliminating the occasion of sin.

If the cleric interposes recourse from the suspension inflicted upon him, the Ordinary must send to the Apostolic See the proofs by which it is established that the cleric truly perpetrated the delict which can be punished by this extraordinary penalty.