ARTICLE III: ON THE CESSATION OF DISPENSATION

Dispensation can cease in multiple ways, namely 1° by cessation of the cause; 2° by revocation; 3° by renunciation.

164. Principles. - I. By cessation of the cause a dispensation ceases (but not a commutation, L. I, 195), if there has ceased: 1) the final cause, and not only the impulsive; and this 2) totally; 3) certainly; and 4) before the dispensation has obtained effect. But if it has already obtained effect, one granted absolutely does not cease; otherwise if under an express or tacit condition: if the cause endures.³

The principle is proved and explained.

It is said: if there has ceased: 1) the final cause and not only the impulsive; for the former, not the latter, is the reason of the dispensation.

It is said: 2) totally. For then the prayers do not rest on truth in any way. It is otherwise if the motive cause ceases only in part, because the cause of dispensation still remains. Hence a dispensation from fasting conceded because of infirmity ceases when you have fully recovered; otherwise, if the infirmity remains in part.¹ Hence likewise, if the final cause, for example, of dispensing in an impediment of marriage is the legitimation of offspring and the reparation of scandal or damage; - if the offspring dies, or the fetus has been miscarried, the dispensation is still sustained for repairing scandal or damage.

It is said: 3) certainly. For in doubt one must stand for the dispensation, which possesses.

It is said: 4) before the dispensation, etc. For he to whom the execution of the letters is committed cannot satisfy his office except under the tacit condition: if the prayers rest upon truth; which condition demands that the final cause persist at the time at which the dispensation obtains execution. Titius, for example, petitions for a dispensation from an impediment of consanguinity, setting forth as the sole final and total cause the legitimation of offspring already begotten from a blood relative; he obtains the dispensation, and the dispensatory letters have already been dispatched; but before the letters are given to execution by the delegate (or before the dispensation has been fulminated), the offspring dies: - the dispensation ceases.

It is added: But if it has already obtained effect, etc. But according to St. Alphonsus² an absolute dispensation is one which is given because of a cause of itself perpetual, such as, for example, in a dispensation over irregularity the poverty of parents, lack of ministers, uprightness of morals is judged to be; otherwise it is held as conditioned, such as infirmity is commonly judged to be, because of which one is dispensed from fasting, abstinence, the Divine Office. (Z) p. 484.

II. Dispensation altogether ceases by the express revocation of the Superior, because obligation or release from obligation depends on the will of the Superior. Yet revocation without just cause would be illicit. - But it does not cease because of revocation by an inferior without just cause, because the faculty of revoking is not in his arbitrary power.³

III. Renunciation must be accepted by the Superior, because he alone can again bind one loosed from the law. But a delegate cannot accept it; for, once the dispensation has been given, he has ceased to be Superior. - A dispensation does not cease by non-use or by contrary use, for example, by fasting or by not marrying the affine, if you were dispensed in fasting, affinity. L. I, 198.