Article II: On Exempting Cause, or Dispensation

970. Exempting cause removes the obligation of the law. Besides the causes which remove the law for all, dispensation is an act of the ecclesiastical superior relaxing the law in a particular case. Generally the same one can dispense from fasting and abstinence; yet someone delegated for a particular matter could dispense from one and not from the other.

971. Who can dispense. - They can dispense:

1. The Pope, by ordinary power, for the whole Church.

2. Local Ordinaries and pastors, by quasi-ordinary power from custom confirmed by law, in singular cases and for a just cause, their subjects, individual faithful or families, even outside the territory, and in their own territory also pilgrims, from the observance of the common law of abstinence and fasting (can. 1245, § 1).

3. Ordinaries, for a special cause and on account of a great crowd of people or public health, the whole diocese or some place (ibid., § 2).

4. Superiors of exempt clerical religious, who have the same power as a pastor toward those subject to their jurisdiction (ibid., § 3).

5. Others, if they have been delegated.

Confessors per se have no power of dispensing. Yet in Belgium a yearly faculty is often granted to confessors, for individual persons, not for families, only on the occasion of confession, and for the year from Lent to Lent. Bishops also receive broader delegated faculties.

972. Observations. - 1. The Pope dispenses validly even without cause; others do not. For validity there is required a grave reason, not merely a light one, although a reason less grave than that which would excuse suffices. If the cause ceases, the dispensation ceases.

2. According to canons 50 and 85, universal dispensations from abstinence, insofar as they are given for a private benefit, are of strict interpretation, since they are odious. Therefore faculties granted in Belgium and elsewhere, except on Good Friday, to certain classes of persons in the Lenten Mandate must be interpreted strictly. Thus military men, or those similar to them, are understood as those actually serving; workers of railway vehicles are not station or administrative workers.¹

¹ Genicot thinks that, with a general dispensation, soldiers can eat meat when they are allowed to be at home briefly, or when they habitually take food outside the barracks, because the indult is granted to all who are actually enrolled.

3. Non-ecclesiastical superiors cannot dispense. Hence a father cannot extend his own dispensation to his family because of expense. Yet if there is an excusing reason, for example, if preparing two meals would cause grave inconvenience, or if the father cannot or will not prepare other food, a simple confessor can permit meats, provided hatred of religion is absent and fasting is observed if possible; for then the reason is the impotence of the children, not the indult of the father.

4. One dispensed from fasting is not on that account dispensed from abstinence, and conversely. Hence if he is fasting, he can eat meat once in the day, and only at the meal, not at the collation; but if he is also not bound to fast, he can eat meat more often.

5. Bishops sometimes impose prayers or alms for the dispensation. Usually the dispensation is principal and absolute, with a slight commutation added. If there is a true precept, it binds only those who are exempted by a dispensation delegated by the bishop, not those who are excused or dispensed by their own superior. Prayers are light and bind lightly; multiple omissions do not coalesce into grave matter. Alms, likewise, are not grave.