Section 5. Defect of Reputation.

487. From Defect of Reputation those are irregular who are marked by infamy of law.¹

The ministers of the Church ought to be irreprehensible and without crime. Therefore in antiquity any delict at all kept one away from the sacred ministry; but today only grave delicts, and indeed those which are expressly determined by law, render irregular, and not properly the delicts themselves but the infamy which is contracted because of the delicts.

1. Infamy is privation or diminution of good reputation or good estimation.

2. Infamy is one thing of law, legal, which is incurred by the authority of law because of a delict; another thing of fact, popular, which is contracted from public knowledge of a crime committed.

a. Infamy of law is contracted either ipso facto, namely by the very commission of a crime before every sentence of a judge, or by sentence of a judge which decrees infamy.

b. Infamy of fact is contracted by its nature from public notice of a crime committed. This notice can become public in a twofold way: either by sentence of a judge condemning the accused for the crime, or by actual divulgation.

3. Infamy of law induces irregularity even if the delict is hidden;² but infamy of fact by its nature requires that the delict be publicly known, either through the sentence of a judge or through actual divulgation.

Infamy of fact existing in reality induces irregularity, even if the sentence of the judge is unjust or the judgment of men about the committed crime is false; for an unjust sentence and a false estimation equally generate infamy, and true infamy.

¹ Cn. 984, 5.

² Gasparri I, n. 288, following Suarez.

488. Who Are Infamous. Infamy of law is not contracted except in cases expressly established by common law.¹

In the new law those expressly established as infamous ipso facto are:

a. He who gives his name to an acatholic sect or publicly adheres to it, Cn. 2314, 2.

b. He who casts away the consecrated species, or carries them away or retains them for an evil end, Cn. 2320.

c. He who violates the corpses or tombs of the dead for theft or another evil end, Cn. 2328.

d. He who lays violent hands on the person of the Roman pontiff or of some cardinal or legate of the Roman pontiff, and nuncios and internuncios also pertain to legates, Cn. 2343 and 267.

e. Duelists and those who are called their seconds, Cn. 1351. Duels of students in Germany, namely academic Mensuren, are true duels, which bring infamy of law on those dueling and on their seconds, as the Sacred Congregation of the Council declared August 9, 1890.

f. Bigamists who, while the conjugal bond remains, attempt another marriage, even only civil, Cn. 2356.

g. Laymen legitimately condemned because of delicts against the sixth commandment with minors below the age of sixteen, or because of rape, sodomy, incest, or pandering, Cn. 2357, 1.

By sentence of a judge clerics in sacred orders, whether seculars or religious, who have admitted a delict against the sixth precept of the Decalogue with minors below the age of sixteen, or adultery, rape, bestiality, sodomy, pandering, incest with blood-relatives or relatives by affinity in the first degree, must be declared infamous, Cn. 2359, 2.

In the new Code the delicts by which infamy is contracted ipso facto have indeed been increased; but infamy itself is restricted to this extent, that because of the delict of another no one is any longer made infamous. Neither infamy of law nor of fact affects the blood-relatives or relatives by affinity of the delinquent, Cn. 2293, 4.

¹ Cn. 2293, 2.