Appendicula: On Deposition and Degradation

Deposition and degradation are most grave penalties, very closely akin to suspension, and are accustomed to be assimilated to it, because they affect clerics alone and induce privation of ecclesiastical rights and benefices. Nevertheless they are not properly censures, because they are inflicted by reason only of penalty, not of medicine.

§ 1. Deposition, with obligations arising from the order received and clerical privileges remaining firm, carries with it both suspension from office and inability for any offices, dignities, benefices, pensions, functions in the Church, and also privation of those which the guilty person has, even if he was ordained under their title.

§ 2. But in this last case, if the cleric truly needs it, let the Ordinary, according to his charity, take care to provide for him in the better way possible, lest he be compelled to beg with dishonor of the clerical state.

§ 3. The penalty of deposition cannot be inflicted except in cases expressed by law (Can. 2303).

Cf. can. 2314, § 1, n. 2, on delicts against the faith and the unity of the Church; 2320, 2322, n. 1, 2328, on delicts against religion; 2350, § 1, 2354, § 2, on delicts against life, liberty, etc.; 2379, on delicts against the obligations proper to the clerical or religious state; 2394, n. 2, 2401, on delicts in the conferral, reception, and loss of dignities.

§ 1. Degradation contains in itself deposition, perpetual privation of ecclesiastical habit, and reduction of the cleric to the lay state.

§ 2. This penalty can be brought only on account of a delict expressed in law, or if a cleric, already deposed and deprived of clerical habit, still goes on giving grave scandal for a year.

§ 3. One kind is verbal or edictal, which is imposed by sentence alone, yet so that it has all its juridical effects immediately without any execution; another is real, if the solemnities prescribed in the Roman Pontifical are observed (Can. 2305).