Chapter II. Suspension

SUSPENSION is a censure by which a cleric is deprived of the use of some ecclesiastical power which he has by reason of his orders, office, or benefice, or, in the words of the Code, it is a censure by which a cleric is debarred from office, or benefice, or both.

This censure, then, differs from the rest in that it is inflicted only on clerics, whom it deprives of the lawful exercise of some portion or of the whole of the ecclesiastical power which they possess. A suspended priest may hear Mass and receive the sacraments, and he retains the order or office from which he is suspended, but he cannot lawfully exercise that order or office as long as he is under censure.

Suspension may be partial, as when it deprives the delinquent of the exercise of some sacred order, or office, or of the administration and fruits of his benefice; or it may be total and embrace all those ecclesiastical powers. When a cleric is simply suspended without any special limitation he is understood to be totally suspended from all sacred orders, the exercise of his office, and the fruits of his benefice.

Suspension ab homine, inflicted for the perpetration of a crime, should ordinarily be imposed after the crime has been proved judicially. However, the Council of Trent¹ permitted prelates to suspend their clerics on account of a secret crime and without judicial process, If they use this right, they are said to suspend the delinquent ex informata conscientia; if it is inflicted as a censure they are bound to make known the grounds of their action to the delinquent himself, and they should be prepared to submit them to the Sacred Congregation if he have recourse to Rome, as he has a right to do, though he has no right to a strict appeal.²

Suspension inflicted for life, or for a crime which is altogether past and done with, or at the will and good pleasure of the superior, is not a censure in the strict sense, but a mere penalty inflicted in punishment for crime.

¹ Sess. xiv, c. 1, de Ref.; can. 2186 ff.

² Instruct. S.C. de P.F., October 20, 1884.

A suspended person who exercises an act prohibited him by the censure commits grave sin, and if he solemnly exercises sacred orders after being suspended from them he incurs the penalty of irregularity in addition (Can. 985). An act of jurisdiction on the part of one who is publicly suspended after a condemnatory or declaratory sentence, or if the jurisdiction were expressly revoked by the superior, would be invalid; otherwise it would always be valid, and even lawful if it were exercised at the request of the faithful who have the right to ask it of him.