Chapter IV. Ecclesiastical Penalties

CERTAIN ecclesiastical penalties resemble censures in some respects, and it will be convenient to say a word about them here. Deposition is an ecclesiastical penalty by which a cleric as a punishment for grave crime is for ever suspended from his office and rendered incapable of holding any office, dignity, benefice, pension, or post in the Church, and deprived of those which he has, even though he was ordained on their title (Can. 2303). It differs from a censure in that it is vindictive, not remedial, and it does not endure merely until correction, amendment, and absolution; but of itself it is perpetual. The deposed cleric retains the privileges of the forum and of the canon,

Degradation is a more severe penalty than deposition, inasmuch as it reduces the cleric to the state of a layman as far as it is in the power of the Church so to do, and deprives him of all clerical offices, rights, and privileges. Degradation is inflicted by the bishop in punishment of grave crimes committed by clerics who are incorrigible, by depriving them solemnly of their vestments and insignia of office, and handing them over to be dealt with by the secular arm,

By ecclesiastical burial is meant interment in consecrated ground with the rites of the Church. All Catholics who die in communion with the faithful have a right to ecclesiastical burial. If there is no consecrated ground in which they can be buried, the grave in which they are placed is blessed at the time of interment. As far as possible Catholics should have a special cemetery of their own or a portion at least of the common cemetery assigned to them exclusively. In this a part should be left unblessed for the reception of the bodies of unbaptized infants and of those to whom Christian burial is to be denied. These are either such as are deprived of ecclesiastical burial because they died out of communion with the faithful, or those to whom it is denied in punishment of crime.

To the first category belong all who are not baptized, open and public heretics, schismatics, apostates, and those under excommunication, for “‘ with those with whom we have not communicated when alive we do not communicate when dead.¹’”4 To the second class belong suicides, unless they killed themselves while out of their mind, and this the Church readily presumes, those who have been killed in a duel, those who did not make their Easter duties, and open and public sinners. No Catholic, however, should be refused ecclesiastical burial without the sentence of the bishop.

Those also, who of their own free will chose to be cremated and persevered in this choice till death, are denied ecclesiastical burial. The Church’s rites may be performed at the house and in the Church in favour of those who are to be cremated by the wish of another, but no sacred rites are permitted at the crematorium.²

Although cremation in itself is not intrinsically wrong, yet the Church for good reasons forbids it, and it is gravely sinful for a Catholic to take a formal part in the cremation of the body of a Catholic.

¹ C. 12, de Sepulturis.

² S.0., December 15, 1886; can. 1203, 1240, 2339.