Morals of the Church
Library › Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology › Volume II › Book IV. On the Sanction of Christian Life, or on Ecclesiastical Penalties › Treatise II. On the Penalties of Delict › Dissertation II. On Penalties in Species › Part II. On Vindicative Penalties

Section — Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology

Section I. On Vindicative Penalties in General

889.

I. Notion. Vindicative penalties are those which tend directly to the expiation of the delict, so that their remission does not depend on the cessation of the delinquent's contumacy (canon 2286).

II. Division. A vindicative penalty is distinguished:

  1. By reason of the privation, into spiritual or mixed, or even merely temporal, because sometimes it deprives one of merely temporal goods; otherwise than a censure (n. 862).

  2. By reason of the subject, into one common to all the faithful or special to clerics.

  3. Finally, just as censure, so also a vindicative penalty is latae or ferendae sententiae, a iure or ab homine, determinate or indeterminate.

Note 1. From inflicted vindicative penalties there is given appeal or recourse in suspensive effect, unless something else is expressly provided in law (canon 2287).

Note 2. In canon law the so-called conditional condemnation is assumed; for canon 2288 establishes: if the guilty person is such that for the first time after a life laudably passed he has offended, it is remitted to the prudence of the judge to suspend the execution of the ordinary penalty inflicted by condemnatory sentence; yet on this condition, that if the guilty person within the next three years commits another delict of the same or another kind, he undergo the penalty due to each delict (canon 2288). With the three years having passed without crime, the guilty person is free from the effect of the condemnation. Nevertheless this conditional condemnation is not admitted: 1° in penalties of degradation, deposition, deprivation of office or benefice; 2° if the necessity of repairing scandal presses (cited canon).

III. Cessation. A vindicative penalty is ended:

  1. By its expiation (canon 2289), and this mode corresponds to its nature.

  2. By dispensation (cited canon); for this there is required a cause proportionate to the gravity of the penal law, because dispensation in a vindicative penalty is against the intention of the law; it is certainly also required that the guilty person be amended and that he have repaired damages and scandal according to his powers. Nor, when the dispensation sought has been denied, can the guilty person appeal, but only for a grave cause have extrajudicial recourse to the Superior.

Dispensation can be granted by: 1° him who issued the penal law or penalty; 2° his competent Superior or successor; 3° the person to whom the power of dispensing from the penalty or from the penal law has been committed (canons 2236; 2237; 2290). Moreover, this power has been committed as follows:

a) The Ordinary, by force of canon 2237, can by ordinary power: 1° in public cases remit vindicative penalties latae sententiae established by common law, except cases brought to the contentious forum, and penalties of incapacity for benefices, offices, dignities, functions in the Church, active and passive voice, or deprivation of these, perpetual suspension, infamy of law, deprivation of the right of patronage and of a privilege or grace granted by the Apostolic See; 2° in occult cases remit vindicative penalties latae sententiae established by common law and reserved in any manner whatever.

b) Any confessor can in the sacramental forum, in more urgent occult cases, namely, if from observance of a vindicative penalty latae sententiae the guilty person would betray himself with infamy and scandal: 1° suspend the obligation of observing the penalty, with the burden imposed of having recourse at least within a month by letter and through the confessor, if this can be done without grave inconvenience, the name withheld, to the Sacred Penitentiary or to the Bishop endowed with the faculty, and of standing by his commands; 2° dispense, if in some extraordinary case the aforesaid recourse is impossible, nevertheless imposing those things which by law must be imposed and imposing congruous penance and satisfaction for the penalty, so that the penitent, unless within a congruous time to be fixed beforehand by the confessor he has done penance and given satisfaction, falls back into the penalty (canon 2290, § 2, compared with canon 2254, § 3); that is, reincidence, although by its own nature it regards censures, nevertheless of itself does not prevent a Prelate from dispensing from a penalty under the condition that the dispensed person, if he does not perform something, is again bound by the bond of the same penalty.1

1 Lega, op. cit., n. 135.

Censures and Ecclesiastical PenaltiesVindicative Penalties