Censure (Catholic canon law)

A censure, in the canon law of the Catholic Church, is a medicinal and spiritual punishment imposed by the church on a baptized, delinquent, and contumacious person, by which he is deprived, either wholly or in part, of the use ofspiritual goods, until he recover from his contumacy.

Division

Besides the particular division of censures into excommunication, suspension, and interdict, there are several general divisions of censures. number one censures a jure and ab homine. Censures a jure by the law are those inflicted by a permanent edict of the lawgiver, i.e., which the law itself attribute to a crime. We must distinguish here between a law, i.e., an enactment having, of itself, permanent and perpetual binding force, and a mere predominance or precept, commonly temporal in obligation and lapsing with the death of the superior by whom it was given. Censures a jure, therefore, are annexed either to the common law of the Church, such as decrees of popes and general councils, or are inflicted by general law, e.g., by bishops for their particular diocese or territory, commonly in provincial or diocesan synods. Censures ab homine by man are those which are passed by the sentence, command, or particular precept of the judge, e.g., by the bishop, as contradistinguished from the law intended above. They are usually owing to particular and transient circumstances, and are allocated to last only as long as such circumstances exist. The censure ab homine may be in the defecate of a general order, command, or precept, binding on all subjects , or it may be only by a particular direction or precept for an individual case, e.g., in a trial where the delinquent is found guilty and censured, or as a particular precept to stop a particular delinquency.

Another division of censures is important and peculiar to the penal legislation of the Church. A censure a jure or ab homine may be either 1 or 2 .

1 Censures of sentence pronounced are incurred by the commission of the crime; in other words, the delinquent incurs the penalty in the very act of breaking the law, and the censure binds the conscience of the delinquent immediately, without the process of a trial, or the formality of a judicial sentence. The law itself inflicts the penalty in thewhen the violation of the law is complete. this bracket of penalty is especially powerful in the Church, whose subjects are obliged in conscience to obey her laws. whether the crime be secret, the censure is also secret, but it is binding before God and in conscience; if the crime be public the censure is also public; but if the secret censure thus incurred is to be shown public, then a judicial examination of the crime is had, and the formal declaration declaratory sentence is produced that the delinquent has incurred the censure.

2 Censures , etc. If however, the expressions are of the future, and imply judicial intervention, the censure is e.g., , etc. In doubtful cases, the sentence is presumed to be , because in penal things the more benign interpretation is to be followed. Moreover, previously the infliction of the latter line of censures, three warnings are necessary, or one peremptory warning, except when both the crime and the contumacy of the delinquent are notorious and therefore sufficiently proved.

Censures are again shared into reserved and non-reserved censures. As sins may be reserved, so also may censures, reservation in this case being limited to limitation or negation of an inferior's jurisdiction to absolve from the censure, and the retention of this power to direct or establishment by his superior. See Reservation.