Penalties - Vocabulary (Notes: Nord, JCD. Prepared: Hastings) Flashcards
Censure
A penalty which deprives the baptized and contumacious delinquent of some spiritual good or something connected to spiritual goods until he withdraws from contumacy. There are 3: excommunication, interdict, and suspension.
Circumstances, Aggravating
circumstances of a delict which show a greater degree of imputablity and so call for a greater penalty. They are: recividity, abuse of dignity or office, neglect with forsight and unreasonable ommission.
Circumstances, Attenuating
circumstances of a delict which do not completely exempt the delinquent from a penalty, but which require that the penalty be reduced or a penance given in its place.
Circumstances, Exempting
circumstances of an act that remove its imputability or which, by the decision of the legislator, make it non-puniable. When there really is no delict by lack of imputability, rather than a simple choice not to punish, these are improper.
Contumacy
perseverance in evil.
Culpa
the omission of due diligence. (Either in foreseeing and avoiding the harmful effect of one’s actions, or violating a law of which one is blame worthily ignorant that the law exists or of its content, so that one believes erroneously and illegitimately that one is acting lawfully.)
Delict
A grave external violation of an ecclesial law, morally imputable by reason of malice or neglect, for which the penal law of the church foresees at least an indeterminate penalty.
Dolus
The deliberate violation of a law or penal precept. (Needs knowledge in intellect and freedom in will).
Excommunication
the most grave penalty that excludes the delinquent from the communion of the faithful and deprives him of all rights and benefits deriving from belonging to the Church, in particular that of administering and receiving the sacraments. It is exclusion from the communion of the Church and of the faithful.
Penalty, Expiatory
The deprivation of some temporal or spiritual good which tends to the expiation of delicts and which do not cease with the delinquent withdrawing from contumacy. They can be perpetual, for a determined time, or for an undetermined time. (In CIC17, called vindictive.)
Imputability
The quality of an action in virtue of which the action can be referred to the free and conscious will of the acting subject. Three levels: physical, moral, juridical, which correspond to “Did he do it? Did he want to do it? Did he know he was a delict (or unlawful, depending on your theory)?”
Interdict
a censure which prohibits the faithful from the use of sacred things, even though they do not loose their communion with the church.
Penal norm
a command or prohibition by a superior with legislative power to which some indeterminate or determinate penalty is attached in case of violation.
Penalty
the deprivation of some good, inflicted by the competent authority, directed toward the correction of the delinquent and the punishment of the delict.
Punibility
The concrete application or non-application of a penalty. Three elements: Objective—external violation has been committed. Subjective—did it by malice or negligence (recall 1341). Legal elements present in act—penal sanction attached.
Remedies, Penal
Admonition and correction. They are esp. used to prevent delicts.
Suspension
the censure which forbids a cleric to use some or all of the powers of holy orders, the power of governance, or the powers derived from a munus or office. Makes his acts illicit, not invalid
Accomplice
the person who assists in the preparation for the delict by common accord but doesn’t perform the delict.
Admonition
A warning on the part of the ordinary to someone in a near occasion of committing a delicts or who is suspected of having committed a delict after a brief investigation, so that he can take care not to fall into the delict itself.
Admonition, Canonical or Final
an external juridical act of admonition placed by the ordinary to check for contumacy before proceeding to impose a ferendae sententiae censure.
Action, Criminal
the subjective right to punish a delict (or the actual exercise of this right by authority). It ends with the condemnation or absolution of the accused.
Action, Penal
the subjective right to concretely apply a declared or imposed penalty (or the actual exercise of this right by authority). It comes from the sentence of condemnation.
Actor, Principal
the mandator, if different than the material executor (=the person who actually does it.)
Apostasy
the total repudiation of Christian faith.
Articulum mortis
the immanence of death is morally certain.
Alienate
Transfer ownership from one to another by any means. Note the delict for alienation applies to alienation without the license of the superior.
Blasphemy
speech which gravely wounds good morals by expressing injuries against religion of the church.
Chance, By
When an action or omission by the person generates an criminal or unlawful effect that the same person could not have foreseen even confusedly or probably, or which even if foreseen, could not have stopped by some remedy.
Co-actors
the people who by common accord placed the physical action of the delict together, both physical and formal cooperation
Coerce
the force generated by law, not a physical force, but a moral force or a force of bonds that call for restitution; cf. page 12 of dispense on its two fonts.
Communio in sacris (Is this not communicatio in sacris?)
As a delict, the participation in the liturgical cult or the administration of a sacrament of a person of a different religious denomination not in full communion with the church, or of a Catholic in the liturgy of another confession.
Concubinage
stably living together as husband and wife, even if not under the same roof, even if not public.
Condition
the event, fact, or deed, the occurrence on which the ordinary makes his remission depend. (Future conditions can be suspensive or resultive).
Conspiracy
When two or more come to an agreement to execute a delict and determine to do it; simple intention to break the penal norm is not enough.
