JUST CAUSE. - It is that reasonable and proportionate motive which leads the ecclesiastical authority to take some measure and in particular to grant some dispensation or derogation from the canon laws. It is also called canonical cause.
The CIC requires in particular the existence of a canonical cause 1) in order that the Ordinary may proceed to the excardination or incardination of a cleric in a diocese (cann. 116-17); this cause is in that case "the necessity or utility of the diocese"; 2) in order to transfer, transform, or erect new parishes: the cause required is the "necessity or evident utility of the Church" (can. 1423, § 1). In the case, however, of the division or dismemberment of a parish, the sole canonical cause on account of which the Ordinary may proceed to it is "if the difficulty of access to the parish church be great or if the multitude of parishioners be excessive, whose spiritual good cannot be provided for by assigning to the parish priest the help of assistant vicars" (can. 1427, § 2); 3) in order to alienate movable or immovable ecclesiastical goods, the c. g. is "the urgent necessity or the evident utility of the Church, or piety" (can. 1530, § 1, n. 2); 4) in order to remove by summary process a parish priest whose ministry, even without fault of his own, has become harmful or useless: can. 2147, § 2 describes in detail what these causes may be; 5) in order to transfer a parish priest from one parish to another: the c. g., in that case, is "the exigency of the good of souls" (can. 2162); 6) in order to inflict suspension "ex informata conscientia" (can. 2191).
If any of the measures listed above were adopted without a g. c., it would for that very reason become not indeed invalid but, according to the circumstances, either unlawful or contestable by recourse to the Holy See.
For the cause in rescripts and in dispensations, v. RESCRITTO; DISPENSA. For the c. g. necessary for the dispensation from a ratified and non-consummated marriage, v. MATRIMONIO.
Vittorio Bartoccetti