INSORDESCENZA. — In ecclesiastical juridical language, the fully deliberate and obstinate persistence in excommunication for a year, without any manifestation signifying the good will to be absolved.
Already from the earliest Christian centuries, those who had obstinately and for a long time remained in the excommunication incurred, without seeking absolution from it, were considered to have renounced all their rights before the Church and were sometimes excluded forever from appearing to defend themselves. In the Middle Ages, those who had remained in excommunication for a year were considered suspect of heresy.
Can. 2340 § 1 of the CIC derives immediately from a provision of the Council of Trent (sess. XXV, de ref., chap. III), according to which those who had persevered for a year under censures were to be considered suspect of heresy. The CIC mitigates the Tridentine discipline, limiting the concept of insordescence to the sole case of excommunication.
On the one hand, the effect of insordescence, which will shortly be examined, is intended to deter the delinquent from evil by bringing him back to more moderate counsels (an aim that may be called one of private interest: the personal sanctification of the excommunicated person); on the other, it is intended energetically to safeguard the penalty of excommunication, attaching to it a most serious effect against anyone who pretends or believes that he can disregard it (an aim of public interest: the defence of public authority).
The excommunication spoken of in can. 2340 is not necessarily that of the so-called excommunicated persons vitandi; it must nevertheless be held necessary, in order that the expiration of the year of insordescence may be juridically determined, that there should previously have been a declaratory or condemnatory sentence, or that the said excommunication should at a certain point have become—subsequently easily recognizable—notorious by notoriety of fact; this is also necessary because the effect of insordescence requires that the person know with certainty that he is excommunicated. It must furthermore be held that one cannot accuse of insordescence anyone who, during the year of excommunication, has shown objective signs of good will, by legitimately having recourse, for example, to the competent authorities, or by declaring himself willing to regularize his status, or by making serious approaches, even if in fact nothing was concluded (provided that the negotiations have not been completely and authoritatively broken off); in other words, one may be accused of insordescence who has done absolutely nothing during an entire year of useful time, that is, during which the excommunicated person had the moral possibility of taking action concerning absolution from excommunication.
Setting aside the debated question of whether insordescence constitutes a true delict in the juridical sense, one must not fail to recognize that the effect it produces is, at least in practice, equivalent to a real and most serious penalty. For can. 2340 § 1 states that whoever remains in excommunication for a year is suspect of heresy; and although this suspicion itself does not seem capable of being regarded as a penalty in the strict sense, nevertheless, in accordance with can. 2315, it is its cause. Indeed, the latter establishes that a person suspected of heresy, if, after being appropriately warned, he does not remove the cause of the suspicion (in the case under examination, insordescence, that is, remaining in excommunication for a year), is to be suspended a divinis if he is a cleric; and, if he is not a cleric, loses the right to the so-called legitimate acts; furthermore, and manifestly more seriously, anyone who, six months after incurring these penalties, has not amended his ways is to be regarded and treated as a heretic and subjected to the corresponding penalties. Nevertheless, one must not think that suspicion of heresy constitutes a true and proper or intrinsic effect of excommunication, not only because it does not produce it by its nature (since the new element of insordescence in excommunication is required), but also because this suspicion can very well be removed by proving precisely the absence of insordescence, while the excommunication nevertheless remains.