PERSONAL INJURY. – In Italian criminal law, personal injury exists when, without the intention to kill, one causes another harm to the body, health, or mental condition. If the intention to kill is present, there is attempted homicide.
For the CIC and for moral theologians, personal injury does not exist as a sin or delict in itself, but falls within the category of delicts concerning violations of another’s person (in bona corporis). This is due to the fact that the CIC, dealing chiefly with specific ecclesiastical delicts, generally refers, at least for the application of penalties, to the laws of the individual States (canons 2198; 2223 § 3, n. 2), insofar as concerns delicts considered by the state penal codes; and also to the fact that moral theologians consider the moral aspect more than the juridical one, thus limiting themselves in this matter to examining the elements common to all injustices, of which personal injury forms part. Moral theologians nevertheless provide some particular elements when they speak of mutilation, attempted homicide, etc.; further elements are also supplied by the CIC in Book V, for example, in canons 2333; 2337 § 2; 2341; 2343 §§ 1–4; 2350 § 1; 2351 § 1; 2353; 2354 §§ 1–2. In neither case, however, is there a specific treatment of personal injury in the technical sense, whereas such a treatment is found in the Italian Penal Code, Book II, Title XII, concerning delicts against the person. In reality, it too offers no express definition; it is nevertheless easy to infer one from the whole of Title XII and especially from art. 582, paragraph 1, which states that “whoever causes another a personal injury from which illness in the body or mind results” is subject to the penalties established therein and in art. 583. That provision must be understood as subject to two reservations: first, that it is never legally possible to speak of personal injury unless the act producing it affects a person other than the agent (therefore attempted suicide, self-mutilation, self-intoxication, etc., do not constitute personal injury); and second, that whenever it produces bodily or mental illness, each of the actions listed in Title XII as distinct from personal injury (beatings, brawls, abandonment of a minor or of incapacitated persons or newborns, failure to render assistance, reducing a person to slavery, kidnapping, unlawful arrest, undue restrictions on personal liberty, arbitrary searches and inspections, private violence, threats, a state of necessity produced through violence) constitutes, in addition to its specific delict, personal injury as well. In this sense, arts. 549, 550, 554, 588, and 559 may be consulted. In any event, for personal injury to exist, the illness produced by the action, whether bodily or mental, must stand in a cause-and-effect relationship to II. Nor can it be overlooked that every personal injury as described is, morally speaking, normally a grave violation of commutative justice. With regard to the moral responsibility for acts injuring the person, whether intentional or negligent, and to the circumstances that aggravate or diminish it (v. pure gli artt. 582-83, 586-88, 590), it should be remembered that, for conscience, the subjective element is more important than what appears in the external forum.
The CIC also considers a violation of the canonical privilege—that is, of the life, dignity, or liberty of a cleric or religious—to be personal injury (canon 2343; V. PRIVILEGI DEI CHIERICI), and punishes it with various penalties. In its penalties it places on the same footing personal injury in abortion, self-injury for suicidal purposes, personal injury in a duel, violent abduction, etc. The penalty is proportionate to the degree of culpability even in cases of preterintentional or negligent injury.