VINDICTIVE PENALTIES. — These are the canonical penalties (v. PENA) that directly aim at punishing the guilty party and restoring the violated order.
They are distinguished into common penalties (applicable to all the faithful) and those proper to clerics. The common penalties are: 1) the local interdict, the general personal interdict, and that ab ingressu Ecclesiae, if imposed in perpetuity, ad beneplacitum (nutum) of the Superior, or for a period strictly fixed in the law, in the sentence, or in the decree of condemnation; 2) the penal transfer or suppression of an episcopal or parochial see; 3) infamy of law; 4) deprivation of ecclesiastical burial, in accordance with can. 1240 § 1; 5) deprivation of the Sacramentals; 6) deprivation or temporary suspension of a pension paid by the Church or charged upon its property, or of another ecclesiastical right or privilege; 7) exclusion from public offices (remotio ab actibus legitimis ecclesiasticis), listed in can. 2256, 2°; 8) deprivation of the capacity (inhabilitas) to obtain ecclesiastical graces or offices in the Church not reserved to clerics, and to obtain academic degrees conferred by ecclesiastical authorities; 9) deprivation or temporary suspension of an office, faculty, or grace already obtained; 10) deprivation of the right of precedence, of the right to vote (vocis activae), of eligibility (vocis passivae), and of the right to use titles, uniforms, or insignia granted by the Church; 11) a fine.
Some of these penalties reflect completely outdated conceptions, such as the transfer and suppression of an episcopal or parochial see, whose absence is ordinarily felt by the innocent and not by the guilty; in the case of others, such as deprivation of ecclesiastical burial, it is difficult to identify the passive subject. Infamy of law, moreover, produces no legal effects of its own and is likewise a remnant of the past. The interdict, on the other hand, removal from ecclesiastical legal acts, or exclusion from public offices, suspension, and incapacitation correspond to certain secular penalties (in Italy, accessory penalties); whereas the principal state penalties—death, life imprisonment, and imprisonment—are not sanctioned in the current canon law. Only the fine is common, but in general canon law it has little application: it is expressly prescribed in the CIC in only one case (can. 2347, 2°).
The vindictive penalties proper to clerics are: 1) prohibition from exercising the sacred ministry outside a specified church; 2) perpetual suspension, ad beneplacitum Superioris, or for a specified period; 3) penal transfer from a higher office or benefice to a lower one; 4) deprivation of a right inherent in an office or benefice; 5) incapacity to assume or acquire dignities, offices, benefices, and other positions or services reserved to clerics; 6) penal deprivation of an office or benefice, with or without a pension; 7) prohibition from residing in a specified place or territory; 8) an order to reside in a specified place or territory; 9) prohibition, for a certain period, from wearing ecclesiastical dress; 10) deposition; 11) deprivation of the right to wear ecclesiastical dress; 12) degradation.
For the differences between vindictive and medicinal penalties, V. PENA; cf., moreover, the entries on the individual vindictive penalties.
Arturo De Jorio