ABSTRACT: The Church's legislation authorizes the judge to impose a prohibition ( vetitum ) on a party when a marriage is declared null. The 2005 instruction Dignitas connubii elaborates on the legislation by indicating, among other things, which authorities are competent to remove that vetitum, including the tribunal that imposed the vetitum in cases of psychological incapacity (art. 251 §1). No general norm delineates a procedure for the removal of such a vetitum , but such a procedure can be drawn out of the consistent praxis of the Roman Rota and applied in diocesan and interdiocesan tribunals (cf. c. 19). After the prohibited party submits a petition to the competent tribunal, the judicial vicar entrusts the matter to the college of judges (or individual judge) that imposed the vetitum and designates the defender of the bond that intervened in the original trial and possibly a promoter of justice. After the gathering of useful proofs and the submission of arguments, the college gathers to make its decision and issue a judicial decree removing or confirming the vetitum . This procedure could be adapted and used when such a request is made of the local ordinary in accord with art. 251 §2.
ABSTRACT: This article discusses how natural and man-made phenomena can disrupt the religious chapter. The article focuses on the canonical issues raised by the 2020–2022 COVID-19 pandemic in relation to the chapter of the Order of Friars Minor Holy Name Province to be held in New York as an example that raises a set of more general canonical questions about chapters and their disruption not only by pandemics but also by other calamities such as war, pestilence, earthquakes, floods, political unrest, revolution, and government constraint. First, the article describes the democratic and theological goods of the chapter in the life of the religious community. Second, it considers the question of postponing the chapter and its possible harm to these interrelated democratic and theological goods. Third, it examines the possibilities of an electronic chapter. Fourth, it treats the question of excusing members on the grounds of health and age in light of the quorum requirement for a democratic body. Finally, it offers a critical analysis of the resolution of the Holy Name Province chapter from the perspective of the chapter's democratic nature and its relation to hierarchical authority. The article concludes with several recommendations for safeguarding the interrelated chapter goods based on the hermeneutic that the law is best interpreted in light of its ratio legis or inner meaning.
ABSTRACT: Grave imputability, which attributes the act to the subject's free will, is a constitutive element of a canonical delict. It is based on either dolus or culpa. Consistent with the definition and doctrine related to the Pio-Benedictine code, dolus involves intellectual awareness that one is violating the law and volitional intent to bring about certain illegal effects. However, dolus does not demand a particular wickedness or malice but occurs even when there is only a confused awareness of acting wrongfully and an unwillingness to avoid it. The intention is therefore not so much to violate the law as it is to engage in conduct (known to be unlawful) and to bring about the resulting unlawful effects. Translating dolus as "malice," "deceit," or "fraud" causes confusion, since the concept also simply includes "specific deliberate intention," and this is the proper sense in penal law. Certain delicts in the revised Book VI envision some specific intention as a constitutive element of the offense: abandonment of ministry in order to withdraw from competent authority (c. 1392), malicious distribution of confessional material (c. 1386 §3), and immoral use of child pornography (c. 1398 §1, 3º). In general, imputability exists independently of one's knowledge of the punishability of his unlawful act and of the punishability itself, such that one may be imputable but go unpunished (e.g., if his violation is due to culpa, not dolus). The general (though non-penal) juridical importance of specific intent is verified in canon 1098.
