§ 150. β) Offences by Clergy

Offences that clergy may commit relate either to their particular office in the church, or to the general duties that bind every Christian.

1. With regard to the particular office of clergy in the church, the church-legal sources mention the following offences:

1) When a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, after having been duly and lawfully ordained, receives ordination a second time to the same rank from someone.[1] 2) When a clergyman who has been lawfully deposed for some offence dares, disregarding his deposition, to perform priestly functions on his own authority.[2] 3) When a bishop performs an ordination on his own authority in a diocese not his own, without the consent thereto of the diocesan bishop concerned.[3] 4) When a priest serves in a private chapel without the knowledge and consent thereto of the diocesan bishop.[4] 5) When a bishop, presbyter, or deacon on his own authority abandons one place of service in the church and takes up another, without the knowledge and consent thereto of the competent church authority.[5] 6) When a diocesan bishop neglects his diocese and for a long time resides in some other place outside the bounds of his diocese.[6] 7) When a bishop or presbyter does not perform the sacred rites in church according to the prescribed order, but on his own authority introduces some innovation.[7] 8) When a bishop or presbyter neglects the people entrusted to him and does not perform the teaching duty in the church.[8] 9) When a bishop or presbyter violates the seal of confession and discloses to third parties some offence that someone revealed to him at confession.[9] 10) When a clergyman squanders church property, or applies it to his own personal benefit.[10] 11) When a clergyman occupies himself with such affairs as have no direct connection with his priestly office, and thereby neglects his duties.[11] 12) When a clergyman neglects his outward appearance and does not take care that it correspond to his priestly character.[12]

For all these offences, now enumerated, the respective penalties are set out in the very same church-legal sources that speak of these offences. In imposing these penalties the church authority always takes into account the canonical rules that exist concerning the imposition of penalties in general (§ 154). Over the remaining offences and misdemeanors of clergy in office the church authority passes judgment with regard to their connection with the offences listed above, and insofar as good order in the church and the standing of the clerical order suffer thereby.

II. Over most of the offences that a clergyman may commit, which touch upon the general duties of social life, secular courts today pass judgment and prescribe the respective penalties for such offences. But according to the immediate jurisdiction of the church over clergy, these same offences also fall under the external court of the church, which has the right to investigate them and to impose the penalty of deposition, excommunication, and others, according to the gravity and substance of the offence committed.

Among offences of this kind the principal ones are: 1) High treason (καθοσίωσις).[13] 2) Conspiracy (συνωμοσία, φατρία), which some clergy form against the existing lawful authority.[14] 3) When someone breaks a sworn oath (ἐπιορκία).[15] 4) Sacrilege (ἱεροσυλία), namely the touching of things consecrated to God and the using of those things for unholy purposes.[16] 5) Blasphemy against sacred things (βλασφημία).[17] 6) Slander and defamation (συκοφαντία, ὕβρις, λοιδορία).[18] 7) Theft (κλοπή).[19] 8) Usury (τοκισμός).[20] 9) Murder (φόνος).[21] 10) Assault (τύψις).[22] 11) Adultery (μοιχεία).[23] 12) Fornication (πορνεία).[24] 13) Drunkenness (μέθη).[25] 14) Gambling/dice (κυβεία).[26] 15) Innkeeping (καπηλεύειν).[27] 16) Frequenting immoral places.[28]

These offences which we have adduced, when persisted in by those who commit them, carry with them the penalty of deposition from the priestly rank. In respect of the remaining offences the church authority judges according to how far they injure the rank itself, and with regard to the scandal they occasion.

The judging of the gravity of one or another offence committed by some clergy, especially in respect of their service in the church, belongs to that judicial authority to which those persons are subject by their hierarchical position in the church. What judicial instances exist we have already said (§ 145). Those dissatisfied with the judgment of the first instance may appeal to a higher instance; and judgments by which a clergyman is forbidden for ever to perform priestly functions, or is condemned to loss of rank, or to final deprivation of the priestly rank, may be executed only when they have been reviewed and confirmed in the last judicial instance. The church recognizes in the ruler, as supreme protector of the church and guardian of the church’s laws (supremo ecclesiae tutori et canonum custodi), the right to pardon a condemned clergyman, when the highest church authority finds that the condemned deserves mercy.