§ 153. B) Penalties for Clergy

Penalties for clergy are of four kinds: admonition (παράκλησις), suspension (ἀφορισμός), deposition (καθαίρεσις), and anathema. Suspension, spoken of here with regard to clergy, differs from the excommunication to which laypeople are subjected, according to that same difference that exists between the penalties of the one and the other (§ 151), and consists not in exclusion from communion, as with the laity, but in exclusion from church office—in the prohibition (suspensio) for a clergyman accused of some lesser offence to exercise certain rights that belong to him by office and hierarchical rank. Deposition consists in this: that the person concerned is deprived of the priesthood, is removed (depositio, degradatio) from his clerical rank. Anathema is, as with laity, exclusion from the church, of course after deposition.

Except for the last, each of these kinds of penalty has several degrees, according to the kind and gravity of the offence, and is imposed by the competent church court either for a set time or forever. With regard to their aim, all penalties to which a clergyman may be subjected are divided into penalties whose task is to reform the clergyman concerned: τιμωρίαι διορθοῦσαι (poenae medicinales, censurae), or else into penalties in the strict sense: τιμωρίαι σωφρονίζουσαι (poenae vindicativae).[1]

1. Admonition (παράκλησις, obsecratio, увѣщанiе). Admonition is a setting-before of the duties to which clergy are bound by their position in the church, and every clergyman is subjected to this admonition as soon as he commits some lesser offence; in doing so the significance of the offence and the consequences awaiting him if he does not reform are set before his eyes. Admonition is repeated up to two or three times, and after that a further penalty already follows.[2]

2. Rebuke (ἐπίπληξις, ἀπειλή, exprobratio, minae, прѣщенье) is given either personally by the bishop, or by a council. In the latter case the rebuke is public, and accordingly it constitutes a greater degree of penalty than the rebuke that the bishop alone gives. Rebuke, as a church penalty, is mentioned in the oldest church-legal monuments.[3]

3. Displacement of the offender from the place that belongs to him by seniority of ordination or advancement, to the last place among those of equal rank to him. This penalty, according to the sense of the 7th canon of the Council in Trullo, is imposed on those who arrogantly and unlawfully wish to seize in the church a more senior place before those who are of the same rank of priestly or administrative hierarchy, but were ordained or advanced earlier.[4]

4. Suspension from office for a set time. At first the offender who incurred this penalty spent the time of suspension at the bishop’s see under the bishop’s supervision. Later, when it was found that monasteries were suited for this, offenders were sent to monasteries under the supervision of the monastic superiors, and for the duration of this penalty the offender also had to undergo the corresponding penance, which usually consisted in strict observance of the monastic rule together with doubled prayer and prostrations.[5]

5. Prohibition of performing priestly functions for a time. This penalty is usually imposed either when some offender must atone for an offence he has committed in the exercise of his priestly office, or during a judicial investigation, if someone is accused of some offence that carries with it deposition. During the undergoing of this penalty, the offender, besides being deprived of the right to perform priestly functions, may also not enjoy the other rights bound up with his hierarchical rank, and thus may neither teach nor take part in church administration. He is a priest in name only, but without any priestly rights.[6]

6. Prohibition of performing certain specified sacred functions. This penalty is imposed on those who commit some offence of a kind that they can never atone for so as to regain the right to perform all sacred functions,[7] or else on those who arrogate to themselves some right in the performance of sacred functions which does not belong to them by their position in the administrative hierarchy.[8]

The penalties mentioned thus far are employed, except for the last, in order to reform the clergyman concerned who has committed some lesser church offence. The last of those set forth constitutes a transition to the penalties in the strict sense, which are the following:

1. Suspension from office forever. This penalty is imposed for irregular performance of the duty that a clergyman has in the administrative hierarchy, and for disturbance of church discipline—for example, when a bishop abandons his diocese for a long time,[9] when he violently seizes some diocese,[10] when a presbyter without the permission of his bishop abandons his place of service and on his own authority occupies another place;[11] and so on. — But since in ancient times no one could be ordained without designation to a fixed place (ἀπολελυμένως), it followed that when someone was suspended from his place of service forever, by this he already came under another grave penalty as well, namely:

2. Deprivation of the right to perform any priestly function whatsoever forever, but with the right of the person concerned to bear the priestly name and to enjoy priestly honor. This penalty is imposed for graver offences, especially such as produce scandal among the people, but which some have committed either out of ignorance or owing to some unusual circumstance, while meanwhile they have repented and reformed. In the canons we find that this degree of penalty was imposed, for example, on those who during persecution had lapsed in the faith and afterward repented,[12] or on those who out of ignorance had entered into an irregular marriage before ordination,[13] and so on.

3. Deposition, or deprivation of the right to perform any priestly function whatsoever forever, together with deprivation of the priestly name and honor. This penalty is imposed both for especially grave offences against the rules of the hierarchy, for example for simony, and likewise for those offences for which laypeople are excommunicated from the church. A clergyman punished with deposition first of all loses all the rights and privileges he had by virtue of the church’s threefold power, that is, the right to perform priestly functions, the right of teaching, and the right of pastoral care;[14] further, he loses all rights of honor that belonged to him as a clergyman;[15] then, his name is struck from the priestly register (ἐκ τοῦ ἱερατικοῦ καταλόγου) in which he was entered at his ordination,[16] and finally, he is placed in the rank of the laity, with the rights that only laypeople enjoy in the church.[17] Deposition, once a clergyman has incurred it, lasts forever, and one who has once been deposed can never again be received into any hierarchical rank,[18] however much he may have repented and however much he may promise to conduct himself according to the canons. In this last case, the canons allow only that he be dealt with more leniently in the church, but only “as with a layman.”[19]

4. Deposition together with excommunication. A clergyman who incurs this penalty is subjected not only to the consequences of deposition mentioned above, but afterward is also subjected to the excommunication that is imposed on offending laypeople, that is, he is deprived, for a longer or shorter time, of church communion in prayer with the faithful. This great church penalty is usually imposed when a clergyman, notwithstanding his deposition, nevertheless dares to perform priestly functions,[20] or when, after deposition, he commits that same offence for which he had already been deposed,[21] or else when he commits such an offence as touches the very foundation of the faith and of the church.[22] Persons who incurred this penalty were in earlier times usually sent to some monastery, to undergo strict penance there;[23] or else, if they continued, despite the church penalty imposed on them, to disturb the church and resisted her court, the church authority handed them over to the secular court for the corresponding punishment.[24]

5. Anathema. This penalty is the same as for laity,[25] and is pronounced against a clergyman for grave offences, after deposition and excommunication.

With regard to some offences, the degree of penalty is fixed in the very canons that mention those offences; and with regard to the rest, the imposition of the corresponding penalty is left to the discretion and fairness of the judges themselves. Of this we speak in the following paragraph. In more recent church legislation we find in the main these same penalties set out for offences of clergy.[26]

The state authority in the Greco-Roman empire recognized the church’s right, in the full sense, not only to exercise penal power, but also lent its assistance in the execution of the judgments of church courts.[27] Today the church in most states enjoys a free right in imposing church penalties, insofar as those penalties carry with them consequences of an ecclesiastical character; but for them also to acquire civil significance, they must be recognized by a corresponding decision of the state authority.[28] The former assistance of the state authority in executing the judgments of church courts in matters of service and disciplinary offences of clergy—this assistance the state authority does not refuse even today, in all those states in which there exists a proper relation between church and state, with observance of the legally regulated provisions.[29] But while recognizing the freedom of church courts to determine penalties for clergy, the state authority, permeated with the interest that in the church everything should be in keeping with the dignity of the church itself, and that no one, by personal arbitrariness, should proceed in imposing penalties in such a manner that the principle of Christian love and forbearance toward human weakness should suffer, has taken care to lend assistance in this too to the canonical prescriptions of the church, and by its laws has secured for its own part the exact preservation of that principle of love and personal freedom of which the church is the chief bearer.[30]

Footnotes

[4] In the canons a penalty is mentioned for similar offenses, whereby the person concerned must be deposed from one, higher hierarchical degree to a lower (from the episcopal to the presbyteral, canon 20 of the Council in Trullo, cf. also canon 10 of Laodicea). But this is contradicted by canon 29 of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, which says that it is ἱεροσυλία, ἐπίσκοπον εἰς πρεσβυτέρου βαθμὸν φέρειν; and therefore, according to the interpretation of canon 20 of the Council in Trullo given by Zonaras (Ath. Synt. II, 349), Balsamon (ib. 350) and Archim. Ioann (II, 317), it is to be understood in the way we have stated in the text; and for the fundamental reason of this see my commentary on canon 29 of the Fourth Ecumenical Council (I, 424), and cf. also my commentary on canon 20 of the Council in Trullo (Rules I, 493).

[5] Ap. can. 35. In Serbia the following regulation is in force for condemned priests: “a) they may never leave the monastery, nor go to a parish; b) when there is an assembly in the monastery, they must remain in their own room and not go about among the people; c) apart from the room assigned to them, they may not spend the night in another room, nor linger with anyone in someone else’s room; d) they must come punctually and regularly to matins, the hours or the liturgy and to vespers, and read or chant at the chanters’ stand; e) in their cell they are to read the Bible and other books of ecclesiastical content” (circular to the consistories of September 15, 1865, no. 1567); and if the persons concerned transgress the rules of conduct prescribed for them, “the monastery superior is the competent authority to correct him with these penalties: up to a hundred metanias in the church, the reading of one or more kathismas from the Psalter, and confinement in the cell where the condemned person lives for up to 24 hours, with or without xerophagy” (circular of December 22, 1869, no. 6065).

[26] In Greece: 1) Ἐπίπληξιν. 2) Ἀργίαν πάσης ἱεροπραξίας μετὰ στερήσεως τῶν δικαιωμάτων τῆς ἐφημερίας τοῦ τιμωρουμένου. 3) Ἔκπτωσιν τοῦ ἀξιώματος εἰς ὃ ἦτον ἰδίως διωρισμένος ὁ τιμωρούμενος. 4) Σωματικὸν περιορισμὸν ἐντὸς διατηρουμένου μοναστηρίου, ἢ ἄλλου εἰδικοῦ διὰ τοὺς κληρικοὺς σωφρονιστικοῦ καταστήματος. 5) Ἀπότισιν ποσοῦ διπλασίου τῶν ὅσα χρήματα ἔλαβεν ὁ τιμωρούμενος πλέον τοῦ νενομισμένου, ἢ διὰ πρᾶξιν ἀπηγορευμένην καὶ ἐναντίαν εἰς τὰ καθήκοντά του. Ἡ εἴσπραξις δὲ αὕτη ἐνεργεῖται ὁπὸ τῆς πολιτικῆς ἀρχῆς καὶ κατατίθεται εἰς τὸ ἐκκλησιαστικὸν ταμεῖον. 6) Ἀφορισμὸν προσωπικὸν κατὰ κληρικοῦ μοναχοῦ. 7) Καθαίρεσιν. See Νόμος περὶ Ἐπισκόπων κτλ. 9. Ἰουλίου 1852. ἄρθρ. Θ΄. Νόμος καταστατικὸς τῆς ἱερᾶς συνόδου 9. Ἰουλίου 1852. ἄρθρ. ΙΔ΄. Ἐγκύκλ. 11. Ἰουλίου 1853. (Χριστοπούλου Συλλογή. σελ. 8. 23. 163). In Serbia: 1) Admonition 2) Rebuke. 3) Penance 4) Suspension from office for a time 5) Prohibition of priestly ministry for a time. 6) Deprivation of one’s parish 7) Deprivation of the sacred rank (the Law of 27 April 1890 on the church authorities, Art. 174). In Russia: 1) Лишеніе священнослужителей сана, а священномонашествующихъ сана и монашества, съ исключеніемъ изъ духовнаго вѣдомства 2) Лишеніе священнослужителей сана, съ оставленіемъ въ духовномъ вѣдомствѣ на низшихъ должностяхъ, и лишеніе священномонашествующихъ сана, съ оставленіемъ въ одномъ монашествѣ на покаяніи. 3) Временное запрещеніе въ священнослуженіи, съ отрѣшеніемъ отъ должности и съ опредѣленіемъ въ причетники. 4) Временное запрещеніе въ священнослуженіи, безъ отрѣшенія отъ мѣста, но съ возложеніемъ эпитиміи въ монастырѣ или на мѣстѣ 5) Временное испытаніе въ архіерейскихъ домахъ и монастыряхъ 6) Отрѣшеніе отъ мѣста 7) Исключеніе за штатъ 8) Усугубленіе надзора 9) Пеня и денежное взысканіе 10) Поклоны. 11) Строгій или простой выговоръ. 12) Замѣчаніе (the Statute on Spiritual Consistories of 9 April 1883, Art. 176). In the Bulgarian exarchate: 1) Бѣлѣжка 2) Мърение. 3) Глоба. 4) Аргосвание. 5) Граничение въ монастирь 6) Лишение отъ офикия. 7) Прѣставание отъ длъжность 8) Низвержение 9) Отлучение на случаитѣ, предвидени отъ церковнитѣ правила 10) Заплащание въ двоемъ размѣръ количеството, взето по вече отъ опредѣлѣната такса за извѣршание свещеннитѣ трѣби (Art. 165 of the exarchal statute of 13 January 1895). In the Karlovci metropolitanate: 1) Admonition. 2) Rebuke. 3) Temporary prohibition of priestly ministry 4) Temporary suspension from the place of service. 5) Loss of the ecclesiastical decoration 6) Loss of the place of service 7) Final prohibition of priestly ministry 8) Deprivation of rank 9) Anathema (§§. 84—86 of the disciplinary rules of 5 March 1900).

§ 153. B) Penalties for Clergy

§ 153. б) Казне за свештена лица