Folia Theologica et Canonica 2. 24/16 (2013)
RECENSIONS
RECENSIONS 277 Questions, 195-209). The preliminary investigation and its analysis should be underlined here (29-44). This is not one part of the penal process, but this is the one which serves the responsible decision of the competent ordinary, forming his deliberated standpoint whether sufficiently improved the suspect or not concerning the possible penalty, in order to begin the penal process or to resist from that. The status of the preliminary investigation makes clear that during this time does not harm the good name of the suspected person because the sentence of penalty can be made only by the conclusion of the penal process which possibly follows the investigation. This reason makes understandable why does not cause automatically penal process by the state or forwarding automatically to the state an uncertain accusation - without any preliminary investigation - which arrives only to the ecclesiastical forum. Obviously, the situation is fundamentally different, if the accusation in a concrete action - penalized by the Church and the state - is done at both competent authority - ecclesiastical and state tribunal - in the same time, therefore the investigation begins in parallel form based on the canonical system and on the competent state’s own penal law. We can see though this explanation that the preliminary investigation is not an instrument to hide the truth, or make “secret search” excluding the people who are interested in the concrete case, but to revel those assertions and their approvable basis which are in the accusation, in order to make clear the situation for a possible penal process. This fact shows well that the goal of the ecclesiastical penal process is in coincident with zeal of application of the state’s penal process: restoring of justice, reform the offender, repair the scandal and prevention of further similar act (i.e. Can. 1341). By this reason pages 94-99 are particularly important, where the Author explicitly discusses on cooperation with the civil authority, referring to paragraphs of the current Hungarian penal law (Act C/2012). This work is also relevant regarding the description of those cases which are reserved to the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith (195-200). Among these very penalties can be found those most grave delicts which are the most dangerous for the community of the Church and for the civil society too, therefore the strongest sanctions for these delicts are obvious as strict reactions by the highest ecclesiastical authority. Nevertheless, we must emphasize again that within this category are several penalties which are neutral for the civil authority because those merely harm the doctrinal teaching of the Church, therefore the state does not recognize them such actions which are dangerous for the civil society. However, these acts are really and fundamentally serious for the Church because the ecclesiastical doctrine is not only a regulation of relations between human beings by positive norms but it organizes the relations among God - man - man through norms which are built on divine or natural law. Peter Artner’s book is a real guide in order to understand what is the reaction of the Catholic Church to the penalties and how happens this reaction through
