Folia Theologica et Canonica 6. 28/20 (2017)
IUS CANONICUM - Peter Artner, Psychical imputability and punishability in the current penal system of the Canon Law
228 PETER ARTNER Can. 695 § 2: Before dismissing somebody from a religious institute for a delict, the imputability (imputabilitas) is to be investigated. If he cannot be considered as imputable, he could not commit a delict so cannot be dismissed from the religious institute. Can. 696 § 1 : A member can also be dismissed for other causes provided that they are grave, external, juridical proven, and imputable (imputa- bilis).2 Can. 852 § 1. The prescripts of the canons on adult baptism are to be applied to all those who, no longer infants, have attained the use of reason. § 2. A person who is not responsible for oneself (non sui compos) is also regarded as an infant with respect to baptism. Can. 1095: Those who lack the sufficient use of reason are incapable (incapaxj of contracting marriage. Can 1550 § 2: The following are considered incapable (incapax) as witnesses in a trial: 1° the parties in the case or those who stand for the parties at the trial, the judge and the judge’s assistants, the advocate, and others who assist or have assisted the parties in the same case; 2° priests regarding all matters which they have come to know from sacramental confession. Can. 1717: During the preliminary investigation the imputability (imputabilitas) of the accused is to be investigated, too. Testing one’s psychical mind without the person’s consent may lead to conflicts of the general spiritual freedom of the Christ’s Faithful and the forced legal system. As it is written in Can. 220: “No one is permitted to harm illegitimately the good reputation which a person possesses or to injure the right of any person to protect his or her privacy”. Pope Pius XII3 was one of the first who explicitly spoke of the person’s right not to have his conscience (neither moral nor psychological) violated. The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office on the 2nd of July 1961 in a mo- nitum stated: Priests and religious of either sex are not to undergo psychoanalytic examinations unless the Ordinary himself permits it for a grave reason.4 The Secretary of the State issued a letter dated 6 August 19765 to all the Pontifical Representatives regarding the use of psychological testing; outlining the Church’s teaching on the use of psychological testing: (1) It is not licit for 2 These two canons are valid for the members of the Secular Institutes and of the Societies Apostolic Life. 3 Pius XII, Allocution to the 13"' Annual Conference of the International Society of Applied Psychology, 276. 4 S.C. S. Officii, Monitum „ Cum copertum AAS 53 ( 1961 ) 571. 5 Secretariat of State, Letter of 6 August 1976, Prot. no. 311157.
