dimond

III. VARIOUS KINDS OF DELINQUENCIES

6. 1°. Occult, Public, Notorious. (Can. 2197.) Delinquencies are always external acts, but they may be unknown or known in various degrees; hence the division into occult, public and notorious.

(a) They are occult, in the full and strictest sense, when they are known to no one but the agent. They are also considered as practically unknown and occult when they are known to only two or three prudent and discreet persons who are not likely to divulge them. They are occult materially, when the fact itself is unknown; formally, when the fact being known, its disorderly character is not.

(6) Delinquencies are public when they already are or, in all probability, will soon be divulged. To how many persons they should be known to be considered as divulged, is not defined by law nor can it easily be, as so much depends on circumstances and the character of the witnesses. St. Alphonsus holds that a crime may still remain occult although it be known to five or six persons, or even seven or eight in a large city. In another place he goes farther and demands for a crime to become truly public, that it be known to the greater part of the town, the neighborhood or the community. (Lib. vii, n. 76.) This is not, however, the ordinary sense of public as distinct from notorious. (D'Annibale, i, n. 242, note 49; Gasparri, Tractatus Canonicus de Matrimonio, n. 252, Paris, 1891; Tractatus Canonicus de Sacra Ordinatione, n. 222.)

(c) Delinquencies may be notorious by notoriety of law or by notoriety of fact. They are legally notorious after a valid judicial sentence which has become final, that is, from which there is no appeal; and after a confession made in court, in presence of the judge, with all the formalities required to give it a judicial character.

They are notorious in fact on two conditions: that they be publicly known, that is, known to the whole community, morally speaking, or to a large portion of it; and that they have been committed under such circumstances that they cannot be concealed by any subterfuge, nor excused by any interpretation of the law. They are generally known both materially and formally. (Wernz, n. 17, v; II Monitore Ecclesiastico, Ap., 1918, p. 123.) Homicide committed in presence of a crowd would be a notorious fact, but if it had some appearance of being in self-defence, it would not be anotorious crime; or it would be notorious materially, not formally.

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