(Latin: censura, censorship or office of censor, judgment, criticism)
Ecclesiastical censure is a penalty by which a baptized person, delinquent and contumacious (obstinate), is deprived of certain spiritual goods, or goods connected with the spiritual, until he has given up such contumacy. The term and idea originated in Roman law. Up to the time of Innocent III (13th century) practically every ecclesiastical penalty was called a censure. The right to inflict censure follows from the nature of the Church as a perfect society; while the chief purpose of censure is corrective or medicinal as indicated by its main divisions:
(1) particular, excommunication, interdict, suspension;
(2) general, censure ab homine (by man) when penalty is inflicted by way of special precept or particular judgment, and a jure (by law) when a specified penalty is fixed by the common or particular law of the Church;
(3) latre sententire (of sentence passed) if penalty is incurred by the very commission of an act; ferendae sententiae (of sentence to be passed) if penalty is to be inflicted after admonition and judgment of a superior.