(I originally penned and posted this in September of ARSH 2018.)
CHAPTER III.
PENAL REMEDIES AND PENANCES
Can. 1339 §1. An ordinary, personally or through another, can warn a person who is in the proximate occasion of committing a delict or upon whom, after investigation, grave suspicion of having committed a delict has fallen.
§2. He can also rebuke a person whose behavior causes scandal or a grave disturbance of order, in a manner accommodated to the special conditions of the person and the deed.
§3. The warning or rebuke must always be established at least by some document which is to be kept in the secret archive of the curia.
Can. 1340 §1. A penance, which can be imposed in the external forum, is the performance of some work of religion, piety, or charity.
§2. A public penance is never to be imposed for an occult transgression.
§3. According to his own prudent judgment, an ordinary can add penances to the penal remedy of warning or rebuke.
With regards to 1340.2, an “occult transgression” means a transgression not publicly known. This provision exists as a sort of “innocent until proven guilty in a canonical court” protection of the accused. We are all familiar with this important aspect of jurisprudence. It seems likely that Pope Benedict XVI knew, or was at least afraid that he could not get a conviction against McCarrick, precisely because of the law of OMERTÁ that reigns among the sodomitical coven that has infiltrated Holy Mother Church, ESPECIALLY inside the Vatican.
With regards to 1339.3, this explains why all communications “downstream” of Pope Benedict were likely done verbally (with +Viganò being first among them as the Nuncio to the United States). Canon Law, which Pope Benedict knew and followed assiduously, clearly says that the written documentation of such a rebuke would have been drafted and deposited in the Secret Archives, presumably in the Curia in Rome, and from THERE, all transmission would have been verbal, precisely because 1340.2 states that those penances imposed on someone not yet tried and convicted in court had to remain confidential.
THIS, folks, is a perfectly plausible response to the tendentious argument that McCarrick openly celebrating Mass and otherwise appearing in public somehow suggests that there were no warnings, rebukes, or penances imposed upon him by Pope Benedict XVI. There were, but McCarrick, knowing that the Rule of Law provided for a presumption of innocence and due process, AND McCarrick knowing that he would be protected and enabled by all of the other sodomite bishops and Cardinals, FLAUNTED and OPENLY DISOBEYED the sanctions made by Pope Benedict because he knew he could get away with it, and stick it to his enemy Ratzinger at the same time.