2050. Defamation supposes that the party who is injured is in possession of a good name. But it is possible that the same individual who enjoys a good name in one place or time, has a bad name in another place or time. Hence, a number of special cases on defamation present themselves for consideration.
(a) Thus, there is the case in which a person who has a good name here is juridically infamous elsewhere; that is, he has lost his good name elsewhere through a final and valid sentence, conviction, or confession made in a public trial (see Canon 2197).
(b) There is the case in which a person who has a good name here is actually infamous elsewhere, that is, his crime is known to so many persons there that it is morally impossible to keep it secret or excuse it.
(c) There is the case in which a person who has a good name now was in bad repute formerly; that is, his bad name of the past has been forgotten or has been obliterated by many years of good living.
2051. Meaning of the Expression “Infamous in a Certain Place.”—(a) The place referred to is either a closed community (e.g., a monastery, a college, a family) or an open community (e.g., a village, a neighborhood, a parish, a town, a city); (b) the notoriety referred to is either universal (i.e. known to all the community), or general (i.e., known to the greater part of the community), or sufficient (i.e., known to so many and such talkative persons that the whole community will shortly be made to share in it). A crime known only to one or two, or to a small circle of Christian-living persons, is not notorious.
2052. Number of Persons Who Are Required for Sufficient Notoriety.—(a) Some authors assign certain definite figures for this purpose—for example, in a closed community of thirty or a hundred members a fact is notorious if known to seven or fifteen; in a neighborhood of forty persons, if it is known to eight individuals from different families; in a village whose population is one thousand, if it is known to twenty here and there; in a town of five thousand people, if it is known to forty here and there.
(b) Other authors hold that no invariable rule can be given, but that in each case the matter has to be determined by a prudent judgment based on the character of the crime, the quality of the guilty person and of the persons present at the time, the publicity of the place, etc. Thus, if the crime was committed in some central spot from which news was quickly disseminated, a smaller number of spectators would make a deed notorious in the surrounding territory.
2053. Publicity of Commission or Report.-Actual infamy or disrepute is produced either by the publicity of the crime or by the publicity of the report.
(a) Thus, a crime has publicity in its commission when it was done in a public place (e.g., on the street, in a public room) or in a private place but before a considerable number of persons, or when its indications were publicly given (e.g., by a confession, by maintenance of a suspected woman in one’s home), or when it was submitted to public notice or judgment (e.g., the acts of one in public office, the words of one who delivers a public address, the deeds of one who boasts about them).
(b) A crime has publicity in its report, when it is widely known, whether due to the talk of the people, or to presumptions or suspicions.