The article deals with the broadening of the first canon of the revised Book VI of CIC through the addition of new § 2, in which the author finds and analyses the basic principles of canon penal law. On the one hand, the article highlights the general principles on which penal law in the Church is to stand and which we can recognise in it, but at the same time it also mentions some of the ambiguities that this canon and the whole of Book VI have introduced.