Actos de administración ordinaria y extraordinaria: normas canónicas

Abstract

Canonical legislation distinguishes between different types of acts of administration of church goods; ordinary administration which is of most interest and extra-ordinary which deals with alienation and equivalent acts. Using this distinction the competence of the various administrators of temporal goods are identified as are the required controls established for adequate administration. However, canon law does not exhaustively describe what it understands by each type of administrative act and only expressly classifies a few types of particular acts. For further detail it remits to particular legislation which can take into account the circumstances of each local church, when determining the particular acts of each class of administration. The author, after expounding the general principles of this matter, analyses the norms given by the Spanish Episcopal Conference and Spanish dioceses. He indicates that, even after twenty years of the current Code, there are no clear and adequate norms in a great number of dioceses in this area, and proposes as a model the Instruction published by the Italian Episcopal Conference in 1992.