Conceptualization of the Church Legal Order in the Modern State

Abstract

The article analyses the church legal order as a component of the general social legal order. It is determined that the unique nature of ecclesiastical law and ecclesiastical legal order is the basis for a new reading of the problem of the relationship between the spiritual and legal principles of society. With the help of a set of modern methodological approaches, the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition, codes of canons and social concepts of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, works of theologians, national legislation and international legal acts, sociological data, press materials are analyzed. The ecclesiastical legal order, and the general social one, is combined with spirituality in that the sphere of the spiritual includes all the intellectual and moral forces of man, his desire for freedom and order. Comprehending the spiritual origins of law and the legal order, the authors assume that they are, above all, spiritual value. The functioning of the church legal order is an argument in opposition to those doctrinal positions that derive the legal order from the law and legality, and emphasises the appeal to the law as its real and reliable basis. Therefore, the concepts of legal order and church legal order are correlated as interrelated, but at the same time different phenomena. Legal regulation of church relations has a dual nature. It is carried out both by legal acts of the church and by the legislation of the state. Such a double dependence creates a vulnerability of the church legal order to the nature and quality of secular law. The subjective structure of the church legal order is also ambivalent. In Ukraine, as in a multi-confessional society, a separate (autonomous) church legal order is inherent in each denomination. Relationships, differences between denominations, interaction or contradictions between them in one way or another affect the state of the church legal order in society, including – the general legal order