SACRAMENTEN EN KERKRECHT

Abstract

SUMMARY The study “Sacraments and Churchlaw. Oversight and Insight” follows up two influential articles of P. Smulders on the relationship between sacraments and churchorder, which were published in this journal in 1956 and 1957. Church community is build up by the sacraments and the most juridical acts of the church are sacramental. After some twenty years, several questions about this approach can now be asked. Is it possible to work any longer with only one concept of law, viz. rule of public community-order? What is the exact relationship between sacraments and law? What is the juridical value of sacramental law? Several authors are reviewed here; especially K. Mörsdorf, A. Rouco Varela, P. Huizing and some Spanish canonists. They develop, in fact, the approach of P. Smulders. But they do not extend the intelligibility of a primary, constitutional, sacramental church order. How can graceful signs have a juridical character? A clear comparison between different types of law is still lacking. The historical study of M. Useros Carretero on Thomas Aquinas stresses the distinction between lex sacramentorum and lex ecclesiae, but does not really take up the other question. In his study on “The Law of Grace”, H. Dombois analyses the juridical nature of God's grace and its sacramental mediation. They give a new existential status to the human person by founding a new relationship. Here law means giving, making a claim and accepting it. This first church order can be completed by a second one, based on claims which make demands and their acceptance, the most well known concept of law. Following up the line taken in Dombois' work, the author tries to foster the recognizability of such a sacramental law by comparing it with two well known processes of juridic value that are not based upon positive law; situations in which persons become joined with one another, and acts by which a person gets a new position in relation to things and persons. Both can be discovered in the positiv laws and churchdocuments relevant to sacramental salvation. Finally, the basic, practical meaning of sacramental law for the structures and rules of the church is developed. The close relationship between the positions of persons and fellowship in the church should be respected as much as possible by positiv canon law. Biblical rules of conduct might recieve a new significance.