Church Canon Law Research Articles

To the question of the concept and essence of church canon law

To the question of the concept and essence of church canon law

Civil and Canon Law on Reporting Child Sexual Abuse to the Civil Authorities

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (‘Royal Commission') found that virtually all the institutions it examined had concealed from the civil authorities information about the sexual abuse of children under their care. The predominant motivation was the preservation of the reputation of the institution. The Royal Commission found that three religious institutions had written into their internal laws a requirement to conceal the abuse. The most significant of these is the Catholic Church. Reporting to the civil authorities involves using the state's criminal laws to punish those who abuse children and to provide a deterrence to others from doing the same thing. Where there are suspicions that a child's welfare is in danger, the state's child welfare laws require reporting by particular professions (doctors, nurses etc.) to specialist units to enable them to take necessary steps to protect them. This article argues that the Royal Commission found that the Catholic Church's canon law since 1922 required Church authorities to conceal child sexual abuse by clergy from the civil authorities. At a meeting of the heads of national bishops' conferences with Pope Francis in Rome in February 2019, an indication was given that the "pontifical secret" would be abolished. At the time of writing, this has yet to be enacted.

Gratian in Paradise: Canon Law and the Desecularisation of Civil Society

This essay argues that Church canon law was an important weapon used by early modern, Counter-Reformation Catholic thinkers, such as Robert Bellarmine, to desecularise civil society in the face of the increasingly strong secular states. The terms “secularisation” and “desecularisation” are defined and canon law and its complex institutional history is briefly presented before showing how canon law provided Bellarmine with a coherent perspective within which to argue for the “indirect power” of popes.

Christian Reason of State: Bellarmine and the Politics of Indirect Power

This essay places Robert Bellarmine’s concept of indirect power within the tradition of reason of state. It shows how Bellarmine drew on Church canon law to develop his concept of indirect power as a Catholic brand of Christian reason of state. Canon law is presented as an alternative to humanist sources such as Tacitus. In the final section, Bellarmine’s concept indirect power is linked to Botero’s defence of Catholicism as the foundation of peace and stability.

Suitable men to enter the episcopate in Late antique Gaul: Ideal and reality

Beside the complicated composition of military and political authority in the successor kingdoms in Gaul in the sixth century there was another power that regulated many of the lives of the community, that of ecclesiastical power. Much of the authority and the achievements of a Gallo-Roman bishop were dependent on his suitability for office. The defining characteristics a candidate was expected to have were found in contemporary church canon law. Canons referring to the requirements for episcopal office were frequent and often reworded and repeated at consecutive councils, indicating both the importance and perhaps the disregard for specific qualifications. This paper discusses both the perceived requirements for episcopal office and the men who were considered suitable and were eventually chosen. The discussion focusses on the period prior to the nomination and the election of the candidate to a bishopric. Evidence of the suitability of these men is demonstrated most clearly through a comparative study of canon law and contemporary narrative sources, hagiography, letters, and poetry. In the late fifth and in the sixth centuries the selection of a new type of man to episcopal office was complicated as a consequence of dwindling Roman power in the West and the subsequent establishment of the autonomous successor kingdoms. Career options became more limited. Aristocratic men who would normally have entered public office in the local or provincial Roman administration now chose instead to enter the ecclesiastical hierarchy, seeing it as an alternative career path holding comparable authority. But were they canonically suitable?

Church music in the light of national legislation in the principality of Serbia and the Kingdom of Serbia

Officially, the Serbian Orthodox Church enjoyed a legally guaranteed status throughout the 19th century and Orthodox faith was considered to be prevalent both in the Principality of Serbia and in the Kingdom of Serbia. Nevertheless, after gaining its autonomy within the Constantinople Patriarchate in 1831 (under whose forced jurisdiction it had been since 1766), Knez Milos?s attitude and a number of state provisions led to the unsparing diminishing of the Church authority together with frequent subversions of the Church Canon law. Introduction of the constitutional and legislative framework for the activities of the Serbian church, the enforcement of institutionalized mechanisms of control, and above all, direct interference of the State authorities in the elections of Church hierarchs and their activities, marked relations of the Church and the State in the 19th century. ?Might makes right? rule was always on the State side. Investigations so far have least examined those provisions of the Government concerning general and theological education, in which church music also found its place. Presentation and analysis of the facts about the beginnings of organized music education go in favor of the existing findings on concurrencies and discrepancies in two cultural policies - that of the State and the one of the Church. Attitudes of the Sovereign and the Government towards the educational process, so vital during the decades of the State formation, are also indicative for affirmation of chanting practice and music art in general, as are (non-) conflicting interests between the prelates and distinguished public figures on one, and those in charge at the ministries on the other side. This paper presents all relevant government legislations regulating religious and music education at regular and theological schools. Attempts of the Church dignitaries and learned Serbian musicians to raise the level of music culture with the help of the State authorities are particularly emphasized. The emphasis was especially on the promotion of polyphonic church music and endeavors to print notated church chanting books. All relevant direct and indirect contributors to the expansion of church music are mentioned, among them especially music teachers at the Theological high school in Belgrade. Eventually, the paper points to those legal regulations which imposed on teachers certain duties related to everyday church services and reactions of the teachers to those regulations.

Necessary to Salvation? The Canon Law of the Church of England and the Interpretation of Scripture

The canon law of the Church of England begins from the assumption that scripture contains ‘all things necessary to salvation’ but the law makes little attempt to lay down rules for the way in which scripture should be interpreted. The authors attribute this reticence to the fact that, historically, adherents of the Church of England have been inclined to disagree about the nature both of ecclesiastical and of scriptural authority; and one of the functions of the Church's canon law has therefore been to hold together a wide spectrum of theological opinions. This comprehensiveness, however, causes strains within the wider Anglican Communion and may lead to difficulties of mutual comprehension in ecumenical conversations.

The Internal Forum and the Literature of Penance and Confession

When Dante ascended to the Sphere of the Sun, he was directed by St. Thomas Aquinas to consider a circle of shining lights. One of the lights, St. Thomas tells him, is Gratian, “who served the one and the other court so well that it gives pleasure in Paradise” (che l'uno e l'altro foro / aiuto si che piace in paradiso [Paradiso 10:104–5]). The allusion to two “courts” (fora) would have puzzled Gratian, but to both Thomas and Dante it would have had a clear reference to the two broad arenas in which the Church's canon law was operative: the external forum of ecclesiastical courts (sometimes known as the “contentious forum”) and the internal forum of conscience and of penance. This new way of describing the Church's legal competence had been invented in the decades immediately following the publication of Gratian's magisterial textbook (ca. 1140), and it would have important consequences for the history of medieval canon law in the years to come.

The Internal Forum and the Literature of Penance and Confession

When Dante ascended to the Sphere of the Sun, he was directed by St. Thomas Aquinas to consider a circle of shining lights. One of the lights, St. Thomas tells him, is Gratian, “who served the one and the other court so well that it gives pleasure in Paradise” (che l'uno e l'altro foro/aiutò sì che piace in paradiso[Paradiso10:104–5]). The allusion to two “courts” (fora) would have puzzled Gratian, but to both Thomas and Dante it would have had a clear reference to the two broad arenas in which the Church's canon law was operative: the external forum of ecclesiastical courts (sometimes known as the “contentious forum”) andthe internal forum of conscience andof penance. This new way of describing the Church's legal competence had been invented in the decades immediately following the publication of Gratian's magisterial textbook (ca. 1140), and it would have important consequences for the history of medieval canon law in the years to come.