Medieval Canon Law

Author(s):  
Karl Shoemaker

This chapter considers the historical development of medieval canon law. The term ‘canon law’ refers to the body of law developed by the Catholic Church to govern the body of Christ on earth. In time, canon law came to designate the totality of laws, legislation, judicial processes, and institutions promulgated by the Church and enforced by its officers upon Christians, and sometimes non-Christians. This chapter covers the successes of canonists in consolidating their text base and laying the ground for an increasing professionalization of their discipline; the professional competition between canonists and theologians, which emerged in part out of a divide between those who understood the Church as a pastoral institution and those that understood it as a rigorously hierarchical administrative entity; and the emergence of new legal practices.

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-45
Author(s):  
Piotr Wojnicz

The increase in migration at the international level also increases the number of religiouslymixed marriages. The Catholic Church advises against entering into such marriages because thisissue refers to the laws of God and the question of preserving faith. The Catholic Church approvesof mixed marriages in terms of nationality or race because belonging to the Church is primarilydetermined by faith in Jesus Christ and baptism in the name of the Holy Trinity. Independentlyof canon law, progressive social secularization is noticeable on that subject matter.


Ecclesiology ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-74
Author(s):  
Kenneth Wilson

Does Methodism want a distinctive ecclesiology? British Methodism assumes its ecclesiology from the Church of England which explains its lack of ecclesiological thinking, its genuine desire for reunification, and indeed its focus on ecclesia in actu. But there can be no ecclesia in actu apart from ecclesia per se. Being and doing are one in God. The Church, grounded in the dynamic being of God in Trinity, celebrates in the action of the Eucharist the wholeness of God’s presence with his world. Proleptically the Church includes the whole of creation and all people. Hence, when as the Body of Christ we pray the Our Father with our Lord, we pray on behalf of all, not just for ourselves. But what then do we mean by apostolicity? Perhaps in Methodism we would be well occupied exploring more keenly with the Roman Catholic Church what we each mean by being a society within the church. Outler may have been right when he opined that Methodism needed a Catholic Church within which to be church.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-130
Author(s):  
Sebastian Zygmunt

Over the centuries, exercising authority in the Catholic Church had been generating many doubts and problems. The extreme understanding the Pope’s role as an absolute monarch who independently decides about all dimensions of the Church has supplanted with time the known from the Apostle’s time communal management of the Mystical body of Christ. Just the Second Vatican Council and the last few popes noticed this particular problem. And one of the given solutions was the necessity of the return to the former way of exercising power by the college of bishops united around the Saint Peter’s Successor. Synods whose provisions would be presented to the Bishop of Rome for possible corrections and acceptance could again become a tool of power. By the analysis of the patrology research results, the history of the Catholic Church and dogmatic theology as well as sources and the subject literature it was possible to answer the question what synodality is in general, where does it draw its foundations and what is its role in building of the Kingdom of God. It was also possible to outline the perspective of the further Church development in an increasingly globalised world. The reflection on the historical formation of a proper understanding of collegiality and primacy proved helpful in understanding the goals behind the ”decentralization” of power in the Church postulated today by Pope Francis.


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 400-407
Author(s):  
Christopher Hill

In the Archbishop of Canterbury's Foreword to the findings of the Anglican Communion Legal Advisers' Network, Rowan Williams argues that law is a way of securing two things for the common good: equity and responsibility. Law is against arbitrariness and for knowing who is responsible for this or that. Law in the Church is also about equitable life in the communion of the Body of Christ and the mutual obligations of our interdependence. As Convenor of the Legal Advisers' Network, Canon John Rees observes that their work, which emerged as The Principles of Canon Law Common to the Churches of the Anglican Communion, is not a quick fix to the contemporary problems of the Anglican Communion. Nor is it a covert device for the introduction of a universal canon law for the whole Anglican Communion with an aim to impose covenantal sanctions for churches which do not toe the line.


1993 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-189
Author(s):  
Alison Williams Lewin

Of all the divisions and crises that the Catholic church endured in its first fifteen hundred years of existence, none was so destructive as the Great Schism (1378–1417). For forty years learned theologians and doctors of canon law argued over whether the pontiff residing in Rome or in Avignon was the true pope. The effects of the schism upon the highly organized administration of the church were disastrous, as were its effects upon society in general. Countless clerics fought over claims to benefices with appointees from the other obedience; the revenues of the church, quite impressive in the mid-fourteenth century, shrank precipitously; and opportunistic rulers especially in Italy did not hesitate to wage private wars under the banner of one or the other papacy, or to prey upon the actual holdings of the church.


2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 250-277
Author(s):  
Mirosław Bogdan

The article defines the role of the altar and tabernacle in the contemporary architectural sacred interior treated as domus ecclesiae, designed to fulfill liturgical functions in accordance with the post-conciliar renewal of Vatican II. The article takes into account the problem of celebrating Holy Mass. by the celebrant with his back to the tabernacle located centrally behind the post-conciliar altar. With reference to the irreversibility of the liturgical renewal, apart from the ordinary form of the Roman rite, the existence of the extraordinary (Tridentine) form of this rite, also accepted by Vatican II, is taken into account.  By presenting the presence of the post-conciliar altar brought closer to the zone of the faithful, the meaning of the Code of Canon Law is defined. The article, defining the irreversibility of the liturgical renewal, presents the location of the tabernacle separated from the altar, built architecturally in the nave or chapel of the church. At the same time, the aesthetic beauty of the liturgical interior furnishings is determined, when all this exists in accordance with the post-conciliar ordinances and serves to build a community of faith.


2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Gary M. Bouchard

The text of Epistle of Robert Southwell unto His Father is populated by bodies: the body politic that is the omnipresent Elizabethan state, the body of the Southwell family on behalf of whom Southwell claims to make his appeal, the body of the Catholic Church from which Richard Southwell is presently separated, and most significantly the body of Christ to which the young priest would have his father reunited. The detachment of father and son from these various bodies, and consequently from one another, is the reason for the letter’s existence as well as the foundation of its arguments and the source of its considerable drama. This essay argues that the artful persuasiveness of the Epistle lies in the simultaneity of its rhetorical appeals to both a private and public audience, appeals which are strengthened by the author’s awareness of the divided bodies he addresses, and his subsequent decision to deploy a provocative interplay between the actions of remembering and dismembering throughout his text.


Author(s):  
Jean-Robert Armogathe

The Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist (the transformation of the whole substance of the bread in the body of Christ) was a stumbling block for Cartesian physics, which denied any accidents. Descartes worried about this and proposed several solutions in order to solve the difficulty and assert his orthodoxy. Despite this, the problem stirred up fierce discussions among his followers and brought him official condemnation from the Catholic church. This chapter shows how this debate is not only a theological debate concerning transubstantiation—Descartes has had to bring a theological discussion into philosophy. The true issue in this discussion is not the explanation of the dogma, but the definition of the body.


Author(s):  
Peter Marshall

This chapter examines the role of the bishops of Rome, or popes, as ‘vicars of St Peter’, and also as ‘vicars of Christ’. St Paul taught that the Church was the body of Christ. If the Church was a body, then clearly, as John Alcock, bishop of Ely, declared in 1497, ‘in every realm of Christianity, the head thereof is Christ’. The chapter first considers what ordinary English people thought about popes and the papacy before discussing the issue of royal taxation of the clergy and the appointment of clergy to English benefices. It then explores lines of demarcation between common law and canon law, along with the arrest, imprisonment and death of a merchant named Richard Hunne, who was accused of heresy. It also looks at the issue of reforming the Church of England and people.


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