Human Person in the Code of Canon Law of John Paul II

The Code of Canon Law, promulgated by John Paul II in 1983, is a synthesis of the earlier 1917 Code and the doctrine of the Second Vatican Council. The Code contains norms which go well beyond a reform of the inner legal relations within the Catholic Church. A lot of them deal with the value and dignity of the human person, which shows a clear impact of the pontificate of John Paul II, who put a lot of emphasis on the given issue. The article discusses the fields of legal regulations in the Code which touch upon the issue of the human person, esp. freedom of religion, protection of unborn life, social rights, legal standing of women and the education of future generations. It points out the main difference between civil law (which also serves the dignity of the human person) and canon law, namely, the latter aims at the salvation of souls.

“Person” in the Law of Religious [Institutes]

The emphasis on the human person and his dignity was significantly applied in the new regulation of the law of consecrated life, which is dealt with in the new Code of Canon Law of 1983 in integrum compared to the previous Code of Canon Law of 1917. This paper describes only some of the changes in the law of religious institutes in the Latin Church.The first section regards mainly the person who has taken religious vows and focuses on the question of religious vows as the basis of religious life. It also discusses confessors viewed as a necessary tool for the renewal of religious life as well as modifications in the concept of poverty as a very important element of religious life. The second section focuses on the government of religious institutes, discussing the strengthened position of internal superiors over external superiors in religious congregations, the strengthened position of the superior of monasteries of nuns, and the extended powers of superiors on release from a religious institute due to illegitimate absence from a religious house.As this is in some cases a very recent legal regulation, the author does not hesitate to express his critical observations.

The Role of the Altar and Tabernacle in the Catholic Church Interior in the Light of Post-conciliar Recommendations and Architectural Arrangement of the Church Interior

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.

The Vicariate of the Orient in the threshold of the union of the Augustinian Provinces in Spain

The article is about methods of restructuring of governance in an Institute of Consecrated Life. The study is set in the context of the Order of the St. Augustine. It highlights methods applicable and proposed by the Code of Canon Law for religious institutes namely; suppression, union, merger, absorption and creation of new provinces as means of restructuring of religious institutes. The study is set in the context of the Unión de las Provincias Españolas, by which Augustinian Provinces in Spain are in the process of uniting and becoming one province. The study considers largely Filipino Augustinian Religious in the Vice-Province of the Vicariate of the Orient under the jurisdiction of the Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of the Philippines having its sede in Spain.

Reform of marriage annulment processes: is it a theological reform?

The article is a legal and theological analysis of Pope Francis “Mitis Iudex Dominus Jesus” document reforming the canons of the Code of Canon Law on marriage annulment cases (September 8, 2015). He shows its advantages and positive effects for a more efficient process of declaring marriage annulment, and draws attention to its theological and ecclesial novelty that raises questions. These questions require answers from the Church, bishops and theologians collaborating with the Pope.

Delicts against the sanctity of the Eucharist and the simulation of the liturgical action

The present article addresses two groups of delicts from the sixth book of the current Code of Canon Law (Sanctions in the Church), i.e. Delicts against the sanctity of the Eucharist and the simulation of the liturgical action. The content of this book is debated among theologians and canonists, raising a variety of questions: Does the Church have the right to coerce the faithful with penal sanctions? Should penal law exist in the Church, or do certain organizing measures suffice? Based on the first canon of the sixth book (can. 1311), this article shows that using sanctions is a native right of the Church. Since sacraments, in particular the Eucharist, belong to the essence of the Church, the delicts against the sanctity of the Most Holy Sacrament and the simulation of the Sacraments have a great impact on the life of the Church. Therefore, although there are many open questions and several ambiguities around this issue, the present article argues that the Church needs an adequate legal order in the case of sacraments.

Sanctuary for Asylum Seekers: Revisiting the Religious Principle and Practice of Refuge in the Church

This article argues for a reconsideration of the tradition of church sanctuary. First, I analyze the reality of Central American asylum seekers who are systematically denied protection in the United States. Second, using the earliest Christian references to sanctuary from the fourth century, I show that sanctuary was a religious and pastoral response to persecuted persons fleeing violence and death. Third, I trace the process that led to sanctuary’s disappearance from the Code of Canon Law in the late twentieth century, and argue that there is a need to reintroduce sanctuary as a religious principle and practice of the church.

Językowe wykładniki intencji prawodawcy w Kodeksie Działyńskich

Linguistic Exponents of the Legislator’s Intention in the Działyński Code The article presents syntactic methods of expressing the legislator’s intentions in the medieval legal document called Kodeks Działyńskich (the Działyński code). The intention is understood by the authors as ‘the goal towards which the action of the legislator is directed’. This type of element of a legislative text does not appear in modern legal texts, apart from the Code of Canon Law. However, in the oldest texts, the purpose of which was to change a functioning custom into binding law, the justification for introducing certain regulations was very important. We also pay attention to the information about the legislator, which is included in the text. The information is expressed by pluralis maiestaticus forms of performative verbs. Three types of syntactic structures serve to express the intention of the legislator: subordinate clauses introduced by the conjunction: aby, participial sentence equivalents based on the verb chcieć, and prepositional phrases with prepositions: na, ku and dla. These structures usually occur in preposition to the superior predicate. The fragments excerpted from the text are characterized by a considerable degree of cohesiveness, not only in terms of meaning but also in structure. A sentence or a participal construction in the semantic relation of the goal functions in a broader context, therefore it becomes necessary to introduce reference indicators and anaphorical elements such as repetitions, pronouns and pronominalization.

Dowodzenie nieważności małżeństwa z tytułu przymusu lub bojaźni w świetle najnowszego ustawodawstwa. Studium z kanonicznego prawa procesowego i małżeńskiego

This thesis concerns the proving of nullity of a marriage on the ground of force and fear. According to can. 1103 Code of Canon Law 1983, force and fear should be characterized as: grave, external, current, and coercive to enter undesirable marriage. Regarding the rulings of the Roman Rota, an important symptom is an aversion to the prospective spouse or to the project of marriage with this person. It is also important to consider the fear of respect, which is the type of fear specified by the Roman Rota. To declare the nullity of a marriage, a judge should obtain a moral certitude, which excludes the rational possibility of proving the opposite. For this purpose, the judge uses the evidence prescribed by law, which are: statements of the parties, documents, expert witness evidences, a local vision and inspection of things. The judge evaluates the evidence based on the criteria for statutory assessments of evidence and reconstructs the facts regarding the contested marriage. The court case ends with a final judgment in which the judge provides the reasons for the decision based on the reconstructed facts. An analysis of the verdicts of the Metropolitan Tribunal of Cracow for the diocese of Bielsko-Żywiec in 1992–2017 has revealed a demand to increase the value of the expert witness evidences and the value of applying the pastoral investigation postulated by Pope Francis.

The 1917 Code of Canon Law: Codification and Development of Latin canon law in the First Half of the 20th Century

This publication presents the very first Russian translation of the First Book of the first official comprehensive Code of Latin canon law. The Code was promulgated on 27 May, 1917, and took legal effect on 19 May 1918. Although replaced in the practice of the Church with the new Code of 1983, the so-called “Pio-Benedictine Code” remains the most important source for the history of the development of canon law of the Catholic Church in Modern era. It represents the first experience of a full-scale legal codification, on which the development of Catholic ecclesiastical law was based throughout the 20th century. Prior to the promulgation of the Code in 1917, the canon law of the Latin Church was dispersed over a number of sources created in different periods of church history. By the time of the convocation of the First Vatican Council (December 8, 1869 – October 20, 1870) by Pope Pius IX (June 16, 1846 – February 7, 1878), it was obvious to many in the Church that there was an urgent need to codify the vast and unorganised mass of ecclesiastical laws that was presenting all sorts of challenges to both church authorities and canonists. Calls for the codification of Latin canon law, voiced in the run-up to and at the Council itself, were heard by the Holy See, although direct work on the creation of the first full-fledged Code of canon law began only 34 years after the Council’s adjournment, in the pontificate of Pius X (August 4, 1903 – August 20, 1914). The introductory article analyses the main stages of the development of can-on law of the Catholic Church, the history of the creation of the Code, the discussions that unfolded in the 19th century among canonists as to the very need for codification, as well as the impact of the Code on the development of Canon law in the 20th century.