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Enlightening News
Canon Law for Catholics
written by Canon Badia
Today, many people ask about the rights and obligations of Catholics who belong to the Catholic Church. In light of recent priestly scandals and lay Catholic problems, we will try to simplify the Canon Law.
- What is Canon Law?
Many people call it the laws of the Catholic Church. That is not correct. It is the official rules for the Catholic Church (clergy and laity). Canon comes from the Greek word, Kanon, meaning a measure or rule. It does not mean Law. Early Church leaders selected the Greek word, Kanon (rule) instead of the Latin word Lex (Law). Canon Law governs rules, decisions, norms of behavior within the Church. Therefore, Church Canons are different from the laws of cities, states and nations. In other words Church Canons govern the rights and obligations of its members. Periodically, it has to update its Canons because of new situations of a particular age.
- A brief history of Canon Law
During the 2000 years of the Catholic Church history, it had to develop needed rules for its membership. It developed an internal structure for decisions and legislations.
a) c. 300s – a collection of canons (rules) developed as the Church became legal under the Roman Empire. It settled problems of widows, married couples, fasting, election of bishops and disciplinary measures against immoral clergy.
b) c. 1200 – it updated its rules for the Church of its day. It made efforts to make Canon Law comparable with Civil Law. Can Law addressed duties and obligations of clergy, criminal proceedings and penitential disciplines.
c) 1917 – Canon Law was updated and unified for the entire Catholic Church in the world.
d) 1983 – Pope John XXIII called for a major reform of the Canons and their interpretations. It returned to biblical and rational roots.
- Who are Canonists?
A Canonist is any person (clergy or lay person) with a graduate degree (a licentiate or doctorate) in Canon Law earned from a pontifical university faculty. In the United States there is only one, located at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. There are approximately twenty pontifical University faculties in the world.
There are approximately 2,500 canonists in the United States. Usually, canonists have degrees in civil law.
- Today’s Problem with Priests
Scandalists priests face civil and canon law disciplinary actions. If there are criminal charges, they will be brought before Civil and Church authorities. If a priest or religious is guilty before the civil law, he/she is punished according to the state laws. Then the priest or religious is brought before the Church tribunal court for further punishments. The punishments can range from deprivation of power, office, function, right, privilege, faculty, title to complete dismissal from the clerical or religious state. Obviously, sexual misconduct is an extreme offence and will be dealt with very severely. A priest will be removed from active duty forever in Church work.
Like any protestant minister, rabbi, teacher and other professional, the guilty person is removed from active work with their people. So too with the priest.
The Origin of the Words: Hebrew and Jew (permission and credits: Tracey R. Rich, www.jewfaq.org.)
The original name for the people we now call Jews was Hebrew. The word “Hebrew” is first used in the Torah to describe Abraham (Gen. 14:13).
Another name used for the people is Children of Israel or Israelites which refers to the fact that the people are descendants of Jacob who was also called Israel.
The word “Jew” (in Hebrew, “Yehudi”) is derived from the name Judah, which was the name of one of Jacob’s twelve sons. Judah was the ancestor of one of the tribes of Israel, which was named after him. Likewise, the word Judaism literally means: Judah-ism, that is the religion of the Yehudim. Other sources, however, say the word Yehudim means “People of God”, because the first three letters of “Yehudah” are the same as the first three letters of God’s four-letter name.
In the 6th century B.C., the Kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria, and the ten tribes were exiled from the land, leaving only the tribes in the Kingdom of Judah remaining to carry on Abraham’s heritage. These peoples of the Kingdom of Judah were generally known to themselves and to other nations as Jews. That name continues to be used today.
Finally, a Jew is any person whose mother was a Jew or any person who has gone through the formal process of conversion to Judaism.
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