“During the course of the centuries the Catholic Church has been accustomed to reform and renew the laws of canonical discipline so that in constant fidelity to its divine founder, they may be better adapted to the saving mission entrusted to it.”
- Pope John Paul II, Apostolic constitution Sacrae disciplinae leges, January 25, 1983.
In his apostolic constitution Sacrae disciplinae leges, St. John Paul II, who promulgated a total reform of the entire canonical legal system of East and West, restated a fundamental principle of canon law. Ecclesiastical laws, insofar as they do not directly positivize Divine Law, natural or positive, are binding for a time and place; they are not immutable, nor are they the final word. The law, like the Church herself, is a living, breathing complex of norms and traditions which cannot be expected to remain unchanged for all time; as a living instrument of a living Church, canon law cannot be content to extinguish its relevance for the Church’s life by relegating itself to the status of a dead letter. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit who breaths Divine Life into the Bride of Christ, must become the Spirit of the law, and the Church must allow for the promptings of the Spirit to continually direct her legal development.
While the unquestioned pursuit of “progress” would be an ideological intrusion detrimental to the theological self-understanding of ecclesiastical law, neither can the competent authorities remain complacent with the law as it is, in slavish deference to the way things have been. Creative execution of the law constitutes the ordinary means whereby the universal and abstract legal tradition becomes concretized in the particulars of time and place, but when it happens that the historical, political, or cultural circumstances in which the Church ministers have undergone drastic change, or when the Church finds herself in new lands ministering to diverse peoples with unique traditions, the Church, in obedience to her Divine Founder’s great commission to go and make disciples of all the nations,[1] must adapt her means of salvific ministry to the needs of particular times and peoples. Divine Revelation and Sacred Tradition remain forever unchanged, but the disciplinary regime whereby the conditions for making God’s love manifest must be continually refined and adapted, if law is to be the “condition of love.”[2]
Again and again we see the Church reforming her laws, either through the work of private canonists and local bishops and synods, or through the universally binding acts of pontiffs, ecumenical councils, and codification commissions. Gratian and the canonists and popes of the Gregorian Reform, the Council of Trent, and Pietro Cardinal Gasparri are central figures and events in the history of what we now know as canon law. St. John Paul II, likewise, the author of the statement we’re meditating upon, might even belong on this list, as he brought to completion the total reform of the Church’s law. Some contemporary canonical commentators mention in their doctrinal writings ideas for a future reform of canon law, noting certain lacunæ or inconsistencies in the law and proposing solutions. The 1917 Code was in effect for about 65 years. The 1983 Code has been in effect for just over 35 years. I don’t mean to suggest that we’re due for another comprehensive overhaul, but it is important to keep in mind the ultimately tentative, yet binding, nature of the merely ecclesiastical jus vigens.
The canonical legal tradition is in some sense outside of time, an unchanging and constant backdrop to which the jus vigens is connected and through which it is properly understood (1983 CIC c. 6 §2). The tradition is a continual source of inspiration, for as much as laws change, people do not, and most issues, administrative or penal, which presently arise have arisen previously. Many legal mechanisms for solving common problems have already been thought of and attempted, with some experiments having achieved desired results, only to be discarded in later periods though accident of history. Some of these mechanisms may well be revived to the benefit of the People of God. In the Church’s continual need for legal adjustment and reform, canonists do well to recall what our ancestors in the Church’s legal tradition attempted, so that our solutions to the here and now will be rooted thereby in a sort of professional communion with all canonists made one through baptismal incorporation into the Body of Christ. The Church’s law cannot become stagnant, but neither are contemporary canonists compelled to reinvent the rota.
The Roman Rota is the highest ordinary appellate tribunal in the canonical legal system, deriving its name from a "wheel" around which it judged causes in time immemorial.
[1] Matthew 28:19
[2] Benedict XVI, “Letter of His
Holiness Benedict XVI to Seminarians (18 October 2010)”, Vatican.va, accessed
December 12, 2018. http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/letters/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20101018_seminaristi.html
(Body of the post originally an essay for canon law school, submitted 12/12/2018).
