About the Catholic effect of Catholic baptism
Canon 868 of the Johanno-Pauline Code regulates the administration of baptism to infants (basically, kids up to about age seven). Currently the law restricts the Catholic ministration of baptism to...
View ArticleTime to head off confusion in Canada
Regarding the Christian burial of suicides the Pio-Benedictine Code differed from the Johanno-Pauline Code in that the former law expressly listed suicides as among those “public and manifest sinners”...
View ArticleYes, religious women “marrying” each other is against canon law
Western society’s understanding of elemental, foundational concepts like “male” and “female” (Gen I: 27) is disintegrating, and I fear we will see more manifestations of this disintegration even within...
View ArticleTaking a page from the Proportionalist Playbook?
Apropos of nothing in particular—but I suppose of several things in general, like the continuing turmoil over Amoris laetitia, the Buenos Aires directives, the Roman diocesan protocol, and a torrent of...
View ArticleA canonical look at the Holy See – China issue regarding episcopal appointments
Catholic Canada Those who, having read Joseph Cdl. Zen, George Weigel, or Yu Jie, are tracking with some trepidation reports on the Holy See’s negotiations with Communist China in regard to, among...
View ArticleCardinals in the Church have rights too
Catholic Canada The rashest reaction to the “Four Cardinals’ Five Dubia” so far is that from Bp. Frangiskos Papamanolis, President of the Bishops’ Conference of Greece, whose railing against the...
View ArticleThree thoughts on the AEA letter
Catholic Canada The Atlantic Episcopal Assembly (i.e, the Roman Catholic bishops of Eastern Canada) has written a short document to and about Catholics who are considering and/or preparing for...
View ArticleA canonical primer on popes and heresy
Catholic Canada No one in a position of ecclesial responsibility—not the Four Cardinals posing dubia, not Grisez & Finnis cautioning about misuses, and not the 45 Catholics appealing to the...
View ArticleReminder: Canon 277, at some point, needs to be authoritatively addressed
Catholic Canada Fr. Dwight Longenecker has written, as usual, an informative essay, this time on some of the practical problems associated with a married Roman Catholic clergy. I recommend his essay...
View ArticleThe Maltese disaster
Catholic Canada The bishops of Malta, in a document that can only be called disastrous, repeatedly invoking Pope Francis’ Amoris laetitia, have directly approved divorced and remarried Catholics taking...
View ArticleThe Maltese directive makes answering the ‘dubia’ urgent
Catholic Canada When highly placed Italian prelates declare that “only a blind man cannot see” that confusion is the ecclesiastical order of the day, and that such confusion has as its fundamental...
View ArticleThree ways to not deal with Canon 915
Catholic Canada Any canonist citing canon law in defense of doctrine or discipline these days should expect to be compared to a Pharisee and tritely accused of ‘throwing the law at pastoral problems’....
View ArticleMaybe ‘adjusting’ Canon 915 is not such a good idea after all
Catholic Canada The chief problem with electronic publishing is that writers and editors, no longer limited by the physical capacity of pages to contain words, now crank out copy with abandon. Stephan...
View ArticleDo footnotes count?
Catholic Canada Fr. Regis Scanlon, in a column that makes several interesting criticisms of Amoris laetitia, offers a comment that I think requires more than his simple claim. In criticizing the very...
View ArticleWhen, please, were ‘adulterers’ actually ‘excommunicated’?
Catholic Canada I hold amateurs to canonical standards when they venture canonical claims, so I certainly hold canonists to canonical standards when they venture canonical claims. Lawyers must respect...
View ArticleCompared to Malta the Germans seem restrained, emphasis on ‘seem’
Catholic Canada Displaying somewhat more scholarly technique than was shown in the Maltese Disaster (whereby that nation’s two bishops flatly contradict unbroken ecclesiastical observance by stating...
View ArticleRestrictions on absolution are not so easily placed
Catholic Canada Clergy, lawyers, and physicians have long been exempt from the duty to report certain crimes known by them to have been committed by certain persons. I do not know what use the...
View ArticleA blow upon a bruise
Catholic Canada Evelyn Waugh’s character Charles Ryder described his friend Sebastian’s protracted acts of self-destruction as “a blow, expected, repeated, falling upon a bruise, with no smart or...
View Article‘Sexual relations’ and ‘conjugal relations’ differ categorically
Catholic Canada Among the fault lines revealed by the ecclesiastical earthquakes erupting after Pope Francis’ Amoris laetitia, we can see, I suggest, how some high-ranking ecclesiastics seem...
View ArticleCanon 377 § 5 and the Chinese negotiations
Catholic Canada Canon 377 § 5 of the 1983 Code states “In the future, no rights and privileges of election, nomination, presentation, or designation of bishops are granted to civil authorities.”...
View ArticleI am a lawyer, not a mind-reader
Catholic Canada Cardinal Vincent Nichols’ echoing of claims that Amoris laetitia changed no doctrines occasioned a question for me: Am I the only (or among the few) Amoris critics who agrees with...
View ArticleA small but important point is at risk
Catholic Canada {NB: This post has some unusual formatting and, depending on your device, it might display oddly. I have strengthened the point made in ¶ ‘Note’.} The debates over admission of...
View ArticleSever ‘canon law’ from ‘pastoral practice’ and lots of things make sense
Catholic Canada I am tempted to address at length Austen Ivereigh’s commentary on Fr. Raymond de Souza’s observations on Cdl. Wuerl’s statement on Francis’ document Amoris laetitia, but at a certain...
View ArticleQuestions in the wake of Cdl. Coccopalmerio’s comments on Anglican orders
Catholic Canada A rock dropped into quiet waters produces a visible splash and observable ripples. The same rock thrown into a storm-tossed sea, however, passes unnoticed, for its effects are...
View ArticleDo Catholics need to seek Church permission for divorce?
Catholic Canada Simmering in Catholic circles for some time has been the assertion that Catholics need permission from their bishop to divorce. Proponents of this alleged requirement (one that, if...
View ArticleConcerning the Diocese of Ahiara
via Catholic Canada I know nothing about the ethno-ecclesial dispute in the Nigerian Diocese of Ahiara beyond what can be found in news reports and so offer no comment on it. Regarding the remarkable...
View ArticleFake canon law goes on goin’ on
via Catholic Canada Fr. James Keenan writing in Crux this week makes his own a question raised (last July, it seems) by Rocco Buttiglione in L’Osservatore Romano: “Is there any contradiction between...
View ArticleCould a pope BE in schism?
via Catholic Canada Concerns that Pope Francis could cause a schism in the Church have been percolating in Catholic circles for some time now: US Catholic, Crux, Inside the Vatican, The Spectator. More...
View ArticleBp Paprocki’s norms on ‘same-sex marriage’
via Catholic Canada A few days ago, doubtless in response to pastoral questions he had been receiving from ministers in his local Church, Springfield IL Bp Thomas Paprocki issued diocesan norms...
View ArticleBp. McGrath’s letter on sacramental service
via Catholic Canada In 1977, during the darkest period of canonical confusion that ran from the end of the Second Vatican Council until the promulgation of the 1983 Code, then-Fr Patrick McGrath earned...
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