On the Buenos Aires directive
Canon 915, the modern (yet resting on ancient roots) norm that prohibits ministers of holy Communion from giving that sacrament to Catholics who “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin” does not...
View ArticleAbout 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 ArticleIs Keller’s essay really the way Amoris should be read?
Catholic Canada Apologies for the length of this post. It always takes more time to correct errors than it takes to make them. In Fr. Paul Keller’s CRUX essay, “Case study in communion for 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 ArticleDiscussing law with people who don’t know what it actually says
Catholic Canada Austen Ivereigh, in a Crux essay that adds little of substance to what has been said over and over again in regard to Amoris laetitia, fatally misquotes the central canon at issue in...
View ArticleFixing things the wrong way
Catholic Canada I see now an editorial note from CRUX admitting the misquotation and subsequent correction. My objections to Ivereigh’s essay as being irrelevant to the Amoris debate in light of his...
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...
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