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Doc. canonlaw.htm
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope John Paul II has urged bishops not to neglect their duty to govern through administrative processes, trials and sanctions, calling it a "pastoral service" necessary to prevent "true injustices."
Addressing participants in a January 24 Vatican meeting marking the 20th anniversary of the revised Code of Canon Law. The Pope also warned against a modern Church trend to ignore the juridical weight of formal doctrinal teachings. The Church's revised code was promulgated on January 25, 1983. Pope John Paul noted this was the anniversary of the date in 1959 when Pope John XXIII [23rd] announced he was convening the Second Vatican Council. He said one of the most significant novelties of the 1983 code was its emphasis on the duties and rights of all Church members, not just Church hierarchy, to reflect the "personalist dimension" of the council's description of the Church. He said it was precisely the code's emphasis on the person that explains the Church hierarchy's "specific and irreplaceable" role in recognising and safeguarding the rights of individuals and the Church community. |
The Pope said Church leaders could "neither in theory nor in practice" abstain from exercising their duty of pastoral governance.
He described this as "declaring, determining, guaranteeing and promoting justice in the Church." "In this way, all the typical instruments through which potestas regiminis (Power of jurisdiction) is exercised -- laws, administrative acts, trials, canonical sanctions -- acquire their true meaning, that of an authentic pastoral service to the persons and communities that make up the Church," he said. "At times this service may be misunderstood or contested. "Precisely then does it reveal itself more necessary to avoid that decisions are made -- in the name of claimed pastoral needs -- that can cause or even unconsciously promote true injustices," he said, without offering examples. The Pope said another "dangerous" trend was to interpret and apply Church law completely separately from the Church's doctrinal teachings. He said this sometimes has led to the proposal of two different solutions to Church problems: one based on canon law and one based on Church doctrinal texts. |
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