Descriere & specificații

For many the law of the Church, canon law, has little meaning; it appears remote both from the Gospel and from the life of most people in the Church. Yet, it can impinge on them at times if a parish priest urges that a baptism be deferred, where a dispensation is needed for marriage or where there is a query about nullity of marriage. Recently, the scandals over clerical sexual abuse of children have drawn wider attention to the need for law also in the Church. At a time when it is popular to assert 'rights' of all sorts ― an identification of authentic rights and of corresponding duties in the Church, as well as mechanisms to ensure that these are respected in practice in a systematic way ― justice and law in the Church cannot be neglected. This book seeks to root the Church's law in the values of the Gospel, in particular in the justice which should guide the lives of those called to follow Christ and in the baptism by which they are incorporated into him and into his Church. The 'canon' or measure of how we should treat one another as members of the People of God and participate in our common mission in the service of that Gospel, according to our particular vocations and functions, is the focus of canon law. No law can replace the Gospel or the Holy Spirit, but canon law is an instrument of justice in the service of the Church and of its mission. The revision of canon law, which led to the Code of Canon Law of 1983 for the Latin Church, sought expressly to reflect the key