There are many interesting aspects to taking on the full-time study of canon law, at this or any time. In my brief experience, the problems of the day are ever-present in our classroom discussions, along with what we as canonists will be facing in our professional work in just a year or so. Canon Law …
Author Archives: A Prairie Canonist
Possible New Models for Parishes
Our earlier comments are not intended to imply that diocesan bishops have simply sat still on pastoral planning and parish staffing while the world changed around them: far from it. As populations have dwindled or shifted, and numbers of available clergy have declined nearly everywhere, bishops across the United States (and elsewhere in the world, …
Mapping the Diocese of Today: Parochial Structures
Since a diocese is required to be “divided into distinct parts or parishes” (c. 374, §1), it seems to follow that, as one distinguished canonist put it to me in conversation, “Every square inch of a diocese has to be part of a parish.” Given the peculiar history of the Catholic Church in the United …
The Nature of Parishes
The parish is “the place where all the faithful can be gathered together for the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist. The parish initiates the Christian people into the ordinary expression of the liturgical life: it gathers them together in this celebration; it teaches Christ’s saving doctrine; it practices the charity of the Lord in good …
Ordinariate: the word itself
It is not exactly a new word in the Catholic Church, but since Anglicanorum coetibus was promulgated nearly two years ago, ordinariate has been slung around in speech in print at an exponentially higher rate than at any point previous. But what, when you stop and look at it, does it really mean? It’s kind …
Parish Councils
The term “parish council” is certainly a familiar enough element of parochial life for most contemporary Catholics, at least in the United States. But what is the role of such councils, really? Why are there two different councils in many parishes? We will try to at least scratch the surface of these questions. Parish Pastoral Council …
Halfway
One more week to go. In a week’s time I will be halfway through my studies for the Licentiate in Canon Law. It is often hard to see how far I have come because my eyes are so fixed on how far I have yet to go before I hold that diploma in my hand, before …
A Welcome Challenge from Canterbury
In his 2009 address at the Willebrands Symposium in Rome, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, confronts the widespread impression that ecumenical dialogue —particularly that between the Churches of Rome and England — has stalled, gone stale, or even reached a dead end. He expresses sincere hope that this is not the case, and emphasizes the …
CIC, Lefebvre, and the Holy Spirit
“I think the Holy Spirit worked to allow the 1983 Code of Canon Law because it provided less severe penalties for the 1988 Consecrations versus what would have been the penalty under the 1917 Code that was replaced. 1983 gave the Archbishop an avenue to persue [sic] the Consecrations that wouldn’t have been available otherwise.” …
Painfully Literal
I find interesting a perennial problem among even those students who most acclaim the shift in translation of official liturgical texts toward a more stringent literalism: the strong preference, or rather the almost insuperable urge, to produce “dynamically equivalent” translations of texts for class assignments. I cannot really fault them; once you begin to get …
