In the Roman Catholic Church, a body of rules or laws to be observed in matters of faith, morals, and discipline. It developed out of the decisions of the Councils of the Church, and the decrees of popes and influential bishops. A notable compilation was made by Gratian in his Decretum (1140), which, with later additions, formed the Corpus juris canonici (completely revised in 1917 and 1983). Pre-Reformation canon law is observed in the Church of England, subject to revisions such as the Book of Canons (16046) and Code (19649).
Canon law is the term used for the internal ecclesiastical law which governs various churches, most notably the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Anglican Communion of churches. The way that such church law is legislated, interpreted and at times adjudicated varies widely among these three bodies of churches. these canons formed the foundation of canon law.
Canons of the Apostles
The Apostolic Canons or Ecclesiastical Canons of the Same Holy Apostles is a collection of ancient ecclesiastical decrees (eighty-five in the Eastern, fifty in the Western Church) concerning the government and discipline of the Early Christian Church, incorporated with the Apostolic Constitutions which are part of the Ante-Nicene Fathers collection.
Catholic Church
After Mosaic Law and Judaism, the Roman Catholic Church has the oldest continuous legal system in history, predating the common and European civil law traditions.
In the Catholic Church, positive ecclesiastical laws, based upon either immutable divine and natural law, or changeable circumstantial and merely positive law, derive formal authority and promulgation from the Pope, who as Supreme Pontiff possesses the totality of legislative, executive, and judicial power in his person.
In the early Church, the first canons were decreed by Bishops reunited in "Ecumenical" (the Emperor summoning all of the known world's Bishops to attend) or "local" (Bishops of a regional territory) councils. This difficult situation impelled Pope St. Pius X to order the creation of the first Code of Canon Law, a single volume of clearly stated laws. After decades of discussion and numerous drafts, Pope John Paul II promulgated the revised and presently binding Code of Canon Law for the Latin Rite or Western Rite of the Church in 1983. Eastern Rite Catholics completed work on their own Code of Canon Law, called the CCEO (Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches) in 1990, their first single volume compilation.
St. Raymond of Penyafort (1175-1275), a Spanish Dominican priest, is the patron saint of canonists, due to his important contributions to the science of Canon Law.
Orthodox Churches
The Orthodox Christian tradition is generally much less legalistic, and treats many of the canons more as guidelines than as absolute laws, adjusting them to cultural and other local circumstances. Some Orthodox canon scholars point out that, had the Ecumenical Councils (which deliberated in Greek) meant for the canons to be used as laws, they would have called them nomoi/νομοι (laws) rather than kanones/κανονες (standards).
Greek-speaking Orthodox have collected canons and commentary upon them in a work known as the Pedalion/Πεδαλιον (rudder--so called because it is meant to "steer" the Church).
Anglican Churches
In the Church of England, the ecclesiastical courts that formerly decided many matters such as disputes relating to marriage, divorce, wills, and defamation, still have jurisdiction of certain church-related matters (e.g., discipline of clergy, alteration of church property, and issues related to churchyards). In contrast to the other courts of England the law used in ecclesiastical matters is at least partially a civil law system, not common law, although heavily governed by parliamentary statutes. The teaching of canon law at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge was abrogated by Henry VIII; thereafter practitioners in the ecclesiastical courts were trained in civil law, receiving a Doctor of Civil Law (D.C.L.) degree from Oxford, or an LL.D. (Admiralty law was also based on civil law instead of common law, thus was handled by the civilians too.) Charles I repealed Canon Law in 1638 after uprisings of Covenanters confronting the Bishops of Aberdeen following the convention at Muchalls Castle and other revolts across Scotland earlier that year.
Other churches in the Anglican Communion around the world (e.g., the Episcopal Church in the United States, and the Anglican Church of Canada) still function under their own private systems of canon law.
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