My Blog

What is Canon Law?

Canon law is the body of norms that govern the Catholic Church. The time-honored principles of canon law help define and protect the rights and duties of the faithful, making sure that the Church lives up to the mission entrusted to it by the Lord.

How can hiring a canon lawyer help me?

A canon lawyer can help people in need of advice , assistance, or representation with any issue regarding the Catholic Church. This can include actions relating to defamation, declarations of marital nullity (“annulments”), fiscal mismanagement in a parish or diocese, difficulties within religious congregations, or issues relating to sexual abuse claims or abuses of ecclesiastical power.

When do I need a canon lawyer?

As soon as someone’s canonical rights begin to appear to be threatened, the early involvement of a reputable, knowledgeable, and competent canon lawyer is absolutely critical. If you are a cleric accused of misconduct, you need to call such a canonist as soon as possible, as time is of the essence.

Why is it important that you are both a civil and a canon lawyer?

Civil lawyers are used to negotiating and problem solving. They also can be trusted to keep client confidences under the attorney-client privilege. Being familiar with both systems of law can be of tremendous assistance when helping clerics accused of misconduct.

How is the Church hierarchy supposed to respond when a concern about a priest is raised? Specifically, what is the role of the local diocesan bishop, and how is the Pope involved, if at all?

Under the canon law of the Catholic Church, every bishop [1] has certain duties when an accusation of sexual misconduct is made against one of the priests of his diocese. Generally, a bishop must investigate the allegation and, if there exist sufficient grounds to believe that the allegation may be true, the bishop must proceed as canon law directs. In the recent revision of Book VI of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, the essentially pastoral purpose of the Church’s penal law is made clear (cf. c. 1311), meaning that enforcing discipline in the Church is a necessary part of a bishop’s duties, and i

Given the Church’s long history, the recent clerical sexual abuse scandals involving minors cannot be the first time that these issues have arisen. How has the Church dealt with this in the past?

Canon law has long provided that clerics who inflict harm on children through sexual misconduct are to be punished. Church Councils such as the Council of Elvira (Spain, early 4th century) strongly condemned the sexual abuse of children, as did influential theologians such as St. Peter Damian (Italy, mid-11th century). Similarly, the first hugely influential collection of canon law documents and commentaries, Gratian’s Decretum (mid-12th century), identified unnatural sex acts with young boys as a grave canonical “delict” (the canonical word for a crime). Only upon the first codification of ec

What do you mean “the first codification of ecclesiastical law”? Didn’t the Church always have some form of canon law?

Yes, Catholics believe that as a structured community of believers established by Christ himself, the existence of a system of justice within the Church is a fundamental and necessary reality. While the Catholic Church has always had some sense of “law,” understood as a system of rights and obligations, the notion of compiling a “code” or a compilation of written statutes is a modern phenomenon. In the Church’s first Code of Canon Law (“CIC17”), promulgated in May 1917, canon 2359 §2 stated that clerics who committed a sexual offense against a minor under the age of sixteen were to be “suspend

I have heard something about a secret document that was published about 100 years ago and sent only to the world’s bishops. Was this part of a global effort at covering up a growing clerical sexual abuse scandal?

On 9 June 1922, just four years after the Code of 1917 went into effect, the Holy See released an Instruction entitled Crimen Sollicitationis (“the crime of solicitation”). Approved by Pope Pius XI, the Instruction was essentially a procedural guide for the prosecution of certain very grave crimes of a sensitive nature, crimes which had already been referenced in the Code of 1917. The Instruction was seen as an update, in light of the new Code, to the Apostolic Constitution that had been promulgated in 1741 by Pope Benedict XIV entitled Sacramentum Poenitentiae (“the sacrament of penance”). Th