In the canon law of the Catholic Church, the loss of clerical state is the removal of a bishop, priest, or deacon from the status of being a member of the clergy.
A decree is a legal proclamation, usually issued by a head of state, judge, royal figure, or other relevant authorities, according to certain procedures. These procedures are usually defined by the constitution, Legislative laws, or customary laws of a government.
In Christianity, minor orders are ranks of church ministry. In the Catholic Church, the predominating Latin Church formerly distinguished between the major orders—priest, deacon and subdeacon—and four minor orders—acolyte, exorcist, lector, and porter. In 1972, the Vatican re-titled the minor orders as "ministries", with those of lector and acolyte being kept throughout the Latin Church. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the three minor orders in use are those of subdeacon, reader and chanter.
Sede vacante refers, in the Canon Law of the Catholic Church, to the state during which a diocese or archdiocese is without a prelate installed in office, with the prelate's office being the cathedral. The term is used frequently in reference to papal vacancies occurring upon the Pope's death or resignation.
Decretals are letters of a pope that formulate decisions in ecclesiastical law of the Catholic Church.
In law, sua sponte or suo motu/suo moto describes an act of authority taken without formal prompting from another party. The term is usually applied to actions by a judge taken without a prior motion or request from the parties. The form nostra sponte is sometimes used by the court itself, when the action is taken by a multi-member court, such as an appellate court, rather than by a single judge. While usually applied to actions of a court, the term may reasonably be applied to actions by government agencies and individuals acting in their official capacities.
The Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches is the title of the 1990 work which is a codification of the common portions of the canon law for the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in the Catholic Church. It is divided into 30 titles and has a total of 1546 canons. The code entered into force in 1991.
In the jurisprudence of the canon law of the Catholic Church, a dispensation is the exemption from the immediate obligation of the law in certain cases. Its object is to modify the hardship often arising from the rigorous application of general laws to particular cases, and its essence is to preserve the law by suspending its operation in such cases.
The Écône consecrations were Catholic episcopal consecrations in Écône, Switzerland, on 30 June 1988 performed by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer. The bishops consecrated were four priests of Lefebvre's Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX). The consecrations, performed against the explicit orders of Pope John Paul II, represented a milestone in the troubled relationship of Lefebvre and the SSPX with the Church leadership. The Holy See's Congregation for Bishops issued a decree signed by its Prefect Cardinal Bernardin Gantin declaring that Lefebvre and De Castro Mayer had incurred automatic excommunication by consecrating the bishops without papal consent, thus putting himself and his followers in schism.
Ecclesiastical letters are publications or announcements of the organs of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical authority, e.g. the synods, but more particularly of pope and bishops, addressed to the faithful in the form of letters.
Papal rescripts are responses of the pope or a Congregation of the Roman Curia, in writing, to queries or petitions of individuals. Some rescripts concern the granting of favours; others the administration of justice under canon law, e. g. the interpretation of a law, the appointment of a judge.
Summorum Pontificum is an apostolic letter of Pope Benedict XVI, issued in July 2007. This letter specifies the circumstances in which priests of the Latin Church could celebrate Mass according to what Benedict XVI called the "Missal promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962" and administer most of the sacraments in the form used before the liturgical reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council.
A Catholic funeral is carried out in accordance with the prescribed rites of the Catholic Church. Such funerals are referred to in Catholic canon law as "ecclesiastical funerals" and are dealt with in canons 1176–1185 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, and in canons 874–879 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. In Catholic funerals, the Church "seeks spiritual support for the deceased, honors their bodies, and at the same time brings the solace of hope to the living." The Second Vatican Council in its Constitution on the Liturgy decreed: "The rite for the burial of the dead should express more clearly the paschal character of Christian death, and should correspond more closely to the circumstances and traditions found in various regions."
The 1917 Code of Canon Law, also referred to as the Pio-Benedictine Code, is the first official comprehensive codification of Latin canon law.
The 1983 Code of Canon Law, also called the Johanno-Pauline Code, is the "fundamental body of ecclesiastical laws for the Latin Church". It is the second and current comprehensive codification of canonical legislation for the Latin Church of the Catholic Church. The 1983 Code of Canon Law was promulgated on 25 January 1983 by John Paul II and took legal effect on the First Sunday of Advent 1983. It replaced the 1917 Code of Canon Law which had been promulgated by Benedict XV on 27 May 1917.
The Catholic Church utilizes the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West, much later than Roman law but predating the evolution of modern European civil law traditions. The history of Latin canon law can be divided into four periods: the jus antiquum, the jus novum, the jus novissimum and the Code of Canon Law. In relation to the Code, history can be divided into the jus vetus and the jus novum. Eastern canon law developed separately.
A decree is, in a general sense, an order or law made by a superior authority for the direction of others. In the usage of the canon law of the Catholic Church, it has various meanings. Any papal bull, brief, or motu proprio is a decree inasmuch as these documents are legislative acts of the pope. In this sense the term is quite ancient. The Roman congregations were formerly empowered to issue decrees in matters which come under their particular jurisdiction, but were forbidden from continuing to do so under Pope Benedict XV in 1917. Each ecclesiastical province, and also each diocese may issue decrees in their periodical synods within their sphere of authority.
The jurisprudence of Catholic canon law is the complex of legal theory, traditions, and interpretative principles of Catholic canon law. In the Latin Church, the jurisprudence of canon law was founded by Gratian in the 1140s with his Decretum. In the Eastern Catholic canon law of the Eastern Catholic Churches, Photios holds a place similar to that of Gratian for the West.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the canon law of the Catholic Church:
Traditionis custodes is an apostolic letter issued motu proprio by Pope Francis, promulgated on 16 July 2021 regarding the continued use of pre-Vatican II rites. It restricts the celebration of the Tridentine Mass of the Roman Rite, sometimes colloquially called the "Latin Mass" or the "Traditional Latin Mass". The apostolic letter was accompanied by an ecclesiastical letter to the Catholic bishops of the world.
