Ecclesiastical law

Canon law (from grc, κανών, , a 'straight measuring rod, ruler') is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (church leadership) for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law, or operational policy, governing the Catholic Church (both the Latin Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches), the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the individual national churches within the Anglican Communion. The way that such church law is legislated, interpreted and at times adjudicated varies widely among these four bodies of churches. In all three traditions, a canon was originally a rule adopted by a church council; these canons formed the foundation of canon law.

Etymology

Greek / grc, κανών, Arabic / , Hebrew / , 'straight'; a rule, code, standard, or measure; the root meaning in all these languages is 'reed'; see also the Romance-language ancestors of the English word ''cane''.

In the fourth century, the First Council of Nicaea (325) calls canons the disciplinary measures of the church: the term canon, κανὠν, means in Greek, a rule. There is a very early distinction between the rules enacted by the church and the legislative measures taken by the state called ''leges'', Latin for laws.

Apostolic Canons

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.

Catholic Church

In the Catholic Church, canon law is the system of laws and legal principles made and enforced by the church's hierarchical authorities to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the church., p. 3 It was the first modern Western legal system and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West.Dr. Edward N. Peters
CanonLaw.info Home Page
accessed June-11-2013

In the Latin Church, positive ecclesiastical laws, based directly or indirectly upon immutable divine law or natural law, derive formal authority in the case of universal laws from the supreme legislator (i.e., the Supreme Pontiff), who possesses the totality of legislative, executive, and judicial power in his person, while particular laws derive formal authority from a legislator inferior to the supreme legislator. The actual subject material of the canons is not just doctrinal or moral in nature, but all-encompassing of the human condition, and therefore extending beyond what is taken as revealed truth.

The Catholic Church also includes the main five rites (groups) of churches which are in full union with the Holy See and the Latin Church:
# Alexandrian Rite Churches which include the Coptic Catholic Church, Eritrean Catholic Church, and Ethiopian Catholic Church.
# West Syriac Rite which includes the Maronite Church, Syriac Catholic Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church.
# Armenian Rite Church which includes the Armenian Catholic Church.
# Byzantine Rite Churches which include the Albanian Greek Catholic Church, Belarusian Greek Catholic Church, Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church, Greek Catholic Church of Croatia and Serbia, Greek Byzantine Catholic Church, Hungarian Greek Catholic Church, Italo-Albanian Catholic Church, Macedonian Greek Catholic Church, Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Romanian Greek Catholic Church, Russian Greek Catholic Church, Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church, Slovak Greek Catholic Church and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
# East Syriac Rite Churches which includes the Chaldean Catholic Church and Syro-Malabar Church.
All of these church groups are in full communion with the Supreme Pontiff and are subject to the ''Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches''.

History, sources of law, and codifications

The Catholic Church has what is claimed to be the oldest continuously functioning internal legal system in Western Europe, much later than Roman law but predating the evolution of modern European civil law traditions. What some might describe as "canons" adopted by the Apostles at the Council of Jerusalem in the first century would later be developed into a highly complex legal system encapsulating not just norms of the New Testament, but some elements of the Hebrew (Old Testament), Roman, Visigothic, Saxon, and Celtic legal 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''.Ramstein, pg. 13, #8 In relation to the Code, history can be divided into the ''jus vetus'' (all law before the Code) and the ''jus novum'' (the law of the Code, or ''jus codicis'').

The canon law of the Eastern Catholic Churches, which had developed some different disciplines and practices, underwent its own process of codification, resulting in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches promulgated in 1990 by Pope John Paul II.

Catholic canon law as legal system

Roman Catholic canon law is a fully developed legal system, with all the necessary elements: courts, lawyers, judges, a fully articulated legal code, principles of legal interpretation, and coercive penalties, though it lacks civilly-binding force in most secular jurisdictions. One example where conflict between secular and canon law occurred was in the English legal system, as well as systems, such as the U.S., that derived from it. Here criminals could apply for the benefit of clergy. Being in holy orders, or fraudulently claiming to be, meant that criminals could opt to be tried by ecclesiastical

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