Canon Law

• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

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Any church's or religion's laws, rules, and regulations; more commonly, the written policies that guide the administration and religious ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church.

Since the fourth century, the Roman Catholic Church has been developing regulations that have had some influence on secular (non-church-related) legal procedures. These regulations are called canons and are codified in the Code of Canon Law (in Latin, Codex juris canonici).

The law of England, which inspired much of the law formed in the United States, was a mixture of canon law and COMMON LAW (principles and rules of action embodied in case law rather than legislative enactments). Canon law and English common law borrowed heavily from each other throughout medieval times and together formed the basis for many of the legal procedures used in the United States. For example, canon law's influence is still visible in the concepts of the GRAND JURY, presentment (a description of a criminal offense that is based on the jury's own knowledge), and some characteristics of U.S. marriage law.

Canon law has its origins in ancient church writings, decisions made by the general councils of local bishops, and rulings issued by the pope. These ideas were organized in the mid?twelfth

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century by an Italian law teacher, Gratian. He sorted the collection into religious law, penal law, sacramental law, and other categories. Along with a set of decisions by the pope called Decretals of Gregory IX, Gratian's work formed the main body of canon law for nearly eight hundred years. In 1917, Pope Benedict XV recodified (revised) the canons. Pope John Paul II reissued the Code of Canon Law in 1983?authorizing increased participation of laity in the church, recognizing the needs of disabled people, and making other changes. A related text, the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, was reissued by the Holy See (the seat of papal government) in 1990.

In the Middle Ages, canon law was used in ecclesiastical courts (church) to decide many types of cases that in modern times are decided by civil courts, including criminal offenses. This was because most English Christians did not make a great distinction between secular and spiritual offenses. Crimes that were tried by the church included ADULTERY, blasphemy, slander, heresy (opposition to official religious views), money lending, and gambling. From the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries...