CANONICAL NORMS ARE INSPIRED BY A REALITY THAT TRANSCENDS THEM

VATICAN CITY, JAN 24, 2003 (VIS) - This morning the Pope received participants in an academic day organized by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law.

John Paul II said that "in these twenty years the Church's need for the new Code has been noted. Fortunately, debate about the law has now been overcome. However, it would be naive to ignore what remains to be done in order to consolidate a true juridical-canonical culture in the present circumstances of history, and an ecclesiastical procedure which is attentive to the instrinsical pastoral dimension of the laws of the Church."

The idea of writing a new Code was that pastors and the faithful would have "a clear normative instrument that had the essential aspects of the juridical order. However, it would be simplistic and misleading to view the law of the Church as a mere collection of legislative texts with the vision of juridical positivism. The canonical norms are inspired by a reality that transcends them."

"The new Code of Canon Law - and this criteria is also valid for the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches - must be interpreted and applied with this theological vision. In this way, certain interpretive reductions that impoverish science and canonical procedure, distancing them from their true ecclesiastical horizon, are avoided. This happens, obviously, especially when the canonical norm is put at the service of interests foreign to the faith and Catholic morality."

The Holy Father warned about "a dangerous reductionism that attempts to interpret and apply the ecclesiastical laws, separating them from the doctrine of the Magisterium. If this were to happen, the doctrinal pronouncements would have no disciplinary value, and only the formally legislative acts would have to recognized." However, he continued, "the juridical dimension, being theologically intrinsic to the ecclesiastical realities, can be the object of magisterial teachings, including definitive teachings."

One of the "most significant new aspects" of the two codes, he added, "is the norm that the two texts contain on the duties and rights of the faithful." The personal dimension allows one "to understand better the specific and irreplaceable service that the ecclesiastical hierarchy must lend for the recognition and protection of the rights of the individuals and communities in the Church."

The Pope recalled that the laws, procedures and canonical sanctions "thus acquire their true sense, a sense of authentic pastoral service." This service, he concluded, "sometimes can be misunderstood and challenged: precisely then it becomes more necessary in order to prevent decisions which cause and even unconsciously favor real injustice."

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