Knowing, loving and living by the Church law

THIS is about Church’s Code of Canon Law. Unfortunately,

many people still are at sea as to the importance, role and relevance

of this law to the Church and to the lives of everyone, especially to

their rights and duties.

            We need to remind everyone that the Church Code of Canon

Law is not just a cold body of guiding principles but is rather a

standard or norm of how everyone in the Church, as individual persons

and as the People of God, should be and should act.

            The Code of Canon Law is the organic juridical expression

of the very essence of Christianity which is love—the love of God that

necessarily translates itself to love of neighbour. It actually

defines how our relationship should be with God and with one another

in the Church.

            We need to overcome a seemingly general ignorance that

afflicts this indispensable aspect of our Church as well to as address

the false conflict that some quarters raise between the this law and

the pastoral care of the Christian faithful, or between justice and

charity.

            We also need to be aware of some dangers that threaten

this law. In one of the speeches of the former chief jurist of the

Holy See, Cardinal Raymond Burke, he mentioned that there are attempts

to manipulate the law to advance a particular agenda.

            He also said that the liturgical laws, which should be

given primacy among the canonical norms since they safeguard the most

sacred realities in the Church, are being undermined, due to some

misinterpretation of the spirit of Vatican II.

            We should not fall for the false conflict between charity

and obedience to the discipline of the Church laws. Pastoral charity

and obedience to Church law should go together.

            It would be good if there be a sustained effort to make

more and more people to be familiar with the Code of Canon Law,

explaining and clarifying the different canons slowly, and showing how

these canons are actually relevant to our daily struggles to seek

sanctity especially in the middle of our very secularized world today.

            Bishops and priests, of course, should take the lead, and

should invite more and more lay people also to carry out this delicate

but very rewarding task. Seminaries and other centers of formation

should see to it that this aspect of formation is given due attention.

            We have to continually reiterate that the canon law is not

opposed to freedom but rather serves what is needed to safeguard the

common good. If known, loved and lived properly, this law could have

avoided the many scandals that have rocked the Church in recent years.

            To mention a few of these scandals, we can cite the

notorious sexual scandals involving clerics, the breakdown of

discipline in priestly formation and priestly life, the abandonment of

essential elements of religious life and the loss of fundamental

direction in many congregations of religious sisters, brothers and

priests; the loss of the Catholic identity of charitable, education

and healthcare institutions.

            This is not to mention the controversy hounding the nature

of marriage, etc.