I HAVE PREVIOUSLY PUT SEVERAL POSTS ON THIS BLOG POINTING OUT THAT THE LIBERAL CLIMATE IN THE CHURCH IN THE YEARS SINCE THE CLOSE OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL WHICH RELEGATES CANON LAW TO AN ECCLESIASTICAL LIMBO  IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MUCH OF THE HARM THAT HAS COME TO THE CHURCH.

Here are some of those posts: CRITICISM OF THE LACK OF EPISCOPAL ACTION AT THE LOCAL LEVEL IS RISING
27 May 09

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR NANCY PELOSI, TED KENNEDY, ET AL TO RECEIVE HOLY COMMUNION IN THE FACE OF CANON 915
25 July 09

WHAT DO PEOPLE THINK ABOUT CANON LAW?  MORE IMPORTANTLY, WHAT DO THE BISHOPS THINK ABOUT CANON LAW?
22 September 09

NANCY PELOSI, HERETIC, INVITES EXCOMMUNICATION
16 January 10

It seems to be of the very nature of liberalism to detest law and punishment according to law.  One rarely reads or hears any bishop or priest mention the Church’s Code of Canon Law.  It is almost as though mankind has reached a new level of sanctity in which there is no need for an organization (e.g. the Roman Catholic Church) to resort to enforcing law upon its recalcitrant members who rebel against good order and bring chaos to the life of the organization.

The necessity of having a code of canon law in the Church was clearly enunciated by Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Constitution Sacrae Disciplinae Leges promulgating the revision of the Code in 1983:

….it appears sufficiently clear that the Code is in no way intended as a substitute for faith, grace, charisms, and especially charity in the life of the Church and of the faithful.  On the contrary, its purpose is rather to create such an order in the ecclesial society that, while assigning the primacy to love, grace and charisms, it at the same time renders their organic development easier in the life of both the ecclesial society and the individual persons who belong to it.

As the Church’s principal legislative document founded on the juridical-legislative heritage of revelation and tradition, the Code is to be regarded as an indispensable instrument to ensure order both in individual and social life and also in the Church’s own activity.  Therefore besides containing the fundamental elements of the hierarchical and organic structure of the Church as willed by her divine founder or as based upon apostolic, or in any case most ancient, tradition, and besides the fundamental principles which govern the exercise of the threefold office entrusted to the Church itself, the Code must also lay  down certain rules and norms of behavior [emphasis added].

The Code does just that in Book VI, Sanctions in the Church, when it lists penalties for specific offenses.  Here are a few examples:

Canon 1364:  penalties for an apostate from the faith, a heretic or a schismatic.

Canon 1369:  penalties for a person who uses a public show or speech, published writings, or other media of social communication to blaspheme, seriously damage good morals, express wrongs against religion or against the Church or stir up hatred or contempt against religion or the Church.

Canon 1371:  penalties for a person who teaches a doctrine condemned by the Roman Pontiff or by an ecumenical council or who pertinaciously rejects the doctrine mention in Canon 752 (rejecting magisterial teaching on faith and morals) and who does not make a retraction after having been admonished by the Apostolic See or by the ordinary.

These are just a few of the Canons which deal with the current scandal of dissent by public and prominent Catholics, not just politicians but also people in the media and entertainment industries.

There can be no doubt that it was the failure of bishops in the United States to employ the sanctions of Canon Law against pedophile priests that contributed to the devastating debacle of  injury to innocent persons, scandal, lawsuits and loss of the Church’s patrimony in the period between the close of the Council and the end of the Twentieth Century.

Only now is the full story of how the same tragedy was occurring in Ireland at the same time is coming out.  Here is an excerpt from an article by Michael Kelly writing in the current issue of The Catholic World Report which perfectly illustrates how the contempt for Canon Law by bishops has a disastrous result for the Church.

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THE WOLVES ROAMED FREELY

by Miichael Kelly

THE CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT

February, 2010

IGNORING CANON LAW

Before the report [The Dublin Report, chaired by Justice Yvonne Murphy] was published in late November [2009], it was common among some commentators to insist that the root of the crisis was too heavy a reliance on canon law. Michael McDowell, a former Minister for Justice, even insisted that the abuse of children was compounded by canon law.

Judge Murphy’s report demolishes that mythical thinking in one fell swoop and serves as a vindication of the Church’s law. The report makes it clear that canon law was not the problem. In fact, the problem of child abuse by clerics was made worse by the reckless actions of Church officials, who simply refused to implement canon law. In the opening pages of the Murphy Commission report, it is made clear that Church law refers to the abuse of a minor as the “worst crime.”

As the commission wrote: “There is a 2,000-year history of biblical, papal, and Holy See statements showing awareness of clerical child sexual abuse…. Over the centuries, strong denunciation of clerical child sexual abuse came from popes, Church councils, and other Church sources. These denunciations are particularly strong on ‘offences against nature’ and ‘offences committed with or against juveniles.’”

“The 1917 Code of Canon Law decreed deprivation of office and/or benefice, or expulsion from the clerical state for such offences,” the report notes. The commission goes on to report that “in the 20th century, two separate documents on dealing with child sexual abuse were promulgated by Vatican authorities.” The documents, says the commission, were “little observed in Dublin.”

The report also notes that in Dublin “the Church authorities failed to implement most of their own canon law rules on dealing with clerical child sexual abuse.” In a vindication of the law of the universal Church, the report notes: “The commission is satisfied that Church law demanded serious penalties for clerics who abused children. In Dublin, from the 1970s onwards, this was ignored.”

The report goes on: “Canon law provides the Church authorities with a means not only of dealing with offending clergy, but also with a means of doing justice to victims, including paying compensation to them.”

For David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute, the reports’ findings about canon law are crucial. “What we see in the report is a rejection of canon law by more liberal elements within the Church,” he said. “From the 1960s onwards the Church’s penal process is virtually abandoned in Dublin and a purely therapeutic approach to the issue of sexual abuse by priests is adopted.”

According to Quinn, “within liberal elements canon law began to be discredited and this has wreaked the most terrible havoc.”

His contention is backed up by the report itself. Judge Murphy notes, “Canon law, as an instrument of Church governance, declined hugely during Vatican II and in the decades immediately after it.”

“What’s clear is that an attempt to correct an excessive legalism in the Church pre-Vatican II led to an opposite extreme where the laws of the Church became so disrespected in some circles that it was impossible to enforce them,” Quinn added.