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Canon
Law 
Articles & Reviews
Articles
General
Overviews of Canon Law
Education Issues
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Stomer's
"Christ among the Doctors of the Law" |
Church
& Children
Marriage
and Annulments
Life
Issues
Other
Reviews
(alphabetical
by author)
(jump
to Briefly Noted)
Velasio de Paolis, DE
SANCTIONIBUS IN ECCLESIA: ADNOTATIONES IN CODICEM: LIBER VI (1986); Antonio
Calabrese, DIRITTO PENALE CANONICO (1990); Alphonse Borras, LES SANCTIONS DANS
L'EGLISE: COMMENTAIRE DES CANONS 1311-1399 (1990).
Briefly
Noted
(alphabetical
by author)
Canon Law Society of
Great Britain & Ireland, Index to the Code of Canon Law
(1985)
This book is only an
index, and one must have the British (not the American) translation of the 1983
Code in order to use it properly. That said, this is
probably the best index of canonical topics available in English. Note: those who get the major British commentary,
The Canon
Law: Letter & Spirit, will no longer need this separate
index volume.
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E.
Capparos,
et
al., eds., Code of Canon Law: Annotated
(1997)
This work
first appeared in Spanish, then in French, and now in English. It is a
thoughtful, canon-by-canon commentary on the entire 1983 Code. It
includes the Latin-English text of all canons, offers a superb English
index, and provides a very useful appendix of complementary canonical
legislation from numerous countries. With each translation, the editors
slightly modified the original Spanish commentary to help make the notes
more useful to readers of that language group. Still, in using this
work, one will notice at times an approach to some canons that reflects
what I will call "more European" concepts of canon law than
North American. This is not bad, of course, but the approaches used here
need not always be the exactly same as one would expect to encounter in
other parts of the world-wide Catholic Church and its legal system. This
commentary is of fine scholarship, the translations are very reliable,
and, without doubt, the Navarra text has become a standard reference in
modern canon law.
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Richard Cunningham,
Annotated Bibliography of the Work of the
CLSA 1965-1980 (1982)
A one-stop reference for those researching the work of
(mostly) American canon lawyers between the end of Vatican II (1965) to
just before the publication of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. The
annotations are somewhat uneven in quality, but remain generally useful.
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John Gilchrist, Collection in 74
Titles: Canon Law...of the Gregorian Reform
(1980)
As modern
secular scholars continue to discover the untapped riches preserved in
the texts and treatises of medieval canon law, most of them immediately
confront the problem of working in Latin, especially juridic Latin.
Gilchrist, an historian of immense credentials, chose wisely in
translating the Collection in 74 Titles, one of the
earliest, most influential, and (from the point of view of readability) most manageable
canonical texts available. Gilchrist's
introduction and indexes along with handsome production
values make this the kind of work one can simply sit down and
enjoy, even if one approaches it with only the vaguest familiarity with
the topics.
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Augustine
Mendonca,
Rotal Anthology:
...Index of Rotal Decisions from 1971-1988 (1992)
A Herculean
achievement. All matrimonial cases heard by the Roman Rota and published
from 1971-1988 are summarized in English (from the Latin); indexed by
protocol number, date of decision, canonical grounds, judges, and
country of origin. Presentation of cases appears unbiased, indexing
seems highly accurate. Allows researches to determine in a few minutes
whether a given annulment case needs to be studied in more detail, and
permits immediate study of Rotal trends during years of intense
canonical development in marriage law.
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John Noonan, Jr.,
Power to Dissolve: Lawyers and Marriages...the Roman Curia
(1972)
John Noonan,
now a prominent judge on the federal Circuit Court of Appeals, was also
for many years a respected scholar of canon law history. This work,
based on Noonan's direct study of Vatican archives, caused quite stir
upon its publication in 1972, by painting an accurate, if not entirely
flattering, picture of the complex canonical process by which, prior to
the Second Vatican Council, Catholic marriage cases were adjudicated.
The work is respectful of canonical tradition and, in my opinion,
basically wanted only to see a franker admission by some canonical
judges that adjudicating marriage cases is as much an art as it is a
science.
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J.
Provost, ed., Code, Community and Ministry:
... Studies for the Parish Minister (1982)
A short
book, consisting basically of overviews of workshops done in the early
1980s by the CLSA on canon law in practical pastoral situations. Dated
by now but still worth a quick read. Does not contain text of canons nor
significant research commentary. Is actually better as a help in
figuring out what kinds of canonical topics might be involved in a given
pastoral situation.
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Elissa Rinere New Law and Life: 60 Practical Questions
on...Canon Law
(1985)
A reprinting
of canon law questions-and-answers penned for Catholic
newspapers in the early 1980s. Neither a code nor a commentary, the materials
tried to respond briefly (sometimes, extremely briefly) to a few of the more
common questions about Church law being floated in Catholic circles at the time.
Some pretty famous canon lawyers contributed to the project, but unless one's
current questions coincide exactly with a given question in the book, there is
not much point in consulting it anymore.
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Michel Theriault &
Jean Thorn, eds.,
Le Nouveau Code De Droit
Canonique: 5th International Congress of Canon Law
(1986)
Beautifully
printed 2-volume proceedings of one of the largest canon law conventions ever
held, with over 50 addresses in five languages covering more than 1,000
pages. A real who's-who of international canon law experts. The strength
and weakness of this work is its time of presentation, ie., concurrent
with the revised Code of Canon Law. That was a time of marked
uncertainty in Catholic Church law, and several of the papers reflect
this. For all that, a highly regarded work of lasting value.
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Constant Van De Wiel,
History of Canon Law
(1992)
The list of
modern histories of canon law is very short, especially in English;
fortunately, this text swells that number. This work assumes the reader
has little knowledge of canonical sources and spends, therefore, a bit
more time explaining basic concepts than do some other studies. The material
is reliable however, and it merits a reading by those
looking for material on the history of canon law.
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Elizabeth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages
(1986)
Vodola ably presents the matter of excommunication from its Old Testament
roots through its "high point" during the late medieval Church.
Accessible for non-canon lawyers, with plenty of scholarly apparatus for
specialists.
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