Last week’s post examined the scriptural background of the relationship between law and spirituality, emphasising how the salvation of souls became fundamental in the relationship between these two concepts. Today’s post continues the trajectory of the salvation of souls and canon law, focusing on Church history.
As the salvation of souls became the fundamental principle guiding Church laws, the concept of the salvation of souls as the supreme law (salus animarum suprema lex) gradually developed in the course of history.
The numerous exceptions granted in relaxing ecclesiastical discipline and remission of ecclesiastical penalties, especially in the danger of death, showed the salvation of souls as the supreme law of the Church.
However, the concept of the salvation of souls as the supreme law developed in the Middle Ages, with St. Ivo, the bishop of Chartres (1040-1116), who maintained that “every institution of ecclesiastical law must always refer to the salvation of souls.”
Saint Raymond of Peñafort (1175-1275) admitted that “in order for the common good to be related to eternal life, that is, to the supernatural purpose, it should be considered and treated by canon law first of all in such a way that only the salvation of men is recognised as the specific purpose of canon law.” St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) reaffirmed this saying that “the end of canon law tends the peace of the Church and the salvation of souls.”
Francesco Suarez (1548-1617) also highlighted this important point, maintaining that the legislative power of the Church should first of all tend towards the salvation of souls and also to avoid sinning. Moreover, the norm that the salvation of souls is the supreme law can even be traced to Cicero, a Roman statesman in the first century BC, who argued that the “safety (welfare) of the people is to be the supreme law” (Salus populi suprema lex esto).
While distinguishing the Church (ecclesial society) from secular society, Pope Leo XIII (1810 – 1903) affirmed that although the Church is made of humans like secular society, it is supernatural and spiritual because of the purpose for which it was founded and of how it aims to reach that end (Immortale Dei, 10).
In the preface to the 1917 Code of Canon Law, Cardinal Gasparri maintained that the salvation of souls contributed to emending ecclesiastical laws because conditions of time and subject matter have rendered the existing laws less conducive to the salvation of souls. Pope Pius XII (1943) taught that the juridical principles on which the Church rests and is established derive its supernatural efficacy from Christ, who set His Church to contribute towards attaining the supernatural end, the salvation of souls. (Mystici Corporis Christi, 31, 63).
In his 1944 speech to the Roman Rota, Pope Pius XII maintained that the salvation of souls communicates to juridical activity the firmness to proceed on the sure path of truth and law, and preserves juridical activity from a weak condescension towards the disordered desires of the passions and a hard and unjustified inflexibility. The health of souls has as its guide an absolutely sure supreme norm: the law and the will of God. In his 1949 speech to the Roman Rota, Pope Pius XII reaffirmed that the ecclesiastical juridical system is always and entirely aimed towards the end of the Church herself, which is the health and good of souls.
In the wake of anti-juridical sentiments of separating the spiritual from the temporal dimensions of the ecclesial society, the Second Vatican Council taught that “the society structured with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, are not to be considered as two realities, nor are the visible assembly and the spiritual community, nor the earthly Church and the Church enriched with heavenly things; rather they form one complex reality which coalesces from a divine and a human element” (Lumen Gentium, 8). The Church remains “the universal sacrament of salvation” (Lumen Gentium, 48).
This means that the legal order within the Church is not only geared towards regulating the temporal order but intrinsically connected towards the spiritual end of the Church, which is the salvation of souls.
In light of this, Pope Paul VI, in his 1969 speech to the Roman Rota, reacted against a Church in which canon law, external and formalistic, would ignore the spirit of the Gospel, prevail over theological speculation or suffocate the formation of an enlightened conscience for self-determination. He rejected the ‘spirit of legalism’ and emphasised the spirit of the Catholic Church, the vigilant guardian of Christian law and maternal interpreter of human reality. He also affirmed that canon law should be a guide to religious life and Christian perfection (cf. Lumen Gentium, 45).
In his 1970 speech to the Roman Rota, Pope Paul VI maintained that canon law enshrines the primacy of the spirit as its own supreme law, gravitates around spiritual values, and responds to the inherent necessity of the Church as an organised community so desired by Christ for the good and salvation of all people.
Pope John XXIII not only convoked the Second Vatican Council on 25 January 1959, but he also simultaneously announced the revision of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which will be revised based on the teachings of the Council. Hence, in light of the Council, ten principles (iter) guided the revision of the 1917 Code. Relevant to this discussion is the first principle, which underlined the centrality of the salvation of souls by affirming that the new code “must define and protect the rights and obligations of each person towards others and towards the ecclesiastical society to the extent that these rights and obligations pertain to divine worship and the salvation of souls.”
In the apostolic constitution promulgating the 1983 Code of Canon Law, Pope John Paul II, while emphasising the Church’s “office of salvation in the world”, affirmed that reforming and renewing laws of canonical discipline is to adapt them better to the Church’s saving mission. He further exhorted all the faithful “to observe the proposed legislation with a sincere spirit and goodwill in the hope that there may flower again in the Church a renewed discipline; and that consequently the salvation of souls may be rendered ever easier under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church.”
Hence, the juridical nature of the canonical norms is perfectly compatible with its intrinsically pastoral nature.
As Pope John Paul II said in his 1990 speech to the Roman Rota: “The juridical and the pastoral dimensions are united inseparably in the Church, pilgrim on this earth. Above all, they are in harmony because of their common goal—the salvation of souls… In effect, juridical-canonical activity is pastoral by its very nature… It follows from this that any opposition between the pastoral and the juridical dimensions is deceptive. It is not true that, to be more pastoral, the law should become less juridical… In the Church, true justice, enlivened by charity and tempered by equity, always merits the descriptive adjective pastoral. There can be no exercise of pastoral charity that does not take account, first of all, of pastoral justice.”
May God continue to help us🙏🏾
K’ọdị🙋🏾♂️
