NATURE OF LITURGICAL LAW

Liturgical law directly embraces the rule of celebration, affecting the actions (words, song, ritual acts) and the circumstances or environment (churches and baptisteries, furnishings, vesture, and the like). This legal or canonical scope presupposes an understanding of the holy liturgy itself: the divine act of sanctification and the public, corporate human response. It is the public worship of God by the Church, Christ the Head and his members - done through signs, the deeds and words that articulate communally the inward faith and worship and the divine gift or grace.

Large areas of church law related closely to sacraments and other liturgical services - from matrimonial dispensations to the requirements for ordination - are sufficiently extrinsic to the actual celebration of the holy mysteries that they are not counted as liturgical law in the strict or conventional sense. Despite evident overlapping between the norm of celebration and the church discipline related to the sacramental life of the Church, this distinction is useful. It is reflected in the name of the body within the Roman curia now responsible for the Roman and other Latin rites: the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

Another key to this distinction between the law of liturgical celebration and the discipline of the seven sacraments lies in canon 2 of the Code of Canon Law of the Latin Church (1983). This canon largely excludes the canon law of liturgical celebration from the code, noting that the liturgical laws lie outside it "for the most part [plerumque]." Nonetheless the code does contain many canons, chiefly definitions and foundational canons, that directly affect the liturgy's celebration.

The same canon 2 provides that "current liturgical norms retain their [canonical, juridically binding] force unless a given liturgical norm is contrary to the canons of the code." About two months before the 1983 code was to go into effect, the competent curial department issued a list of variations or emendations that had to be made in the new Roman liturgical books in view of the codification (decree, September 12, 1983). The variations, however, were largely minor or merely formalistic. (Something similar had happened earlier this century when the first code of the Latin Church was promulgated in 1917. That code had many norms derived from the existing liturgical

Toggle SidebarMagisterium AIMagisterium AI

Magisterium AI

Login for more usage & features

Handbook for Liturgical Studies: The Eucharist (Volume I)

Magisterium AI
Magisterium AI