does the Catholic Church have the right to make laws?

Answer 1

The Catholic Church has the right to make church (or canon) law.

Canon Law is the ecclesiastical, or church, law of the Catholic Church. Catholic ecclesiastical law is a fully developed legal system, with all the necessary elements: courts, lawyers, judges, precedent, a fully articulated legal code and principles of legal interpretation.

In the Catholic church, the canons of the councils were gathered together into collections as early as A.D. 1234.

Much of the jurisprudential style was adapted from the Roman Law code of Justinian. As a result, courts in the Catholic Church tend to follow the Roman Law style of the continent of Europe, featuring collegiate panels of judges, a somewhat neutral presumption before verdict, and an investigative form of proceeding, called "inquisitorial", from the Latin "inquirere", to enquire.

This is in contrast to the adversarial form of proceeding found in the Common Law jurisdictions of British and American law, which feature juries, single, neutral judges, etc.

In the 13th century, the Catholic Church began attempting to collect and organize canon law, which after a millennium of development had become a complex and difficult system of interpretation and cross-referencing.

The 1917 Code of Canon Law (Codex Iuris Canonici or CIC) was actually the first instance of a new code completely re-written in a systematic fashion, reduced to a single book or "codex" for ease of use. It took effect in November 1918.

After the sweeping reforms of the Second Vatican Council so much had changed in the Church that the council fathers wrote into the documents that the code be completely revised. After decades of discussion and numerous drafts, the project was nearly complete upon the death of Paul VI in 1978. Later that year when John Paul II had become pope, he brought further major changes to the code. The new revision, (CIC 1982) took effect in 1983.

Pope John Paul II promulgated the revised and presently binding Code of Canon Law for all of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, with exception of the Eastern Catholic Churches.

These Eastern Rites within the Catholic Church have a separate Code of Canon Law, called the CCEO (Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches) incorporating certain differences in the hierarchical, administrative and judicial fora.

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

The Catholic Church is the only Church that possesses the God-given authority to make laws which govern every baptized Christian.

The authority is 100% scriptural and was given directly by Jesus Christ to his apostles, the first priestly bishops, when he founded his church.

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit provided the power and wisdom they would need ... enough to last all the way until the end of time.

Can you imagine what kind of a mess the world would be in if everybody ignored the official authority of the only church Jesus ever founded, and decided to follow only their own personal and misguided interpretations of scripture?

Before we even realized it, there would be 30,000 different Christian groups, all preaching their own warped versions of the truth!

With God's church splintered like that, the world would be in chaos. Wars and terrorism would break out everywhere. Politicians, judges, and even priests would be corrupt. People would be given over to lusts of the flesh. Television and movies would be obscene. Women would line up at clinics to have their own babies killed. Children would put their elderly or sick parents to death, rather than give them the necessary loving care. And the government would make it all legal for them.

Who could imagine living in a world like that?

Answer 3

The Pope has the exclusive right to interpet the Bible and tell you what each "law" of the Bible means and you are expected not to break it.

For the longest time Catholics were NOT allowed to eat meat on Friday, then the Pope changed this in the 1970s.

All other religions do this too, some Islamic regions DEMAND a woman wear a veil, others do not.

Many religions demand an unmarried man wear a beard, others do not.

Answer 4

Just one note to the above. The right to bring order to the Church is given directly by Jesus to Peter and then seperately to the rest of the apostles. To Peter in Matthew's Gospel he says "whatever you bind on Earth is bound in Heaven and what you loose on Earth is loosed in Heaven." The power to bind in loose is later separately given. Likewise, to Peter alone after the Resurrection he instructs him to "Feed my sheep." To Peter and his successors alone was given a global responsibility to care for the Christian community.

Then, one of the first acts of the apostles in Acts 1:46 was to ordain the first Catholic bishop and apostolic successor, Matthias. One of the next acts was to create an ordained ministry Jesus did not, the deacon. Further, the apostles go to efforts to govern the communities from that point forward and if you read the early Christian writings, you will see that that behavior did not stop with the deaths of the apostles but the bishops continued with their authority accepted and intact from the apostles. The very earliest non-canonical Christian writing (which is older than many of the canonical writings) was an epistle from the third Pope, Clement and discusses restoring those chosen by the apostles to authority and control at Corinth. He points out that communities do not get to pick their ministers nor do people get to decide they want to be a minister but rather the apostles put into place a distinct process that must be followed in choosing ministers. A minister only gets his authority from the apostolic authority given by Jesus.

Canon law is just the codification of 2000 years of experience.

Answer 5

No. Church should have no power over state and vice versa. Furthermore, we elect people into office to pass laws. These people represent the population once having been elected. The general population does not elect anyone into a church.

Answer 6

The affections of the Catholic Church are more traditions than worship of the Lord. The Lord stated when in the world that traditions were getting in the way of worship of the Lord.

Ye have made the commandment of God of none effect by your traditions. (Matthew 15:6). ...

Answer 7

No not laws - they have their doctrine and ordinances and what they believe and how they interpret something. If you want to be a catholic you are suppose to follow.

But as a law the rest of us have to follow NO, they have a hard enough time getting their members to follow

Answer 8

Absolutely not. If any Catholics disagree, rethink the question as "does a coven have the right to make laws?" or any other religious group.

Answer 9

no but thay do thay use the brianwashed politions to change the laws to suit the churches than at the end of the day the churches run the goverments and then the countrys thay have managed to brainwash u.s.a

Answer 10

The Bible is the law for the church, how can they make new laws?