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Ecclesiastical polity is the government of a church. There are local ( congregational ) forms of organization as well as denominational . A church's polity may describe its ministerial offices or an authority structure between churches.
The supreme administrator and steward of to all ecclesiastical temporalities is the pope, in virtue of his primacy of governance. [1] The pope's power in this connection is solely administrative, as he cannot be said properly to be the owner of goods belonging either to the Church or to particular churches.
Churches with an episcopal polity are governed by bishops, practising their authorities in the dioceses and conferences or synods.Their leadership is both sacramental and constitutional; as well as performing ordinations, confirmations, and consecrations, the bishop supervises the clergy within a local jurisdiction and is the representative both to secular structures and within the hierarchy ...
The bishop or eparch of a see, even if he does not also hold a title such as archbishop, metropolitan, major archbishop, patriarch or pope, is the centre of unity for his diocese or eparchy, and, as a member of the College of Bishops, shares in responsibility for governance of the whole church (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 886).
In Presbyterian and Reformed churches, canon law is known as "practice and procedure" or "church order", and includes the church's laws respecting its government, discipline, legal practice, and worship. Roman canon law had been criticized by the Presbyterians as early as 1572 in the Admonition to Parliament. The protest centered on the ...
Presbyterian (or presbyteral) polity is a method of church governance ("ecclesiastical polity") typified by the rule of assemblies of presbyters, or elders.Each local church is governed by a body of elected elders usually called the session (or consistory), though other terms, such as church board, may apply.
The relations between the Catholic Church and the state have been constantly evolving with various forms of government, some of them controversial in retrospect. In its history, the Church has had to deal with various concepts and systems of governance, from the Roman Empire to the medieval divine right of kings, from nineteenth- and twentieth-century concepts of democracy and pluralism to the ...
The Church's tradition taught that government and laws originally emerged from the people, and were justified with their consent . Catholic thinkers believed that government authority was to be limited by natural and customary laws, as well as independent institutions such as the Church. [ 2 ]