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Canon law (from Ancient Greek: κανών, kanon, a 'straight measuring rod, ruler') is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (church leadership) for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members.
The canon law of the Catholic Church is articulated in the legal code for the Latin Church [9] as well as a code for the Eastern Catholic Churches. [9] This canon law has principles of legal interpretation, [10] and coercive penalties. [11] It lacks civilly-binding force in most secular jurisdictions.
An ordinance or ecclesiastical ordinance is a type of law, legal instrument, or by-law in the canon law of the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, and in Calvinism.. Each Christian denomination that has a hierarchy tends to need rules and regulations that define the rights, privileges, powers, and responsibilities of each individual cleric (such as deacon, priest or pastor, bishop ...
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. Polity relates closely to ecclesiology, the theological study of the church.
Philosophy and theology shape the concepts and self-understanding of canon law as the law of both a human organization and as a supernatural entity, since the Catholic Church believes that Jesus Christ instituted the church by direct divine command, while the fundamental theory of canon law is a meta-discipline of the "triple relationship ...
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 ...
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] Even papal authority should be balanced by the secular nobility (episcopalism) and the Church hierarchy (election of the Pope by the conclave , and the conciliar movement ).
The Church of England, like the other autonomous member churches of the Anglican Communion, has its own system of canon law - known as "Canon law of the Church of England". The principal body of canon law enacted since the Reformation is the Book of Canons approved by the Convocations of Canterbury and York in 1604 and 1606 respectively.