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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. Polity relates closely to ecclesiology, the theological study of the church.
In Eastern Catholic Churches, Patriarchs, major archbishops, and metropolitans have ordinary power of governance for the whole territory of their respective autonomous particular churches. [73] Diocesan bishops and eparchial eparchs; Other prelates who head, even if only temporarily, a particular church or a community equivalent to it
The canon law of the Catholic Church (from Latin ius canonicum [1]) is "how the Church organizes and governs herself". [2] It is the system of laws and ecclesiastical legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the ...
In canon law, the power to govern the church is divided into the power to make laws (legislative), enforce the laws (executive), and to judge based on the law (judicial). [6] An official exercises power to govern either because he holds an office to which the law grants governing power or because someone with governing power has delegated it to ...
The church has the power to judge sin, in the internal forum, but a sin can be at the same time externally a misdemeanour or a crime (delictum, crimen), when threatened with external ecclesiastical or civil punishment. The Church also judges ecclesiastical crimes in the external forum by infliction of penalties, except when the wrongdoing has ...
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 ...
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, a distinction is made between the internal forum, where an act of governance is made without publicity, and the external forum, where the act is public and verifiable. In canon law, internal forum, the realm of conscience, is contrasted with the external or outward forum; thus, a marriage might be null ...
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.