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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.
Ecclesiastical government, ecclesiastical hierarchy, or ecclesiocracy may refer to: Theocracy, a form of religious State government; Hierocracy (medieval), papal temporal supremacy over the State; Ecclesiastical polity, the government of a Christian denomination Hierarchy of the Catholic Church
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).
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.
According to Walter Ullmann, medieval Catholic scholars came close to envisioning and endorsing democracy in its modern form, [2] with Saint Thomas writing that the law should be formulated by "the whole community or the person who represents it" and describing a regime in which "all participate in the election of those who rule" as the best ...
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 ...
Congregational polity, or congregationalist polity, often known as congregationalism, is a system of ecclesiastical polity in which every local church (congregation) is independent, ecclesiastically sovereign, or "autonomous".
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 ...