A question of interpretation: the Roman Rota and the theologie of marriage

• Autores: Aidan McGrath
• Localización: Ecclesiastical law journal, ISSN 0956-618X, Vol. 8, Nº. 39, 2006, págs. 425-437
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Judges need guidance if they are to apply the law in particular circumstances with an even hand. For Roman Catholics, Canon 19 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law provides this guidance by reference to the practice of the Roman Curia and by the constant opinion of learned authors. Useful as these supplementary sources are, they mean that judges have to trust that those responsible for making decisions in the Roman Curia and the learned authors have drawn their conclusions on a sound basis. This study considers what happened when a specific document was misunderstood in the Roman Catholic Church for almost four hundred years. The document, a letter from Pope Sixtus V to his Nuncio in Spain in 1587, responded to a specific query concerning the capacity for marriage of men who had been castrated. The interpretation of the letter defined the Roman Catholic Church's concept of marriage in general and its understanding of the impediment of impotence for four centuries. In the twentieth century, several Roman Catholic judges and canonists refused to take at face value the conclusions offered by other judges and learned authors, and decided to carry out their own analysis of the document in question. This resulted in a complete reversal of the way in which marriage cases were considered by the Apostolic Tribunal of the Roman Rota, and contributed to the emergence of a much richer and more integrated theology of marriage.