This month has been the month of conferences. First I attended the 21th Congress of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches in Bari, September 10-13. The next week I cohosted a colloquium at the Center for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University on September 18.
The Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches is an ecumenical canon law society founded in 1969 with its seat in Vienna. The society promotes the scholarly study of the internal and external juridical and canonical regulation of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, Oriental Orthodox Churches, and Eastern Catholic Churches. The current Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was one of the founding members of the society.
The topic of the 21th congress was “Particular law and Current Issues in the Churches.” The congress was originally planned to be held in Lebanon, but the venue was change to Bari, Italy, as a result of the current political situation in the region. The papers presented dealt with particular law from the perspective of both ius internum (i.e., the autonomous regulation of ecclesiastical institutions and affaires) and ius externum (i.e., the regulation of ecclesiastical institutions and affaires in national and international law). The program of the congress is available here.
The Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Eastern Catholic Churches face very different issues with regards to particular law. The Eastern Catholic Churches have their own codified ius commune – the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. The possibility of particular law was originally meant as a way to ensure a place for the patrimony of the Eastern Churches sui iuris in their juridical order. A challenge for particular law in the Eastern Catholic Churches sui iuris is the territorial limits of their legislative competence to enact particular law. The primates and synods of the Eastern Churches sui iuris are competent to enact particular law in their proper territory, but not for communities in other territories (e.g., Eastern Catholic communities in North America) which belongs to the rite of Eastern Churches sui iuris. Another challenge to particular law is to balance fidelity to the patrimony of the Eastern Churches sui iuris and the actual needs of the churches in the contemporary context. Fidelity to the ritual patrimony must not result in a juridical antiquarianism which is unable to address the juridical challenges of the church today. Finally, there is the issue of the relationship between particular law of the Eastern Churches sui iuris and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.
The situation of the Eastern Orthodox Churches with regards to particular law is very different. The Eastern Orthodox Churches do not have a codified ius commune. They have a common canonical tradition based on the decision of the seven ecumenical councils and the canonical material received and transmitted in the classic Byzantine collections of canon law. The Eastern Orthodox Churches have in a sense only particular law. While the “sacred canons” are an important element in the confessional identity of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, most of them are unusable since they presuppose ancient and Byzantine sociopolitical structures and cultural institutions which do not exist anymore. The Eastern Orthodox Churches also face new political structures and institutions which do not have any analogy in history (e.g., labor unions and labor law). Adaptation to the changing sociopolitical contexts of the Eastern Orthodox Churches has historically take place through customary law and juristic reinterpretations of the classic Byzantine canonical material. But today’s legal culture with its emphasis on the rule of law, juridical certainty, and legal codification creates new challenges for the development of particular law in the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
On the last day of the congress we elected Bishop Dr. Kyrillos Katerelos to replace Prof. Dr. Konstantinos Pitsakis, who passed away last year, as president of the society. I was also elected vice secretary of the society. Then we visited the relics of St. Nicholas and had dinner at the Dominican Community which is in charge of the Basilica of St. Nicholas.
The next week it was time for yet another conference at my university which I organized and cohosted together with Jonas Otterbeck, assistant professor of Islamic Studies. This conference was a small one day colloquium on religions, law, and democracy. The purpose of this colloquium was to lay the initial foundation of a future Nordic interdisciplinary network for research on religion, law, and politics. At the colloquium we discussed papers on democracy, religious freedom, political theology, Christian social ethics, Jewish law, and Islamic law. After this colloquium we decided to arraign a limited series of interdisciplinary seminars about religion, law, and politics during three semesters. The topics of the first three seminars are the following: (a) religions and family law, (b) religious rights and human rights, and (c) religious organizations and property. After the series of seminars we will hold another conference which will hopefully be the beginning of a Nordic interdisciplinary network for religion, law, and politics.
Somewhat incidentally I also received this month an invitation to attend the workshop “The Orthodox and the Other” at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights in December this year. I was asked to present a paper with a historical overview of the regulation of persons with other confessional and religious affiliation in Eastern Orthodox canon law. I have accepted this invitation and begun to work on the paper.
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