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[German Version] Both Roman Catholic and Protestant church law know the deanery as a supra-congregational administrative unit within the diocese and as a mid-level association within the regional church respectively. The dean is a pastor with supervision and leadership responsibilities in the deanery, including pastoral care as the pastor pastorum, ordination (Protestant), visitation, supervision, and administration. The functions of Roman Catholic deans derive from the bishops. Protestan…

[German Version] is a corporation of canons or canonesses. It is sometimes substantively and terminologically synonymous with chapter, which can at other times be distinguished as the administrative organ, and can sometimes be extended also to spiritual territory. “Stift” indicates the maintenance of the canons by means of an endowment (Benefice). Such foundations were originally set up to support public worship, and later also served general cultural and social purposes (such as providing mainten…

[German Version] A chapter is a collegial body with liturgical or administrative functions in the Catholic Church. It may be associated with a cathedral (cathedral chapter) or a collegiate church (collegiate chapter; now rare; see CIC/1983 cc. 503–510) or a deanery (Dean/Deanery) chapter = rural chapter). It is also the administrative body of a religious institute (monastic orders and societies of apostolic life; see CIC/1983 cc. 631–633, 734). See also cathedral chapter, canons, orders Catholic, (each with bibl.). The term has a similar use in…

[German Version] I. General Church History – II. Europe – III. Latin America I. General Church History Laicism (from Gk λαος/ laós, “people”; Laity) originated in 19th-century France ( laïcisme) as an aggressively anticlerical concept; originally it proposed absolute separation of the state, secular culture, and the church (esp. the Catholic Church; Church and state), opposing all public influence on the part of the church. Its intellectual roots were in the Enlightenment and especially the French Revolution – although it r…

[German Version] In the legal sense, this is the exclusion of an office/ministry (VII) from combination with another office or profession. The intention of incompatibility is to ensure an exercise of office that is appropriate to the task. The leading ideas to be emphasized include: the separation of powers in state law and the protection of the preaching task of the pastoral office in church law. Michael Germann Bibliography H.H. Klein, “Status des Abgeordneten,” in: J. Isensee & P. Kirchhof, eds., Handbuch des Staatsrechts der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, vol. III, 32005, §51, 26–30 H…

[German Version] I. History and Practical Theology – II. Law I. History and Practical Theology Confirmation, understood here in a narrower sense as a rite in Protestant churches, has been interpreted and shaped differently. Today, it is common in almost all Protestant churches, even in families that are rather distanced from the church. The problems of confirmation already appeared in the Reformation period when confirmation began to develop as an independent rite in Protestant ch…

[German Version] Generally speaking, particular law is the law governing a portion of a legal community. The concept presupposes a legal community that is inclusive (universal) but subdivided. In the history of secular law, it is commonly used for the local law in force in different territories against the background of the common law deriving from Roman law. In canon law (I, 3), it can refer to the law of particular churches (dioceses) against the background of the law of the worldwide Catholic C…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. Church History – VI. Ethics – VII. Law I. Religious Studies As a solemn affirmation of a statement, an oath takes its religious quality from the underlying belief in the power of words to effect a blessing or curse (Blessing and curse). Therefore the early phenomenology of religion classed oaths with invective, curses, etc. as words of consecration: those who swear oaths identify themselves with their words and are “consecrated…

[German Version] I. Law – II. Social Ethics I. Law A culture state is a state that takes responsibility not only for the security and freedom of its citizens, but also their cultural concerns (Culture), nota bene, for ¶ the sake of its own cultural conditions. Legally, the culture state expresses itself in part in determinations of the objectives of state (clearly in art. 3 I 1 of the 1946 Bavarian Constitution: “Bavaria is a legal, cultural and social state”), otherwise in the establishment of the state educat…

[German Version] As juridical persons, ecclesiastical corporations (Protestant regional churches, Catholic dioceses, local churches, etc.) are recognized by law as having legal rights and duties. In the context of the churches' own law this goes without saying (Legal capacity under church law). Germany's Basic Law, art. 140, with Weimar Constitution (WRV) art. 137, IV, recognizes the legal capacity of “religious bodies” “according to the general provisos of civil law”; WRV art. 137, V recognizes t…

[German Version] (Nov 8/20, 1838, near Kostroma, Russia – Jul 23/Aug 5, 1910, St. Petersburg). Gorchakov was a Russian Orthodox ecclesiastical law professor. He studied Protestant theology at Tübingen, Heidelberg, and Strasbourg, then law and ecclesiastical law at St. Petersburg, where he was ordained priest in 1865. In 1868 he became a lecturer, in 1871 he received his doctorate in law, in 1873 he became professor of ecclesiastical law, and in 1881 he received his doctorate in theology. He follow…

[German Version] I. Law 1. Catholicism. Within the total structure of the church, the teaching office is the court of final authority for preserving, transmitting and interpreting the faith. The teaching office stands under the Word of God (Vatican II, DV 10: magisterium non supra verbum Dei, sed eidem ministrat), and perceives its task as constantly involved in interaction with the other ecclesiastical witnesses ( loci theologici) to the Word of God. Consonance with all other courts and organs of the church is shown in the church’s reception (II) of decisions…

[German Version] A rural chapter or deanery chapter is a collegiate body comprising all the clergy of a deanery (Dean) in the Catholic Church (Chapter). Its canonical structure, developed in the 13th century, includes the right to elect or present the dean and certain administrative tasks. Several Protestant church orders initially adopted the institution. In Protestant church law today, the pastors’ assembly is a distant echo of the rural chapter. In Roman Catholic canon law, the rural chapter has preserved its corporate status in many particular churches. Michael Germann Bibliogra…

[German Version] I. In keeping with the vocabulary of civil law, ecclesiastical administrative acts can be described as decisions which an ecclesiastical body takes to regulate a specific case in ecclesiastical law. By definition, such decisions are only treated as administrative acts under civil law to the extent that in the applicable church-state system they have a share in the sovereignty of the state. II. The 1983 Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law gives detailed regulations in c. 35–93 for the presuppositions, forms, and effects of “s…

[German Version] I. German Law Along with artistic freedom, Basic Law art. 5 § 3 guarantees freedom of “scholarship, research, and teaching.” The association of freedom of teaching with scholarship and research shows that the guarantee of the Basic Law applies only to scholarly teaching, i.e. teaching that presents the findings of one’s own research (and examines critically the findings of others). Freedom of teaching thus relates (albeit not exclusively) to teaching in public and private universitie…

[German Version] In civil and canon law, publication (or promulgation) denotes the official public announcement of legal acts, especially legal norms. The term promulgation is generally preferred in Catholic canon law. Publication presupposes execution by the responsible body and is required for the law to take effect. The purpose of publication is to make it possible for those affected to know the law’s content; it puts the legal act into effect independently of de facto knowledge. The media in which norms are published are official journals and gazettes, for example the Bundesgesetz…

[German Version] (Jurisdiction/Power of Jurisdiction) I. Catholic Church – II. Protestant Churches. I. Catholic Church The Codex Iuris Canonici (1983) ( CIC 1983) lays out the procedures of ecclesiastical trials in Book VII. The new code had a twofold purpose: to simplify the structures and procedures of the tribunals and to expedite trials. 1. By virtue of its own – i.e. divine – and exclusive authority, the church claims jurisdiction in litigation concerning spiritual and related matters – worship, ¶ doctrine, ecclesiastical assets and offices, violation of ecclesiastic…

[German Version] Legal rights and duties apply primarily to individuals (“natural persons”; Person: III). In abbreviation, the law also grants organized entities the capacity to be addressed by rights and duties (legal capacity). If legal capacity is granted in relation to all other legally competent subjects, the law creates a juridical person. Lacking a natural capacity for acting, juridical persons “act” through their institutions. State law creates juridical persons under civil law (such as re…

[German Version] I. Church History – II. Canon Law I. Church History Censorship is the partial or total suppression of written or printed works based on prior or subsequent ecclesiastical or governmental examination. The NT already rejects false teaching (Tit 3:9f.), and the development of the NT canon presupposes a process of censorship. In the Early Church and the Middle Ages, heresy was condemned by synods and bishops, but actual censorship of books was practiced only in is…

[German Version] I. History As it developed in the Early Church and the Middle Ages, the term synod (from Gk σύνοδος/ sýnodos, “assembly, being together on the way”) cannot be separated from the term council. Only in 19th- and 20th-century Protestantism is a separate treatment warranted; in that context – with roots going back to the 16th century – the synod represents a new constitutional phenomenon (Church polity: IV, 2; V, 1.c). Its antecedents include medieval diocesan synods (as extensions of the provincial syn…