canon law

Example Sentences

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The verdict also did some legal gymnastics to make sense of the Vatican’s outdated criminal code, based on Italy’s 1889 code and the church’s canon law, requalifying or combining charges to fit into other ones.

From Seattle Times • Dec. 22, 2023

Gay rights groups cheered the news, but Dawn Eden Goldstein, a Catholic theologian who holds a licensure in canon law, advised that church members should read the Vatican’s pronouncement carefully.

From Washington Times • Dec. 18, 2023

Defrocking - the process of being reduced to a 'lay state' in which clerical status is taken away from a priest - is among the harshest sanctions available in the Catholic church's canon law.

From BBC • Dec. 19, 2022

To explain his stepping down, a Vatican statement at the time referred to a canon law that allowed bishops under 75 to retire for health reasons or other “grave” reasons, but did not elaborate.

From New York Times • Sep. 29, 2022

The Catholic Church has survived for centuries, not by passing on a ‘celibacy gene’ from one pope to the next, but by passing on the stories of the New Testament and of Catholic canon law.

From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari