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Canon Law Ninja

canonlaw.ninja

34 pointsdanielam17 comments

Canon law, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is used in the governance of the Catholic Church. It governs the internal affairs of the church and the conduct of its members.

This site appears to be a searchable, linkable version of the canons, which is likely useful for online research by canon lawyers.

Here's some history:

> Following centuries of increasing complexity in canon law, Pope St. Pius X decided in 1904 that canon law, which was then scattered throughout thousands of papal and diocesan decrees, decisions, and commentaries, should be collected and simplified into a single authoritative “Code”. By 1917, the Church’s first Code of Canon Law was ready. The Pio-Benedictine, or 1917, Code was widely recognized as a major legal and pastoral accomplishment. Its 2,414 canons were in force through the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) by which time, though, it was clear that the 1917 Code was in need of reform.

> Beginning in 1966, and utilizing canonical and theological experts from around the world, this major revision process was completed by late 1982. In January 1983 Pope John Paul II promulgated the 1,752 canons of the new Code of Canon Law which took effect the following November. This revised Code, known commonly as the 1983 Code, will likely remain the Church’s basic canon law for many decades to come. The only official text of the 1983 Code is in Latin but unofficial translations are readily available.

Source: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/what-canon-l...

It's incredible, and believable, that the effort to untangle and codify centuries of law from disparate sources would take decades. That's a huge undertaking, that I think helps put into perspective the challenges associated with simplifying legal systems.

> Canon law, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is used in the governance of the Catholic Church. It governs the internal affairs of the church and the conduct of its members.

The Code presented in the website under discussion is that of the Catholic Church, but “Canon Law” is not exclusively Catholic (the various Churches of the Anglican Communion have their own canon law, for example.)

Not 100% sure why this is trending, but anyone here interested in the Code of Cannon Law for the Roman Catholic Church, might also find this of interest: https://github.com/DivinumOfficium/ (no affiliation)

This project maintains a digital source for multiple old versions of the "Divine Office" (aka Liturgy of the Hours or Roman Breviary). I find it particularly interesting from a FLOSS perspective. The source data is all very old (none/expired copyrights), but the calculations for which readings/prayers should be said for each particular day of the year are non-trivial (and the readings/prayers for a particular day are different from year-to-year). So, the logic included maintained in the project is a real value-add.

I found one hit for "exorcism" https://canonlaw.ninja/?nums=1172

There is an interesting blog[1] by an exorcist with entries once a week for a few years now. I've read most of them and his book, and it's definitely worth a read.

[1] https://www.catholicexorcism.org/blog

Would be great to have English translations for the 1917 Code (esp. the canons regarding "what is a marriage", ... ). Right now I use Gemini for searching through the Latin text, it "works", but it would still be a decent value-add. Just in case the maintainer sees this. Also, semantic matching of 1983-1917 canons would be nice.

Can’t say anything one way or the other about quality of the translation, but there is:

https://archive.org/details/1917-or-pio-benedictine-code-of-...

The English version of the CCEO (Eastern Code) has some copyright issues:

> This document is temporarily unavailable due to a cease and desist from the Canon Law Society of America. We are hoping for a solution in the near future.

https://canonlaw.ninja/?v=cceo

I’m quite confused and the “About & FAQ” button doesn’t work on Safari on iOS

What is this site?

CanonLaw.Ninja is a website that allows you to search canon law and other various church documents. It's developed by Fr. Paul Hedman, a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul & Minneapolis.

Is CanonLaw.Ninja up-to-date?

To the best of my knowledge, as of March 15, 2022, all of the documents on CanonLaw.Ninja are up to date. CanonLaw.Ninja includes the changes promulgated in Ad tuendam fidem, Omnium in Mentem, Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus, De Concordia inter Codices, Magnum principium, Communis vita, Pascite gregem Dei, Competentias quasdam decernere, and Pope Francis' update to the Catechism.

I have a suggestion or question!

Send an email to webmaster@canonlaw.ninja and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. If I can do something that would make the site more useful to you, I'd love to help!

Credits

The Code of Canon Law is provided courtertesy of, and with permission from, the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland

Catechism paragraphs were scraped from vatican.va. Other documents were scraped from various sources.

CanonLaw.Ninja used the Bootstrap framework by Twitter, which is used under the MIT license. Original code written by me is also copyright under the MIT license.

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