News from the Church
Law Society
REVIEW 29
3/2004
From the Church
Law Society
A. R. D. ICDr. PaedDr. Marián Feduš PhD., the Judicial
Vicar of the Diocesan Court
in Rožňava, Slovakia, and a member of
the Church Law Society, received on 18 September 2004 in Bratislava, Slovakia,
from the Apostolic Nuncio to Slovakia a Papal Decree appointing him a Chaplain to His Holiness with the title
of Monsignor. We congratulate Mons. Marián Feduš warmly.
Mons. Eugen Kočiš, the Auxiliary
Bishop of the Prague Greek
Catholic Exarchate, donated a copy of the Code of
Canons of the Eastern Churches
to the Church Law Society. The publication includes an official translation
in Ukrainian. We thank him for his generous donation.
On 29 September
2004 the 10th Church and State Conference
was organized by the Brno chapter of the Church
Law Society at the Law School
of Masaryk University. In this
issue of the Revue we include
a report about the event by a participant.
Effective October 2004 a British member of the Church
Law Society, P. Robert Ombres
OP, was appointed a member of the
General Curia of the Dominican
Order to Sta. Sabina in Rome as Procurator
General. The distinguished canon law expert most recently served as the Dominican
Novice Master in Cambridge and before
that in the same capacity in Oxford, where he was
visited by three members of the
Church Law Society Operating Committee in June 2000.
jrt/zh
Brief News
Charity Helps the Victims
of the Terrorist
Attack in Beslan
One of the
first humanitarian organizations to offer help to the victims of
the terrorist attack in Beslan, Ingusia, was the
Charity. The humanitarian mission of the
Czech Catholic Charity, active in the North
Caucasus, distributed 15 types of the
most-needed medicines and medical material
in the amount of 60 000 RUB (approximately 2
000 USD). The aid was donated in the name of
the international confederation of national Charity organizations, Caritas Internationalis, through the local
Caritas Vladikavkaz and parish of
Vladikavkaz on 3 September
2004.
The assistance was received by the physicians of the Republican
Children’s Hospital, which treated 282 injured children, and the Republican
Emergency Hospital, which treated more than 200 injured adults.
The Church corporation
Czech Catholic Charity announced a public collection in the Bohemian and Moravian Dioceses to help victims of the
Beslan attack. Further aid will
be quickly forwarded in compliance with the recommendations
of World Health Organization representatives and will be targeted
specifically to those most
in need in view of the current
difficult situation.
The Evangelic Church of the
Czech Brethren Becomes a Member of the Lutheran
World Federation
The second largest
church in the Czech lands belongs
to the founding members of the
ecumenical union of churches such as the World Council of
Churches, the Conference of European
Churches and the Ecumenical Council of Churches
in the Czech Republic and also
participates in the activities of the
confession communions – the global communions
of the same
denominations (church “confederations”2 sui generis).
The Evangelic Church of the
Czech Brethren, a coalition of evangelic
churches of the Augsburg Confession
and Helvetian Confession of the
Czech language in Bohemia and Moravia, was
formed on 17 December 1918 into one church
and succeeded to the existing membership
of the evangelic
church of the Helvetian Confession
in the Alliance of the Reformed
Churches Throughout the World Holding the Presbyterian System (now called
the World Alliance of Reformed
Churches).
We received news that the
Lutheran World Federation accepted at its meeting in Geneva on 7 September 2004 three new members:
the Evangelic Church of the
Czech Brethren, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands and the Evangelic
Lutheran Church of Ghana.
The Lutheran World Federation, established in 1947 in Sweden with its seat
today in Geneva, has 138 member churches in 77 countries and a total of almost
65 million members. It is a global
communion of churches endorsing the Lutheran Augsburg
Confession (1530) that wishes to strengthen cooperation in theology and diacony while providing
mutual inspiration in a search for a common testimony of the
Gospel.
These protestant churches are usually members of one
of the confessional
communions, normally the communion of
the confession that the church
endorses. However, the Evangelic Church
of the Czech
Brethren endorses four different confessions: Bohemian (1570), Brethren
(1662), Augsburg (1530) and
Helvetian (1566). Beginning
in 2004 it is a member of an
additional world confession communion; it now belongs
to two different world confession communions.
Symposium of Canon Law in Spišská Kapitula,
Slovakia
On 6–10 September 2004 the XII Symposium of Canon Law took
place in Spišská Kapitula. The
first Symposium occurred in
September 1991. As is usual, there were
also representatives of church courts
and experts in legal science from the Czech lands
participating and lecturing in addition to the hundreds of
participants from Slovakia.
The Symposium took place under the
personal and scientific patronage of Cardinal Zenon
Grocholewski, a strong supporter of Czechs
and Slovaks, who was at
that time the Prefect of
the Supreme Tribunal of the
Apostolic Signature and is currently
the Prefect of the Roman Congregation
for Catholic Education, and Mons. Daniel Faltin, a Judge of the Roman Rota and a native of
Spiš. The organizers were the Slovak
Society for Canon Law and the Priest Seminary
of the Bishop
Ján Vojtaššák in Spišská Kapitula. In 1991–2000 the Symposium was organized annually, usually at the
end of August, but it now
takes place every other year
– the XI Symposium took place
in September
2002 and the XII in September 2004. Detailed information about the last Symposium, provided by R.D. Ing. Mgr. Pavel Boukal,
Vice-Chancellor of the Bishopric
of Hradec Králové and a member of the
Church Law Society, is available in this issue of
the Revue, together with the text of
the lecture that was presented
by R. D. ICDr. JUDr. Stanislav Přibyl PhD.
The Conference La Pologne religieuse aux XIX–XX siècles dans le contexte
international in Paris
An international conference focusing on the status of religion and religious societies
in Poland in the 19th and 20th centuries in the international sphere took place
on 21 and 22 October 2004
in the great amphitheater of the Catholic Institute in Paris. The Conference was organized by the Catholic Institute in Paris and the Institute of Central-East
Europe of the Catholic University of Lublin.
Among the speakers
were Prof. Jean-Paul Durand
OP, the Dean of the Canon Law
School of the Catholic Institute in Paris, R.
D. Jerzy Kloczowski, the director of
the Institute of Central-East Europe
of the Catholic
University of Lublin, and R.
D. Andrzej Paczkowski from the Polish
Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.
The Conference Il Codice di
Diritto Canonico e il nuovo Concordato
vent’anni dopo in Bologna
A conference
on the revision of the Code
of Canon Law and of concordats
took place on 29 and 30 October 2004 at Bologna University. Among the many experts from a number of
countries who presented were Prof. G. Ghirlanda, on Fondamenti
teologici del diritto ecclesiale, Cardinal J. Herranz on Dal
Concilio Vaticano II alla nuova codificazione
canonica, Cardinal A.
Silvestrini on La revisione
del Concordato come punto di
approdo nell’ordinamento della Chiesa and Prof. F. Margiotta-Broglio on La revisione del Concordato come punto di
approdo nell’ordinamento dello Stato.
jrt/zh