From the Church Law Society
The magazine Revue
církevního práva/Church Law Review No 45-1/10, No 46-2/10 and 47-3/10 were published. Numbers 45 and 46 were published in honor of Prof. JUDr. Jiří Rajmund
TRETERA, the leading Czech scientist in the field of state law on churches,
on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
General Meeting of the Church Law
Society
The General Meeting of the Church Law
Society took place on 19 April 2010 in room 220 at the Law School of Charles
University. An announcement of the General Meeting was placed on the internet
website of the Society on 13 March 2010 and on the same day it was also
published in the Society’s Bulletin. The General Meeting was presented with a
report of the Society’s activities during the past two years and a report
concerning the economy; it thanked the outgoing committee.
In a secret ballot the Society elected
the following leadership:
Chairman: J.R.Tretera; vice-chairman:
Z. Horák; members of the Working Committee: A. Furek, M. Holub, Š. Hůlka, J.
Mindlová, S. Přibyl, S. Pšenička; alternates: A. Bašný, J. Czernin, M.
Heldenburg, D. Němec, D. Spratek, J. Šafránek; Supervisors: S. Pšenička, J.
Šafránek; alternates: M. Uhlířová, T. Zadražil.
The General Meeting approved the change
of the seat of the Society, which is now at the following address: CZ-130 00
Prague 3, Sudoměřská 25.
As of the date of the General Meeting,
the Church Law Society had 411 members; since the last General Meeting on 26
March 2008, 23 new members joined the Society, five left the Society and six
members passed away.
Every member of the Society who has
passed was individually commemorated during the General Meeting.
A Lecture from the Lecture Series
The Effects of Law on Society and the Church
The 61st evening of lectures and
discussions took place following the General Meeting of the Church Law Society.
Mgr. Jakub Kříž from the Department of Churches of the Ministry of Culture of
the Czech Republic talked about “Current Issues of Czech State Law on Churches
and Religious Societies.” There was a lively discussion following his
presentation.
The Result of the Contest for the
Best Law Journal in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic
On 17 and 18 June 2010 the Society of
Czech, German, Slovak and Austrian Lawyers “Karlsbader Juristentage” held its
XVIII Conference in the Thermal Hotel in Karlovy Vary.
During the conference the 2010
prestigious awards were awarded to the best legal journals. The award for the
Czech Republic was given to the journal Právní rozhledy,
and for Slovakia the award was given to the journal Justična
revue. Additional information is available at www.kjt.cz.
JUDr. Vladimír Zoufalý, the
vice-president of “Karlsbader Juristentage,” congratulated the Church Law
Society for the standing of the Church
Law Review, which appeared in 5th place out of 26 competing journals. JUDr.
Vladimír Zoufalý met Dr. Záboj Horák, the vice-chairman of the Church Law
Society, on 15 July 2010 at the seat of “Karlsbader Juristentage” at Prague 1,
Národní 10.
The 16th Annual Conference on
Church and State at the Law School of Masaryk University in Brno
Each year since 1995 at the beginning
of September the Law School in Brno has hosted a full-day scientific conference
entitled “Church and State”; it is attended by experts from throughout the
Czech Republic who focus on legal matters of churches and their status in the
state.
The 16th annual conference took place
on 7 September 2010. Similar to last year, the conference again had a central
unifying theme; this year it was “Marriage, Children and Family Life in a
Religious Plurality State”.
The conference was organized by the
Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science of the Law School of
Masaryk University in cooperation with the Church Law Society. There were nine
lecturers who presented papers and almost 50 participants, which was a record
participation in the history of the conference.
In addition to experts from schools of
law, theology, philosophy and other schools there were several representatives
from legal practice and some students.
The conference was opened by JUDr.
Kateřina Šimáčková, Ph.D., justice of the Supreme Administrative Court, who
also teaches at the Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science and
is the head professor of the fields of church law that are taught at the Law
School of Masaryk University. The participants at the conference were greeted
by Professor JUDr. Jan Filip, CSc., the head of the Department of
Constitutional Law and Political Science in Brno, and Professor JUDr. Jiří
Rajmund Tretera, the chairman of the Church Law Society.
The conference was chaired by JUDr.
Pavel Molek, Ph.D., from the Department of Constitutional Law and Political
Science.
The first panel on “Marriage” was
opened by JUDr. Záboj Horák, Ph.D., from the Legal History Department of the
Law School of Charles University in Prague; he presented a historical overview
of the forms of marriage in the Czech lands. Mgr. Petr Jäger from the
Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science
of the Law School of Masaryk University
in Brno discussed the perspectives of the new Civil Code on church marriages.
Mgr. Jakub Kříž from the Department of Churches of the Ministry of Culture
spoke about covenant marriage in the legal system of the United States. JUDr.
Miloš Holub, Ph.D., an attorney from Prague, presented “Several Considerations
on Divorce”.
The second panel on “Parents and
Children” was opened by Professor JUDr. Jiří R. Tretera from the Law School of
Charles University in Prague; he discussed the religious freedom of children
and its safeguarding in the legal system of the Czech Republic. Mgr. Kamila
Bubelová, Ph.D., the head of the Department of Legal Theory and Legal History
at the Law School of Palacký University in Olomouc, talked about the confl ict
between the right of a parent to raise a child and the right of the child to
freedom of religion from both the secular and religious perspectives.
The third panel on “Canon Law” began
with Mgr. Monika Menke, Th.D., from the Church Law Department of the Sts Cyril
and Methodius Faculty of Theology of Palacký University in Olomouc speaking
about the form of marriage in the Catholic Church in the Czech Republic. Docent
Damián Němec, Dr., presented his paper on the changes in the Code of Canon Law
in 2006 and 2010 concerning marriage of “faithless Catholics”. JUDr. Ing. Marie
Kolářová, Th.D., the Chancellor of the Prague Archdiocese, explained the
treatment of the validity of a civil marriage in canon law. Each panel was
followed by a discussion.
The participants at the conference
included among many others the following guests: JUDr. Pavel Vošalík, the
ambassador of the Czech Republic at the Holy See, PhDr. Jiřina Štouračová, the
chairperson of the Moravian-Silesian Christian Academy, Mons. Jiří Mikulášek,
the General Vicar of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Brno, ICDr. JUDr. Stanislav
Přibyl, Ph.D., from the Theological School of the South Bohemian University in
České Budějovice and a judge of the Metropolitan Church Court in Prague, JUDr.
Jiří Palla, Justice of the Supreme Administrative Court, JUDr. Metoděj Dudák, a
lawyer from the Brno Diocese, JUDr. Michael Kučera of the Hussite Theological
School of Charles University in Prague, JUDr. Michal Lamparter, Ph.D., a
longtime organizer of the Conference on Church and State in Brno, Mgr. Štěpán
Šťastník, a clerk to a Justice of the Constitutional Court and a permanent
attorney to the Diocesan Church Court in Brno, Docent JUDr. Zdeňka Králíčková,
Ph.D., from the Law School of Masaryk University, Mgr. Ladislav Vyhnánek, from
the Law School of Masaryk University, Mgr. Stanislav Hykyš, legal advisor to
the Czech Bishops’ Conference, and Mgr. Petr Šimůnek, from the Office of the
President of Charles University.
The New Archbishop of Prague and
the Chairman of the Czech Bishops’ Conference
On 13 February 2010 Pope Benedictus XVI
appointed a new metropolitan archbishop of the Bohemian church province, Mons.
ThLic. Dominik Jaroslav DUKA, OP, born on 26 April 1943 in Hradec Králové.
Mons. Duka took office on 10 April 2010 and was elected the chairman of the
Czech Bishops’ Conference at its conference on 21 April 2010.
While a student at Sts Cyril and
Methodius Roman Catholic School of Theology in Litoměřice he was secretly
accepted in 1969 as a member of the Order of the Preachers Dominicans.
Following his ordination as a priest in 1970 he worked in spiritual
administration in Jáchymov and in several parishes in the westernmost part of
the Prague Archdiocese. After he lost state approval that was necessary for
clergy activity in 1975 he worked for 15 years as a worker in the Škoda factory
in Pilsen. Throughout this period he was one of the foremost persons secretly
fighting for reinstatement of the Dominican Order. In 1979 he received a
licentiate of theology at the Pontifical Theological School in Warsaw. In
1981–1982 he was imprisoned. In 1986–1998 he was a Provincial of the Dominican
Order. After the fall of the communist regime, as the chairman of the
Conference of Higher Order Superiors, he successfully lobbied for 265
monasteries in the Czech Republic to be returned to their original owners; this
change allowed the establishment of novitiates and a number of church schools.
While at university he was a researcher
for Biblical studies and is credited with greatly contributing to the
translation into Czech and publication of the Jerusalem Bible.
In 1998 he was appointed the Bishop of
Hradec Králové Diocese.
Lectures by the Chairman of the
Appellate Court of Vatican City
On 24 March 2010 Mons. José María
Serrano Ruiz, the chairman of the Appellate Court of Vatican City, gave a
lecture in the faculty lounge of the Law School of Charles University. The
topic of his lecture was “The Legal System of the Vatican: Origins and Basic
Characteristics.”
In his lecture he explained the significant
distinction between canon law as the law of the Catholic Church and the secular
legal system as the law of Vatican City, which developed when the state of the
Vatican was established in 1929. He focused on the constitution of this state,
court procedural rules and other legislation that has gradually replaced
Italian law, which has been applied as a subsidiary source of law in the
Vatican territory. He explained the differences between the Holy See and the
Vatican state.
Mons. Serrano Ruiz, an important jurist
and canon law expert, also lectured at the Metropolitan Church Court in Prague
and at the Law School of the West Bohemian University in Pilsen.
Agreement on the
On 24 May 2010