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 Prague Catholic Cathedral

On 24 May 2010 Prague archbishop Dominik Duka OP and the President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus signed in Prague an agreement on the regulation of the future usage of the Prague catholic cathedral church of St. Veit, Wenceslaus and Adalbert. According to this agreement the long year suit between the catholic juridical persons and the Czech state on the ownership of the cathedral was finished.