Judith Hahn - Böcker

The Roman Catholic Church has been criticized for many reasons, including its legalism. The growing aversion of church members to the law and the church hierarchy's juridified interpretation of Christianity is fueled by the language of ecclesiastical law (medieval legal Latin), which excludes most of the faithful from understanding and participating in debates on reforming the church's legal structure.In The Language of Canon Law, Judith Hahn explores the legal order of the Roman Catholic Church to better understand how the Roman Catholic Church communicates as a legal institution. She argues that the language of canon law reveals the political ideology of the church hierarchy, and she takes up the tools of language and law scholarship to examine and challenge that language. Examining the function of canon law language in ecclesiastical communications, she studies the character of canonical language, the grammar and terminology of canon law, and how canon law language makes use of linguistic tricks and techniques to create its typical sound. Further, Hahn discusses the comprehension difficulties that arise out of ambiguities in the law, out of transfer problems between legal and common language, and out of canon law's confusing mix of legal, doctrinal, and moral norms. An important contribution to law, language, theology, and sociology alike, this book proposes a rethinking of whether Latin is the appropriate language of a global and cross-cultural legal order like canon law, suggesting that the global church instead seek to develop a multi-language practice.

'Sacramentality' can serve as a category that helps to understand the performative power of religious and legal rituals. Through the analysis of 'sacraments', we can observe how law uses sacramentality to change reality through performative action, and how religion uses law to organise religious rituals, including sacraments. The study of sacramental action thus shows how law and religion intertwine to produce legal, spiritual, and other social effects. In this volume, Judith Hahn explores this interplay by interpreting the Catholic sacraments as examples of sacro-legal symbols that draw on the sacramental functioning of the law to provide both spiritual and legal goods to church members. By focusing on sacro-legal symbols from the perspective of sacramental theology, legal studies, ritual theory, symbol theory, and speech act theory, Hahn's  study reveals how law and religion work hand in hand to shape our social reality.

Natural law has long been considered the traditional source of Roman Catholic canon law. However, new scholarship is critical of this approach as it portrays the Catholic Church as static, ahistorical, and insensitive to cultural change. In its attempt to stem the massive loss of effectiveness being experienced by canon law, the church has to reconsider its theory of legal foundation, especially its natural law theory. Church Law in Modernity analyses the criticism levelled at the church and puts forward solutions for reconciling church law with modernity by revealing the historical and cultural authenticity of all law, and revising the processes of law making. In a modern church, there is no way of thinking of the law without the participation of the faithful in legislation. Judith Hahn therefore proposes a reformed legislative process for the church in the hope of reconciling the natural law origins of church law with a new, modern theology.

Natural law has long been considered the traditional source of Roman Catholic canon law. However, new scholarship is critical of this approach as it portrays the Catholic Church as static, ahistorical, and insensitive to cultural change. In its attempt to stem the massive loss of effectiveness being experienced by canon law, the church has to reconsider its theory of legal foundation, especially its natural law theory. Church Law in Modernity analyses the criticism levelled at the church and puts forward solutions for reconciling church law with modernity by revealing the historical and cultural authenticity of all law, and revising the processes of law making. In a modern church, there is no way of thinking of the law without the participation of the faithful in legislation. Judith Hahn therefore proposes a reformed legislative process for the church in the hope of reconciling the natural law origins of church law with a new, modern theology.

This "Open Access" book investigates the legal reality of the church through a sociological lens and from the perspective of canon law studies, the discipline which researches the law and the legal structure of the Catholic Church.

This book is the first study to consider findings from sociology, legal anthropology, ethnology, legal pluralism, comparative law and theology in order to gain a better understanding of the diverse cultures of global Catholicism and the cross-cultural challenges arising from Roman Catholic canon law within the local churches. The author, renowned for her work at the intersection of socio-legal studies and canon law, examines the latter as a distinctive example of a European religious legal system that cuts across the myriad legal cultures of the local churches. In light of findings on legal transfer and legal colonialism, and by examining canon law within the emerging field of social and cultural studies approaches to law, her book sheds light on how canon law is imposed upon and received by the local churches around the world. It analyses the challenges and problems arising from the law’s transcultural claims within these churches. Based on these observations, the study discusses the critical stance of canon law within contemporary Catholicism and the current debates on a synodal reform of the church and its law. The book adopts different perspectives: As a sociological study, it describes the contemporary Eurocentrism of global canon law and the conflicts arising from it. As a theological study, it presents ecclesiological reasons for challenging the hegemony of global legislation. As a study of canon law, it suggests ways in which legislation could permit greater diversity while maintaining the unity of the universal church. By analysing canon law as a specific example of a religious legal order with cross-cultural ambitions and global claims, the book also contributes to the study of transnational law in general by illustrating the typical problems that accompany transnational legal regimes in both secular legal systems and religious groups.This is an open access book.