Judith Hahn

Zusammenfassung: Was macht die Kanonistik als wissenschaftliche Disziplin aus? Ist sie Theologie oder Rechtswissenschaft? Und wie wirkt sich die jeweilige Verortung methodologisch aus? Judith Hahn und Adrian Loretan bieten unterschiedliche Perspektiven auf diese Grundlagenfragen ihres Fachs. Sie zeigen, was Kirchenrechtswissenschaft gegenwärtig leisten kann und leisten muss, und geben damit wichtige Impulse für eine Reform der Disziplin und des kirchlichen Rechts.

Abstract: “Sacramentality” can serve as a category that helps to understand the performative power of religious and legal rituals. Through the analysis of “sacraments”, one 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, the author 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, the study reveals how law and religion work hand in hand to shape our social reality.

Abstract: This study explores the language of canon law. It seeks to bring the language of canon law into the law and language debate and in doing so better understand how the Roman Catholic Church communicates as a legal institution. It examines the function of canon law language in ecclesiastical communications. It studies the character of canonical language, the grammar and terminology of canon law, and how it makes use of linguistic tricks and techniques to create its typical sound. It 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. It reviews the potential consequences of a plain language agenda in the church. This includes an evaluation of whether dead Latin is the appropriate language for a global and cross-cultural legal order such as canon law, and a discussion of how to improve multi-language communication. The book also takes a closer look at ecclesiastical interpretation theory. It examines forensic language, the language of ecclesiastical tribunals, in its problematic shifting between orality and textuality.