Church constitution

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The church constitution refers to the entirety of those norms of canon law that make the essential fundamental decisions about the structure and organization of a church (organization) . The constitution often influences the material, religious, moral, moral and intellectual conditions within the respective church. At the same time, it can be a basis of legitimation for the church as an institution .

Constitutions of the various churches

The individual church constitutions are influenced both by theological convictions of the respective churches and by historical developments. They therefore differ considerably from one another.

Roman Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Church has no constitution in the formal sense, i.e. no constitutional document in which the relevant norms are summarized.

The Codex Reform Commission for the CIC / 1983 also intended to present an ecclesiastical constitution, which was called Lex Ecclesiae Fundamentalis (abbreviated: LEF ) (roughly: Basic Law of the Church ). A draft was sent worldwide for comments in 1971. Finally a 7th draft was handed over to the Pope in 1980. He decided to give up the project without giving any further reasons. Of the 86 canons of the draft of the LEF in its last version, 38 canons were integrated into the CIC / 1983 or later into the CCEO . So they have no formal constitutional status.

Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Church also knows legal norms that represent constitutional norms in a material sense. However, only a small part of these have found their way into the Codex Iuris Canonici , the codification of canon law . Special features are the organization as a universal church and the hierarchical structure. The Pope as Bishop of Rome , “in whom the office entrusted by the Lord only to Peter , the first of the apostles and to be mediated to his successors, continues, is head of the college of bishops, representative of Christ and shepherd of the universal Church here on earth; therefore by virtue of his office in the church he has the highest, full, immediate and universal ordinary power, which he can always freely exercise ”(Can. 331). The division into clergy and lay people is also typical , whereby, by virtue of ius divinum, not only different tasks but also a difference in essence are assumed (Can. 207 § 1: “By virtue of divine instruction, there are spiritual ministers in the church among the believers who are Rightly called clerics, the others are also called lay people. ”).

Evangelical churches, especially regional churches in Germany

The Protestant regional churches and their associations have issued their norms of fundamental importance in constitutional documents. These are often referred to as basic regulations (GO) or church regulations .

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant churches are not world churches. The hierarchical structure is also not present in the same way (cf., for example, Article 7 of the basic order of the Evangelical Regional Church in Baden : “The various offices in the church do not establish rule of one over the other, but rather participate in the service entrusted to the entire community . "). Because of the Reformation principle of the general priesthood of all believers , a distinction between priests and laypeople is unknown (cf., for example, Section 44 (1) sentence 2 GO: “Because of baptism, every Christian is authorized to witness and serve in the community and in the world and committed. "). As a result, the members have extensive rights of participation in church legislative bodies ( synods ). During the sovereign church regiment , the sovereigns were (emergency) bishops. After the end of the monarchy and the final separation of the regional churches from the state, most regional churches reintroduced a bishop or regional bishop. In some churches, on the other hand, the leading clergyman is called the Church President or President .

With regard to the structure and organization of regional churches, different types have emerged. In the episcopal-consistorial type, the bishop and the governing authority ( consistory ) face each other on the one hand and the synod on the other, so the governance is originally assigned to the organs (principle of separation). This type is usually followed by the Lutheran regional churches , for example the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria and the Evangelical Regional Church in Württemberg . In the synodal type (e.g. Evangelical Reformed Church (Synod of Evangelical Reformed Churches in Bavaria and Northwest Germany) ), on the other hand, the elected regional synod is at the center, the other bodies and offices are derived from there (principle of unity). However, there are also mixed forms in which, in addition to the synod on the one hand and the bishop and consistory (or senior church council ) on the other, there are still connecting bodies. An example of this is the regional church council in the Evangelical regional church in Baden , which includes bishops, prelates and senior church councils as well as elected representatives of the regional synod.

historical development

If these conditions freeze, there is a need to reform the church constitution . Such a case often occurs when a connection between Christian doctrine and the church as an institution of faith cannot be established to a sufficient extent among the members of the congregation. It is not uncommon for discrepancies between popular piety and the official faith conveyed by the church and its conception of faith to appear. Often there is also a need for reform when the hierarchical order within the church becomes a problem due to the delimitation of ecclesiastical and secular power.

middle Ages

The church reforms of the 11th century and the investiture dispute already give some idea of ​​this. Furthermore, z. B. the solidification of the late medieval church constitution, the necessity of reforms emerge more and more clearly. The names of church reformers such as John Wyclif , Wilhelm von Ockham and Jan Hus can serve as examples of a comprehensive need for reform in the late Middle Ages in the 14th and 15th centuries . In the pre-Reformation period, these are without question the best known among the reform forces within the Church. Even John of Wesel or Johann Pupper of Goch as a representative of the German "Reform Church," we can call here. Ultimately, conciliarism was also a movement to reform the church constitution, which drafted a quasi-synodal counter-image to the Pope's claim to absolute power. The decisions made at the reform councils could not be enforced in the course of the 15th century and so more or less fizzled out. Even in the time of the Reformation there are still Catholic reform efforts that can be understood as a continuation of these lines. The most famous representatives are Pope Hadrian VI. and Erasmus from Rotterdam .

reformation

The Reformation , as it was initiated by the reformer Martin Luther , albeit not as intended, and thus finally leads to the secession from the Catholic Church , is a consequence of this, as is the intra-Catholic reform movement in the course of the Council of Trent , the Counter-Reformation and the religious struggles that lasted until the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648 . There is no question that these church conditions are also dependent on general political conditions and, conversely, that these in turn have an effect on general politics. The realization, however, that Reformation, Catholic Reform, Counter-Reformation have their common roots here in the late medieval church constitution, had already been won by Wilhelm Maurenbrecher in 1880 at the latest in his book History of the Catholic Reformation, Vol. I, Nördlingen 1880 . Nevertheless, it must be noted that in the 16th century the Protestant Church (s) and the Roman Catholic Church tread a fundamentally different path to the order of the church: While the Catholic Church continued to update medieval church law in the corpus for centuries Iuris Canonici will operate and will not present a new legal book until 1917 with the Codex Iuris Canonici, a completely new type of church constitution was designed in Saxony , Württemberg and the major imperial cities from the late 1520s : the Protestant church order .

As early as the 16th century, the two basic types of Protestant church constitution mentioned above, the synodal and the episcopal-consistorial system, were developed. While the latter prevails in practically all German regional churches under the regiment of the sovereigns, the former is developing above all in Switzerland , France ( Huguenots ), in the Netherlands and on the Lower Rhine ( Wesel Convent ), in the reformed refugee communities in Germany - but also z. B. in the Lutheran churches of Transylvania . In other words, wherever Reformation churches organize themselves without direct patronage or even explicitly against such patronage. The question of the form of the church constitution of a Protestant church is therefore much less a denominational feature than it is perceived today (according to the motto: reformed = synodal, Lutheran = episcopal), but a historical and political one.

Modern times

Even at a later time we have events that have a decisive impact on the church constitution, especially of the Catholic Church. First Vatican Council (Vaticanum I) and Second Vatican Council (Vaticanum II) are events in the church history of the Catholic Church in the 19th and 20th centuries, which contain reforms of the existing church constitution or signal a need for reform.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. on the whole Ulrich Rhode : Church Law. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2015 (textbooks theology; vol. 24), ISBN 978-3-17-026227-0 , p. 45
  2. ↑ 100.100 Basic Order (GO) - Canon Law online reference work. Retrieved August 23, 2018 .

literature

  • Real Theological Encyclopedia. Tape. 19. Berlin, New York 1990, pp. 110-165.
  • Gunther Wenz et al. (Ed.): Ecclesiology and Church Constitution: The institutional shape of the episcopal service. Contributions from the Center for Ecumenical Research, Volume 1. Munich 2003.
  • Jörg Winter : Article church constitution. In: Werner Heun u. a. (Ed.): Evangelisches Staatslexikon. Kohlhammer, 2006, pp. 1236-1245.

See also

Web links