http://sites.google.com/site/canonsoc/

Leo Paul

IMHO it reads like a Latin-Rite attempt at treatment of Eastern canon “law,” which may be only to be expected after generations of Unia. Benedict’s comments sound like the old ‘Unia as bridge to reunion’ argument that RC reps at Balamand rejected in the 1990s, presumably with his blessing then from the Doctrinal Office (CDF), though maybe not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balamand_declaration.

Two random highlights:

1) For ECCs that have Synods, these are technically no more than consultative, their Patriarchs, Major Archbishops, or other primates technically seemingly imagined as ‘little popes’ over their jurisdictions. Room seems left for theoretically continuing to function according to uncodified custom … or this may be lip-service — I don’t know how they actually function, although ECs on the WWW seem pretty devoted to their primates….

2) There seem to be no territorial jurisdictions as such, in communion with Rome! Everybody is born into the “Particular Church” of their Catholic father, whether Latin or Ukrainian or Melkite or Syriac or Chaldean or whatever (with provisions made for other parental arrangements, such as if the mother, not the father, is Catholic, etc.). This applies even if where they live, their PC is not organizationally represented, and they’re canonically “under the care of” another PC (usually the local Latin ruling hierarch). Cf. Canon 29 and following ones, from here: http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG1199/_PT.HTM. (The Latin Code’s counterparts, Canons 111-112 [go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/236788/Code-of-Canon-Law-1983 and from there, find page 19], read similarly.)

–Leo Peter