Editor’s Introduction

Current or recent legislative initiatives at the universal level sometimes interfere with academic planning and call for changes of publication plans. This second issue of The Jurist for 2015 offers proof of that. Some of the planned contributions are pushed back to the first issue of 2016 to make room for a first set of commentaries offering an analysis of the revised procedural laws for the declaration of nullity of marriages.

On September 8, 2015, His Eminence, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, the Cardinalis Patronus of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, gave the keynote address during the conference “The Synod on the Family: Addressing the Instrumentum Laboris” at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, OH. The text was first published in the volume From the Beginning: The Mission and Vocation of the Family in the Contemporary World, ed. Michael G. Sirilla (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2015), and is reprinted here in The Jurist with permission of the organizers and the author. The latter focuses on the canonical questions regarding the proposed pastoral care of the faithful who are divorced and have attempted marriage as proposed in the Instrumentum laboris for the Fourteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops celebrated in October 2015.

The second contribution in this issue comes from His Excellency, Most Reverend Timothy P. Broglio, Archbishop for the Military Services, USA. His contribution is the written text of the Twelfth Annual James H. Provost Memorial Lecture given at the School of Canon Law of The Catholic University of America on March 19, 2015. The author spoke on the pastoral dimension of the office of papal representatives, an office he held from 2001 until his appointment in 2007 as Archbishop for the Military Services. Before that time, Archbishop Broglio attended the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy (1979–1983) and had been in diplomatic service of the Holy See since 1983.

The missio sui iuris is not a well-known structure. In his extensive study, Joseph McCabe shows how, toward the end of the 19^th century, the then-Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide began erecting the missiones sui iuris or independent missions as an alternative viable structure in areas where the mission diocese, apostolic vicariate or apostolic prefecture could not be initiated for various reasons. Although such a structure existed in limited circumstances from the time the Congregation was founded in 1622, it was after the First Vatican Council that the structure of an independent mission became more prevalent. The missio sui iuris was omitted in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, but both Benedict XV and Pius XI recognized the structure as one of four structures in mission territories. While the independent missions were omitted in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, in the 1980’s and until 2002 the structure was again employed for special missionary circumstances.

Those consecrated to God by profession of the evangelical counsels sometimes behave in a way that causes scandal and impedes the Church’s mission of salvation. This may be so serious that it leads to the member’s dismissal from his/her religious institute. The 1983 Code of Canon Law has two categories for dismissing religious from an institute: ipso facto dismissal (c. 694) and ab homine dismissal, the latter being sub-divided into the mandatory dismissal process (c. 695) and the facultative dismissal process (c. 696). John Chrysostom Kozlowski, OP, focuses on the mandatory dismissal process as it applies to religious institutes (cc. 695, 698–702). He traces first the origins of the mandatory dismissal process from the 1917 Code of Canon Law to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, and then presents a two-part analysis of the notion of mandatory dismissal.

With the promulgation of the motu proprio Mitis iudex Dominus Iesus for the Latin Church and the motu proprio Mitis et misericors Iesus for the Eastern Catholic Churches, Pope Francis simplified and changed the procedure for the declaration of nullity of marriages. The new legislation is in effect since December 8, 2015. For an academic journal such as The Jurist, it is extremely important to...