The 1917 Code of Canon Law

On reading the 1917 Code today

The Codex Iuris Canonici promulgated by Benedict XV on Pentecost 1917 was the law of the Latin Church for sixty-six years. On 27 November 1983 it was superseded by the Code promulgated by John Paul II, and its canons no longer bind of themselves. A reader who needs to know what the Church's law now requires must go to the 1983 Code — each canon below shows its 1983 counterpart, linked, for that reason.

Why, then, present the old Code in full, and give it a place beside the manuals? For three reasons.

First, because the 1983 Code is its heir. The new Code was drafted canon by canon against the old, keeps a great part of its substance, and is by its own principles to be understood in continuity with it: where the new law repeats the old, it is to be read in the light of the old law and of the tradition of interpretation that grew up around it (compare the rule the 1917 Code itself lays down in canon 6, and the corresponding rule in canon 6 of the 1983 Code). To read the old canon and its 1983 correlation side by side is often the quickest way to see what a modern canon means.

Second, because the moral manuals in this library cite it on nearly every page. Written under this Code, they treat its canons as the concrete shape the Church gave to her discipline in their day — on marriage, the sacraments, fasting, censures, the confessor's duties. One cannot read the manuals with understanding without being able to look up the canons they cite.

Third, and most important, because much of what the old Code contains is not positive law that a legislator can repeal, but the Church's expression of principles that do not change: the natural and divine law on the sacraments, on marriage, on the seal of confession, on justice and restitution. Where a canon merely disciplines — the hour of Mass, the days of fast — later law may and did alter it. Where a canon states what belongs to the constitution of the Church or to the moral law, the new Code re-states it, and the older text remains a witness to a perennial teaching, often more fully and precisely worded.

So the reader should hold two things together. As law, this Code is history — the 1983 Code governs. As a witness to what the Church has held and how she has reasoned about conduct, it remains a living source, and this library treats it as one: read it, follow its correlations to the present law, and let the manuals show how its principles were applied.