In this post, and later posts in this series on Collections, we try to highlight areas in our collection which are either particular important to our Library’s holdings, or it is maybe not very obvious to the uninitiated that we would have books or journals on this area of theology or philosophy. We hope that our posts in this series will encourage engagement with these areas of our collection.
Maybe my understanding or appreciation of Canon Law is typical for a Catholic? You know that it exists, but very few of us engage with the rules how the Catholic Church is structured, which procedures should be followed, and which principles are applied in a specific (“real life”) situation. One of our more than 30 experts, advises us on Canon Law, and it took me a while to get my head round this, and then to figure out how to order things. As with everything in life, you can simplify things, and you could just point anyone to the Vatican’s web page on the “Code of Canon Law“.
However, you can appreciate that this is not all there is, and that there are lawyers and academics who work on the practical issues. A very practical manner of such work are the so-called Roman Replies. A finding aid is available at https://www.iuscangreg.it/roman_replies.php .
We recently bought a copy of the fourth (and most recent) printing of the Code of Canon Law, Latin-English Edition (9781932208658), and have started to fill our gaps of the Roman Replies, with adding the volumes for the years 2017 to 2023: for the catalogue record, please see [2026 edit:] https://hey.koha.openfifth.net/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=99315
If you are interested in Canon Law and want to browse our shelves, you are looking at the classmark range from KBR27 onwards; these books are generically-described as ‘Official acts of the Holy See’. Two serials publications to consider are also Acta apostolicae sedis : commentarium officiale (1909 onwards), and Studia Canonica (we have volumes from 1977 onwards).
Of course, not everyone can be interested in Canon Law, but we are here, if you need to study it.
CG
(Caption to featured image: Pile of volumes on Canon Law, acquired in August 2024.)
What are your thoughts about the above?