CANONIZATION OF CIVIL LAWS. — In certain matters, rather than formulate its own juridical norms directly, the Church establishes that the norms issued or to be issued by the legislators of various States on those matters shall be valid as norms of canon law: the norms issued by the State, insofar as they thereby become part of the Church’s legal system, are termed, by now traditional expression, “canonized civil norms (or laws).”
Naturally, for the Church to be able to do this, the matters must be those governed by the laws of the State; and indeed we see that in the CIC the canonization of civil laws occurs almost exclusively with regard to contracts (cf. cann. 33 § 2, 1529, 1926 and 1930) and prescription (cf. cann. 1508), for which matters, therefore, the Church’s legislation is not uniform but varies from State to State.
The reason the Church resorts to this indirect procedure in establishing certain norms is chiefly the desirability that in certain matters the canonical norms be identical or nearly identical to the civil ones, and moreover conform to the exigencies arising from the character of various peoples and from differing circumstances of place and time.
It is obvious, however, that just as the Church cannot issue laws contrary to divine law, so civil norms can have the force of canonical norms only insofar as they do not conflict with divine law: this reservation is sometimes explicitly stated by the Church when it canonizes civil laws, but it must be understood even when not expressly stated. Moreover, just as the Church, by canonizing civil laws, does not thereby lose the power to issue laws on the same matter, should it wish to regulate it fully with norms of its own formulation, so too, in canonizing civil laws, it may derogate from them at certain points with its own norms, which will therefore prevail in the Church’s legal system over the corresponding civil norms. We see, in fact, for example, that although, as has been said, civil laws on contracts and prescription are canonized, the Church has nevertheless established various norms regarding contracts entered into by ecclesiastical entities and regarding prescription in ecclesiastical matters; these norms derogate from the civil laws, which will therefore be applicable in such matters only if, in addition to not being contrary to divine law, they are also compatible with the norms issued by the Church.
It should be noted that there are also cases in which the ecclesiastical legislator refers to the laws of the State without thereby having canonization; this occurs, for example, when a canonical norm mentions juridical institutions in such a way as to presuppose the norms of the respective State legal system (cf. cann. 600 n. 3, 1613 § 1, etc.); or makes certain juridical situations depend on the manner in which State juridical norms are framed (cf. cann. 547 § 2, 581 § 1, 1513 § 2, etc.); or finally refers to civil law to declare that it, and not canon law, is to govern certain relationships (cf. cann. 1016, 1813 § 2, 2108).