CANONIZZAZIONE DELLE LEGGI. — For certain matters, instead of directly formulating its own juridical norms, the Church establishes that the same norms which have been or will be issued on that matter by the legislators of the various States shall have the force of norms of canon law: the norms issued by the State, insofar as they thereby become part of the Church’s legal order, are called, in an expression by now traditional, canonized civil norms (or laws).
Naturally, for the Church to do this, the matters in question must be ones dealt with by the laws of the State: and indeed we see that in the CIC the c. of civil laws occurs almost exclusively with regard to contracts (cf. cann. 33 § 2, 1529, 1926 and 1930) and prescription (cf. can. 1508), matters for which the legislation of the Church is therefore not uniform, but varies from State to State.
The reason why the Church resorts to this indirect procedure in establishing certain norms is above all the desirability that, in certain matters, the canonical norms should be identical or nearly identical to the civil ones, and should moreover conform to the requirements arising from the character of the various peoples and from the different 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 formulated by the Church when it canonizes civil laws, but it must also be understood when it is not expressed. Moreover, just as the Church, by canonizing civil laws, does not thereby lose the power to issue laws on that same matter, should it wish to regulate it fully by norms formulated by itself, so, by canonizing civil laws, it may derogate from them at certain points by means of its own norms, which therefore, in the Church’s legal order, will prevail over the corresponding civil norms: indeed, we see, for example, that although, as has been said, civil laws concerning contracts and prescription are canonized, the Church has nevertheless established various norms concerning contracts entered into by ecclesiastical entities and concerning prescription in ecclesiastical matters; these norms derogate from the civil laws, which will therefore be applicable in such matters only if and insofar as, besides not being contrary to divine law, they are also compatible with these 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 this constituting c.; this occurs, for example, when a canonical norm mentions juridical institutions in such a way as to presuppose the norms of the respective legal order of the State (cf. cann. 600 n. 3, 1613 § 1, etc.); or makes given juridical situations dependent on the manner in which state juridical norms are constituted (cf. cann. 547 § 2, 581 § 1, 1513 § 2, etc.); or finally refers to civil law in order to declare that it, and not the law of the Church, must regulate given relationships (cf. cann. 1016, 1813 § 2, 2198).