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An ordinary (from Latin ordinarius) is an officer of a church or civic authority who by reason of office has ordinary power to execute laws. Such officers are found in hierarchically organised churches of Western Christianity which have an ecclesiastical legal system . [ 1 ]
The Supreme Pontiff (the Pope) is a local ordinary for the whole Catholic Church. [71] [72] In Eastern Catholic Churches, Patriarchs, major archbishops, and metropolitans have ordinary power of governance for the whole territory of their respective autonomous particular churches. [73] Diocesan bishops and eparchial eparchs
Papal supremacy is the doctrine of the Catholic Church that the Pope, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, the visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful, and as pastor of the entire Catholic Church, has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered: [1] that, in ...
A prominent 20th century Eastern Orthodox Christian theologian, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, envisioned a primacy that sums up rather than rules over: "Primacy is power, but as power it is not different from the power of a bishop in each church. It is not a higher power but indeed the same power, only expressed, manifested, and realized by one." [4]
The canon law of the Catholic Church (from Latin ius canonicum [1]) is "how the Church organizes and governs herself". [2] It is the system of laws and ecclesiastical legal principles made and enforced by the hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the ...
The exercise of the Catholic Church's magisterium is sometimes, but only rarely, expressed in the solemn form of an ex cathedra papal declaration, "when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, [the Bishop of Rome] defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church," [7] or of a similar ...
The church has the power to judge sin, in the internal forum, but a sin can be at the same time externally a misdemeanour or a crime (delictum, crimen), when threatened with external ecclesiastical or civil punishment. The Church also judges ecclesiastical crimes in the external forum by infliction of penalties, except when the wrongdoing has ...
The argument is often made that to be a Christian means to assent to the principle of sola scriptura, or the self-sufficiency of the Bible. But to claim that the Bible is the final word of God—more specifically, the final written word of God—is to claim more for the Bible than it claims for itself.