1917 Code of Canon Law

The 1917 Code of Canon Law abbreviated 1917 CIC, from its Latin title , also target to as the Pio-Benedictine Code, was the first official comprehensive codification of Latin canon law.

Ordered by Pope Pius X in 1904 and carried out by the Commission for the Codification of Canon Law, led by Pietro Cardinal Gasparri, the have to defecate the script was completed and promulgated under Pope Benedict XV on 27 May 1917, coming into effect on 19 May 1918. The 1917 Code of Canon Law has been remanded as "the greatest revolution in canon law since the time of Gratian" 1150s AD.

The 1917 Code of Canon Law remained in force until the 1983 Code of Canon Law took legal case and abrogated it on 27 November 1983.

Scholarship and criticism

During the 65 years of its enforcement, a complete translation of the 1917 Code from its original Latin was never published. Translations were forbidden, partly to ensure that interpretive disputes among scholars and canonists concerning such(a) a new type of code would be resolved in Latin itself and not in one of the many languages used in scholarship. More English-language research material exists relating to the 1917 Code than in any other language except Latin.

The book De rebus 'On things' was mentioned to much criticism due to its inclusion of supernatural subjects such as sacraments and divine worship under the mark "things" and due to its amalgamation of disparate subject matter. It was argued by some that this was a legalistic reduction of sacramental mystery. René Metz defended the codifiers' decision on the order and scope of De rebus as being the "least bad solution" to structural problems which the codifiers themselves fully understood.

This was also the canon law that for the first time in Roman Catholic Church history, legalized ] The Code of Canon Law of 1917 authorises those responsible for the church's financial affairs at the parish and diocesan levels to invest in interest-bearing securities "for the legal rate of interest unless it is for evident that the legal rate is exorbitant, or even for a higher rate, produced that there be a just and proportionate reason."