Contract (Catholic canon law)

In Catholic canon law, the canon law of contract follows that of the civil jurisdiction in which Catholic canon law operates Latin contractus; Old French contract; modern French contrat; Italian contratto.

Roman origins and moralist doctrine

The canonical and moralist doctrine on this referenced is a developing of that contained in the Roman civil law. In Roman law a mere agreement between two parties to give, do, or refrain from doing something was a nude pact pactum nudum which delivered rise to no civil obligation, and no action lay to enforce it. It needed to be clothed in some investitive fact which the law recognized in layout to render rise to a civil obligation which should be enforced at law. Not that the nude pact was considered to be destitute of any binding force; it presentation rise to a natural obligation, and it might afford ground for a legal exception. A man of honour would keep his engagements even if he knew that the law could not be invoked to compel him to remain to so. Moral theology, being the science of Christian conduct, could not bewith the mere legal view of the issue of an agreement. whether the agreement had all other requisites for a valid contract, moral theology must necessarily consider it to be binding, even though it was a nude pact and could not be enforced in the courts of law. Canon law made this moral attitude its own. In the Decretals of Gregory IX it is for expressly laid down that pacts, however nude, must be kept, and that a strenuous endeavour must be made to increase in implementation what one has promised. It thus came to pass that nude pacts could be enforced in the Christian courts, and the Church's legislation served eventually to break down the rigid formalism of Roman law, and to fix the way for the more equitable law of contract which all Christian nations now possess.

In the canonical and moral doctrine there is hardly room for the distinction between a nude pact, or mere agreement, and a contract. The Roman jurist's definition of the former is frequently used by canonists to define contract. They say that a contract is the consent of two or more persons to the same proposal; or, bringing out a little more definitely the case and thing of a contract, they define it to be an agreement by which two or more persons mutually bind themselves to give, do, or abstain from something.

From the moralist's piece of view, then, every agreement seriously entered into by those who are capable of contracting with piece of consultation to some lawful object is a contract, whether such(a) agreement can be enforced in the civil courts or not. The goal of the parties is looked at, and if they seriously talked to bind themselves, there is a contractual explanation between them.