Abstract: | Two remarks of John Paul II from his Letter to families (1994) constitute landmarks of
the contemporary Magisterium de familia christiana. „The family itself – says number 19
of the document – is the great mystery of God. As the »domestic church«, it is the bride
of Christ. The universal Church, and every particular Church in her, is most immediately
revealed as the bride of Christ in the »domestic church« and in its experience of love:
conjugal love, paternal and maternal love, fraternal love, the love of a community of
persons and of generations”. This statement correlates with a part of number 17 of the said
letter: „As a community of love and life, the family is a firmly grounded social reality.
It is also, in a way entirely its own, a sovereign society, albeit conditioned in certain ways.
This affirmation of the family’s sovereignty as an institution and the recognition of the
various ways in which it is conditioned naturally leads to the subject of family rights”.
As P.J. Viladrich rightly observed, a creative academic reflection on a convergence of
meaning resulting from the both famous notions „domestic church” and „sovereign family”
may contribute to implementation of a postulate to place family in a central position of
systematics of the canon law. Christian family has an unquestionable constitutional and
legal place in the Church and a society. What is at stake here is „a primary basic structure
around which the people of God is build up, configured and fundamentally organised”
(J. Hervada). Representatives of the so called „Spanish school” unanimously point at the
canon – key to a new placement of a family in a canonical legal order. If the science of
canon law still has got a task to introduce a congruent system of family law, a peculiar
catalyst and a starting point of its fulfilment may be a formula of canon 226 § 1 of the
Code of Canon Law which states that: „According to their own vocation, those who live
in the marital state are bound by a special duty to work through marriage and the family
to build up the people of God”. |