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54 Jurist 22 (1994)
The Vindication of Parish Rights

handle is hein.journals/juristcu54 and id is 28 raw text is: THE JURIST 54 (1994) 22-39 THE VINDICATION OF PARISH RIGHTS JAMES A. CORIDEN* Individual members of the Catholic faithful possess explicit rights and obligations within their Church. The new list of their rights and duties in the 1983 Code of Canon Law was a celebrated innovation. Even though it is still a struggle to have those rights recognized more than ten years after the promulgation of the code, they are a very significant and welcome addition to the Church's canonical discipline. Communities of the faithful, that is, parishes and other local con- gregations, also have rights and obligations within the Church.' They have not yet found their way into the code or any other official legis- lation, but they do exist. A brief listing of parish rights and duties appears below. Who can claim these rights, and how can they do so? These are the two questions to be addressed in this essay: who can vindicate the rights and press the obligations of local communities of the Catholic faithful, and what are the means by which they can do so?2 A brief addendum treats a related question: do non-parochial local communities of the faithful possess rights and obligations? The bold assertion of the rights and obligations of Catholic parishes and other local congregations is based squarely on the theological fact * J.C.D. (Gregorian University, Rome, 1961), J.D. (The Catholic University of America, 1972). Academic Dean and Professor of Canon Law, Washington Theological Union, Silver Spring, MD. 1 This article is the third in a series on parish rights. The first, The Foundations of the Rights of Parishes: The Bases for the Canonical Rights of Parishes and Other Local Catholic Communities, appeared in lus in Vita et in Missione Ecclesiae (the acts of the international symposium held at the Vatican on the tenth anniversary of the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law, April 19-24, 1993), ed. Pontifical Council on the Interpretation of Legal Texts (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994) 505- 525; the second, The Rights of Parishes: The Canonical Rights and Obligations of Roman Catholic Parishes and other Local Congregations of the Catholic Faithful, appeared in Studia Canonica 28 (1994) 293-309. 2 These questions were treated by Ernesto Cappellini, La tutela dei diritti delle communith territoriali: diocesi e parrocchia, Monitor Ecclesiasticus 113 (1988) 85- 104.

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