Association of Christ's Faithful Selected Issues
![handle is hein.journals/juristcu62 and id is 300 raw text is: THE JURIST 62 (2002) 294-311
ASSOCIATIONS OF CHRIST'S FAITHFUL
SELECTED ISSUES
ROCH PAG*
When the Second Vatican Council spoke of apostolic associations, it
is quite evident that, even in 1965, the underlying model was one of the
organized apostolate, such as Catholic Action, and not of the pious
unions or confraternities mentioned in the 1917 code. The Catholic
Action image and model show through quite clearly in the council's in-
sistence that associations not only maintain a relationship with the bish-
ops but that this relationship be a condition for the laity's exercising their
right to found and direct such associations, and to join those already
existing.'
Although it does not speak of the necessity for a relationship with
competent ecclesiastical authority, canon 215 does maintain that one of
the fundamental rights of the faithful is to establish freely and to direct
associations which serve charitable or pious purposes or which foster the
Christian vocation in the world [... ]. Speaking of the freedom of asso-
ciation, Pope John Paul II, in his apostolic exhortation Christifideles
laici, n. 29, mentions that such liberty is a true and proper right that is
not derived from any kind of 'concession' by authority, but flows from
the sacrament of Baptism, which calls the lay faithful to participate ac-
tively in the Church's communion and mission.2
What is new here is the actual formulation of the right of association
and its placement within the fundamental rights of the faithful. Indeed,
the faithful have joined together for centuries, either for mutual support
in their goal of fostering a more perfect life, or for sharing in apostolic
works. Several of these groups developed and eventually formed the re-
ligious institutes that we know today.
As other fundamental rights called for a framework of application in
various sections of the code3, so too did the legal recognition of this right
* Professor of Canon Law, St. Paul University, Ottawa, Canada.
Apostolicam actuositatem 19.
2 ActaApostolice Sedis (AAS) 81(1989) 445.
3 Let us think of the right to worship God according to the prescripts to their own
rite (c. 214) on the one hand, and personal parishes by reason of rite (see c. 518) on the](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/juristcu62&div=20&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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