§ 139. Particular Church Legislation

Besides the general church legislation, whose enactments are binding upon all, the canons permit each local church to be governed, within its own bounds, according to its own local circumstances, and to issue such laws as those circumstances require. The Council in Trullo, by its 39th canon, notes that the privileges which the local churches in question canonically enjoy are to be respected; and the Second Ecumenical Council, prescribing by its 2nd canon the bounds of jurisdiction of certain chief bishops, ordains that the affairs of each particular church province are to be administered by the local council. By this, the corresponding legislative power was in essence recognized as belonging to these provincial councils within the bounds of the local churches. The canons likewise recognize legislative power to bishops as well, within the bounds of the church province entrusted to them. The Council of Antioch, by its 9th canon, and likewise the Seventh Ecumenical Council by its 6th canon, prescribe the scope of provincial councils, but at the same time recognize the right of bishops, acting within the sense of the general ordinances of the provincial council on which they depend, to administer independently the affairs of the church entrusted to them and to issue such ordinances as are necessary for the good governance of that church. Finally, there exist in individual churches various brotherhoods (confraternities) with defined pious aims. These brotherhoods, once canonically recognized and possessing their own law-confirmed autonomy, likewise have the right, within the bounds of that same autonomy and according to the needs of the brotherhood, to issue corresponding regulations, which as such acquire legal force.

The legislative activity of these last—namely, the autonomous church brotherhoods—stands in immediate dependence upon the diocesan bishop concerned. As regards the legislative power of the provincial councils, and likewise of the bishops, the general canonical rule holds that, in developing their particular legislation, they must be guided in the first place by the canons that are universally binding for the whole Church, and only in dependence upon the general canonical prescriptions may they introduce, within the scope of their competence, certain particular regulations. These latter they may change independently according to circumstances as they newly arise, but the fundamental canonical ordinances they must always strictly preserve. The wilful departure of a bishop, or even of a local church, from those fundamental canonical ordinances which have been received by the ecumenical Church places the local church in question in the position of a schismatic society, and the bishop who does so is subject to deposition.