Transcript of CS#61: Pete Vere Suprised by Canon Law

Transcript of Interview with Pete Vere about Surprised by Canon Law. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Surprised by Canon Law is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1111165/Surprised-by-Canon-Law-150-Questions-Catholics-Ask-about-Canon-Law/

———————————

Chris Cash:  This is the Catholic Spotlight, the podcast where we talk about what is new, cool and exiting in the Catholic marketplace.  I am your host, Chris Cash, Director of E-Commerce from CatholicCompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs.

Today in this Catholic Spotlight, we have author and canon lawyer, Pete Vere.  I think you guys are going to be surprised at how interesting this show is.  Hopefully not too surprised but canon law tends to be one of those areas that puts a lot of yawns on people’s faces.  Do you not think, Pete?

Pete Vere:  Absolutely not.  Yes, I mean we do have a reputation for boring and I think that is probably because we like to drink sherry but other than that it is a pretty exciting profession.  What a lot of people do not understand is that canon law touches upon every aspect of your daily life as a Christian whether you are a godparent, whether you are making your first communion.  Every time you go up to the confessional.  Any time you take a course through your parish or through your local Catholic university, there is some element of canon law into which you are coming into contact.

Chris Cash:  Except you guys do not act as traffic cops usually.  You do not see too many canon lawyers, at least not very often, coming down on anybody for things that they have done.  It is really mostly in egregious instances when you actually see that or when it comes to a marriage Tribunal.

So why do you not talk just a little bit about what canon lawyers do that affects us in our daily lives even though we may not see it so often.

Pete Vere:  Okay.  Imagine yourself at Sunday mass.  Now, imagine that there is no missal or no rubrics to follow along with.  What would happen?  Essentially, what would happen is nobody would know what to do.

So what canon law does is it provides a structure.  It provides some order so that we can function as Catholics.  So when we go to mass, there is a set pattern to the liturgy that the priest follows and that we as faithful follow along with.  Well, that touches upon canon law.  Canon law provides order within that liturgy so that we as the people of God can worship Christ and receive the Eucharist.

Similarly, with godparents, you want someone who is living a Catholic life.  You want someone who is mature in the Catholic life, and that is why canon law has certain requirements.  That the individual should be 16, the individual should have received the sacrament of Confirmation, that the individual should be in good standing with the church.

But canon law also affects other areas.  Anytime you ask for the intersession of the saint, there has do be some sort of process whereby the church declared infallibly that this person is a saint.  That this person is indeed in heaven with our Lord and canon law provides that type of structure whereby the church can prudently look at the life of an individual who has believed to have lived the holy life and make that determination.  So it just follows that canon law touches very, very broadly as Christians.

Chris Cash:  Now you have recently – I guess this is volume two of the series but you have Surprised by Canon Law, both volume one and volume two out now.  What are the types of things that a reader of your book are  going to find surprising about canon law and the processes within and the things that it governs and so forth.

Pete Vere:  I think the first thing they will find surprising is how common-sensical it is, that when we envision law we envision some big complicated structures, whereas the Code to Canon Law and the church’s canon law is actual quite simple.

Chris Cash:  We see complicated structures in our personal government because we have legislatures, which meet and continually pass new laws.  I guess with canon law they probably do not pass new laws very often, except when they are absolutely needed.

Pete Vere:  Oh, absolutely.  That is sort of the mindset…

Chris Cash:  …and they are not so politically motivated for getting re-elected either.

Pete Vere:  Yes, that is one of the mindsets behind canon laws.  That anything that is legislated should be done at the lowest level.  That the pope really should only intervene as supreme legislator in the church when there is a matter of urgency that affects the whole church.  The other difference is that in many ways are secular laws.  Sort of act with the presumption that people are going to behave badly, so we need as many laws as possible to prevent them from so doing.  Whereas in canon law, the presumption is that it is better to have good people interpreting few laws than to have not so good people interpreting many laws.

So what that provides is it provides a legal system that is rich.  It goes back 2,000 years, even more when you take into account what was adopted from our Jewish ancestors as well as our Roman ancestors.  But in terms of its applicability, it applies to the pastoral situation we have today.  That is the second thing they will be surprised about with canon law is how pastoral it is.

Let me just give you an example.  In the Western Church, or the Latin Church I should say, generally the age of first Holy Communion is the age of reason, which is on completion of one’s seventh birthday.  However, if you have a child who is very sick in the hospital, if you have a child who is maybe three or four who is dying of leukemia, the church does not want that child not to be comforted by the sacraments.  The church wants that child to receive Eucharist, to receive strength and grace from the sacraments.

So it puts in an exception that says, in the case of state of emergency or if a child’s life is in danger, that that child can receive the Eucharist if that child can distinguish the consecrated host from ordinary bread.  So that just shows you the pastoral nature of the law.  That yes, it does have rules and regulations but it also willing to make exceptions where the good of souls requires, for extraordinary types of circumstances.

Chris Cash:  So there is a lot of pastoral discretion built into the canon law then?

Pete Vere:  Absolutely.  For instance, if someone is in danger of death and is under a censure such as excommunication, you cannot wait for this to go to Rome, have the excommunication lifted.  If it is a type of excommunication that is reserved for the Holy See and get back, and you do not want that person to die in the meantime unreconciled with the church.  So any confessor at that moment can lift the excommunication if there is a legitimate danger of death.

Again, what we have to keep in mind is that there is one law that overarches our entire body of canon law in that every law must be made subject to it.  That law is that the salvation of souls is the supreme law and that is a very pastoral statement.

Chris Cash:  It is kind of a beautiful statement in saying that no matter what the canon say we are out to save souls.  If the canon is in some way are in the way of that, there is discretion to be able to override them.  That is beautiful in a way.

Pete Vere:  Yes, absolutely.  That is the other thing is that people are often surprised to find out that canon law does not exist for its own sake.  Rather it does not exist because we need laws.  It does not exist for the law.  As Christ said, “The law was made for man, not man for the law.”

So canon law exists to serve the church and to serve the church’s mission which is the salvation of souls.  So every time you take a look at a canon, a canon lawyer has to ask himself, “Is this serving souls and is this serving the church?”

Chris Cash:  Very well put.  Now, in both of your canon law books, Surprised by Canon Law I and Surprised by Canon Law II, obviously these were popular enough you wanted to write a second one.  What is it that a reader is going to get out of picking up this book and having a sit down with it?

Pete Vere:  Well, the first thing the reader is going to get is they are going to find out a lot of the reasons why the church does things that she does.  Quite often we go to mass on Sunday, we go to our Knights of Columbus meeting or we go to the Holy Rosary Society and we go through the motions but we are not really understanding what we are doing or why we are doing it.  A lot of these explanations are available in canon law.

So the first thing that the reader learns is why we do things.  Like why a godparent has to be a certain age, why do we normally wait for children to attain the age of reason, why do we have Catholic schools?

Chris Cash:  So you are taking an approach of this is an explanation as to why the canon laws are the way they are.

Pete Vere:  Absolutely.  We are also taking the explanation of issues that touch everyone.  Now, in the first book what we did was we did the first half of the Code of Canon Law.  We did the sacraments, we did social communications, we did Catholic education, we did like your diocesan structures.  What are dioceses?  Why do we have diocese?  How do parishes differ from the diocese?  What is the Holy Father’s role within the church both as supreme legislator which means that he is the highest lawmaking official.  As supreme pontiff, which incorporates other powers that have been passed down.

So we cover a lot of those questions.  We go into each sacrament individually with the exception of ordination.  We held that off until the second book.  Things like general absolution, what are the conditions because there has been a lot of misunderstanding there.  Now, you have people that say it should never be applicable and you have other people that go to it instead of private confession.  Well, neither of those are correct.  If you are in a situation, say a war zone or if you are in a situation where you cannot get to confession because of a shortage of priests or because of something going on in society, well yes.  The church invites you to come to general absolution.  However, in so doing, you have to be personally resolved as soon as possible to go to private confession and confess those sins that are being absolved through general absolution.

So a lot of Catholics are familiar with the first part that you can go to general absolution under certain circumstances but they are not familiar with the second which is it does not remove the obligation to go to private confession and confess those sins.  So we address a lot of issues like that.

Now, when the first book came out there was a number of high profile issues that were very deeply rooted in canon law that suddenly sparked in the public.  That suddenly became big news.  Some of those things were very painful like the sexual misconduct crisis among clergy or Catholic politicians who promote abortion but still receive communion.

Some of these issues were very joyful such as the election of Pope Benedict, the successor to Pope John Paul II.  Some advances in ecumenical dialogue as well as the rebuilding of eastern Catholic churches that had been suppressed through communism.  Other joyful incidence include the canonizations of the Fatima children, of St. Faustina, of Padre Pio, of St. Josemaría Escrivá.  So we have had a number of high profile canonizations as well.  The laity suddenly, our fellow lay people – because Mike and I are lay people.  We are married, we have children and families – were asking questions.  How does this work?  What is it to canonize?  How are popes selected?  What about these new movements that have arisen, these new religious orders that are popping up and serving a need of the church?

So Michael and I felt the second book was necessary.  We prayed about it and we discussed it with other canon law professionals.  We each discussed it with our respective bishop and we were very strongly encouraged to go ahead and do the second book.

Chris Cash:  All right, we are going to take a short break here to here from our sponsor but when we come back, we will be speaking more with Pete Vere about Surprised by Canon Law.  This is the Catholic Spotlight.

[Commercial]

Chris Cash:  We are back on the Catholic Spotlight, talking with Pete Vere of Surprised by Canon Law.  Pete, what kind of background did you have going into this book and kind of making the decision that you ought to write it in the first place?

Pete Vere:  Well, what happened was Michael my co-author and I were both canon lawyers.  We were young laymen, married.  We had gone through the canon law program together at St. Paul’s University.  Prior to that, I had a Bachelors of Religious Studies as well as I have done a year of theological studies to transition to canon law.  Mike has an M.Div., or Masters of Divinity.  So we met in the first year of our licentiate program.  At the time, it was a two-year program.  It is now a three-year program.  It was basically non-stop courses on canon law.  We did not even have an elective.  Every course was on some section of the Code of Canon Law.

So we spent two years in studying canon law at a master’s level.  We earned our license, which is your professional qualifications to practice.  From there, he went over into the Archdiocese of Detroit where he worked in the Tribunal for several years and then he switched over to the Chancery Office.  He is now Assistant Chancellor in Detroit.

Myself, I worked for the Diocese of Scranton in the Fraternity of St. Peter for a couple of years doing stuff for the Fraternity, which is a society of apostolic life.  Which is slightly different from a religious order as we explained in the book, and also doing Tribunal.  From there I went down to the Diocese of Venice to work on their Tribunal under two canon lawyers that are very well respected.  One is Fr. Joe Amato and the other one is Fr. John Dolceamore.  They were both retired canon lawyers and retired professors of canon law.

Now on the side, I also did a lot of writing on canon law because I was looking at a lot of the attempts that theologians and catechists had made after the second Vatican council to make theology and catechesis more accessible to lay people.  After praying about it and Michael prayed about it, we just felt we really need to do the same thing with canon law.  There is just such a rich tradition there that lay people need to know about.  Some of this came from answering questions on the Tribunal.  We were Defender of the Bond, which is a position that lets you see the process from the start to the end.  Often times, you are the one that gets called to answer questions that come in from lay people.

So we started noticing that a lot of the questions, even though I was down in Florida and he was up in Detroit, we started noticing that a lot of the questions where similar.  We would speak with other lay canonists at conventions and they noticed a lot of their questions were similar as well.  So from there we prayed about it.  We put the manuscript together and that is how the book came about.

Chris Cash:  Now, you have mentioned a couple of things that canon lawyers do, the Tribunals as well as answering questions from people about things going on in the church.  What other places are we going to find canon lawyers most likely?

Pete Vere:  The two places you are most likely to find canon lawyers are – besides in the parishes because a lot of priests and religious who are canon lawyers also do parish ministry.  In terms of canonical ministry, the two most likely places are the Chancery Office and the Tribunal.  The Tribunal of course is the church’s internal legal system.  We often identify it with annulments, which technically is not the right term because the church does not actually annul a marriage.  It declares the marriage invalid after careful examination or if there is no proof, it maintains the presumption of validity, which means we continue assuming that the marriage is valid.

That is the primary job of the Tribunal here in North America but Tribunals also handle other cases.  If there is a dispute between two parishes, if there is a dispute between a pastor and a group of lay people within the parish.  That can go through the Tribunal.  It is just like any court system and it goes back.  It is as old as the church itself.

Chris Cash:  So what kinds of cases have you typically seen go through the legal system of the church?  Do people going into the legal system in the church, do they typically hire or have a canon lawyer appointed to them or is the canon lawyer’s job mainly to make rulings from the bench?

Pete Vere:  It is everything.  We are just like secular lawyers in that you will find us as judges.  You will find us as advocates for the parties.  You will find us as Promoter of Justice, which is the equivalent to the DA.  You will find us as the defender of the Bond which if you are dealing with a declaration of nullity or someone is accusing their marriage of being invalid, the Defender of the Bond rather than the Promoter of Justice would act.  In that, the Defender’s job is to defend the bond of marriage as well as to ensure the integrity of the process.

Some dioceses assign canon lawyers or they will provide a list.  Over in Europe you have to hire them.  They will charge fees just like – like here in North America.  Generally, canon lawyers will work for a Tribunal or a Chancery Office but they can also take cases independently provided they get the approval…

Chris Cash:  Are there any real hotshot canon lawyers that you would want on your side if you were in a big mess?

Pete Vere:  Yes, it depends on the issue but other cases that they will take are allegations of sexual misconduct against clergy or religious.  I have done some of those.  As well as a lot of times it is parish property issues.  Either the church wants to close down or it wants to do some renovations or if you have two or three ethnic groups, they want to consolidate and maybe shut down one mass that is said in another language or move it to another parish.  So you get a whole broad spectrum.

Chris Cash:  So any time that a church wants to change its mass schedule does it have to go before the Tribunal?

Pete Vere:  No but if someone objects in the Tribunal, that can happen.  If no one objects to Father changing the mass schedule then it does not go before the Tribunal, which brings us to another thing about Tribunals, is someone has to initiate the complaint.  If there is not complaint, there is no case so to speak.

Chris Cash:  Now, does the church itself initiate complaints very often or is it mostly a disgruntlement by someone.

Pete Vere:  Oh no, the church can initiate a complaint and that is what the Promoter of Justice’s job is.  The Promoter of Justice acts like the DA.  If the Promoter of Justice knows of an injustice, pretty serious injustice, and it is not being dealt with administratively or for some reason the bishop would rather it be dealt with judicially.  The Promoter of Justice can then initiate a case.

Chris Cash:  Well, Pete, it has been real exciting but we are pretty much out of time today.  Was there anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners about your book or about canon law before we take off here?

Pete Vere:  Absolutely.  A question that always comes up is, “If my marriage is declared invalid by the Tribunal, will my children be considered illegitimate by the church?”  The answer to that is no.  Canon law is very clear.  Again, we see the pastoral nature of the law.  That if your marriage was believed to be valid, if it was attempted in good faith then it is declared invalid by the church, then your children are considered to legitimate.  Other than that, I would encourage lay people to check out the book, to become knowledgeable about how the church functions and why we do what we do as Catholics.

Chris Cash:  So for all those out there who are just kind of scratching your head about, “Why does Pastor Bob do this?”  This is probably a good book to get some foundation on some of those reasons for why things are done.  That is just really awesome and it is written in a really accessible way.  Pete, you and Michael have done a tremendous job putting this together.  We really appreciate what you have done for the church here.

Pete Vere:  Thank you very much and God bless you and all your readers.  Thanks for having me.

Chris Cash:  Thank you, Pete.  For all you listeners out there, also be sure to share this show with your friends.  Let them know about CatholicSpotlight.com.  Send them on over, we have got lots of great shows out there on lots of different topics.

Also, it is about ready for a new month to start so be sure to go on over to Podcast Alley and put in your vote for our show.  It helps to get us up higher on the list so that more people can find us and we can break in to some of that more general Christian podcast place.  Get more people interested in what is going on in the Catholic faith.  So be sure to go to Podcast Alley and vote.  Also, leave us a review over at iTunes.  That also helps raise our visibility up in the podcast listings.

Pete, thank you so much for what you have done and God bless you.

Pete Vere:  Thank you.

———————————

Transcript of Interview with Pete Vere about Surprised by Canon Law. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Surprised by Canon Law is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1111165/Surprised-by-Canon-Law-150-Questions-Catholics-Ask-about-Canon-Law/