The Person and the Christian Faithful in the Church’s Universal Legislation

Abstract

The author describes and the personality of Christian faithful in the Church’s universal legislation. He invites us to focus on the human person, an issue which is at the centre of the Church's social thinking and her moral and legal teaching. Since the Second Vatican council, we can see how the Church has grown in its awareness of the concept of the human person, especially in the social-pastoral thinking of the Church. The current Code of Canon Law is the fruit of the Second Vatican Council, and reflects the anthropology that underlies it. The author explains that we must not forget that this intrinsic and essential union between the person (human being) and law is born of empirical reality. According to him, law is the fruit, to a large extent, of human life, of the human experience itself, as well as the hermeneutic principles of law and of the human person.