II

WHY KEPT IN LATIN

FOR convenience the history of canon law is divided into three principal epochs.That which was enacted prior to the time when Gratian compiled his Decretum, at Bologna, near the middle of the twelfth century, is known as Ancient Law. That produced between Gratian and the Council of Trent, about the middle of the sixteenth century is Modern Law and that of later times is called Recent Law.—Preface Codex Juris Canonici.

The Roman hierarchy through all the centuries of its existence has deliberately identified itself with imperial Rome and stood aloof as an alien to all current civil governments by spurning every living tongue and couching its law and theology in the ponderous and difficult Latin. Since early in the twelfth century its general councils have assembled in the West and their canons and decrees and the papal constitutions have been recorded in the medieval corruption of that dead language.

So are the record and the law of the unique papal system diligently placed beyond the reach of the people. Under that arbitrary policy the vast lay membership of the Roman Church in every land was kept in dense ignorance of its legal rights till those rights were carefully eliminated. Two-thirds of the literature of the canon law of persons establishes the rights and privileges of the hierarchy and clergy and nearly all of the other third is devoted to the monastic class technically known as "religious." Little indeed is said about the laity and that little establishes no rights but imposes manifold and onerous legal duties.

No other judicial establishment in recorded history has vested in a titled nobility such prerogatives extorted from the submissive and untitled masses. No other system has so methodically held the people in ignorance to facilitate their exploitation and continued subjection to arbitrary power. Under no other law has despotism so perfected and matured its illegitimate fruit.

To the same end every official and unofficial compilation of the canon law has been couched in Latin. The great private compilation made by Gratian was in that tongue. The Liber Extra of Pope Gregory IX and the Liber Sextus of Boniface VIII were in the same language. In scores of ponderous tomes the constitutions, canons and decrees enacted during the six centuries intervening between the pontiff last named and our time likewise rest defiantly in the dead tongue of pagan Rome.

During the last sixty years legislation flowing from the Pontifical Throne has been officially chronicled in the monthly bulletin known as Acta Sanctae Sedis exclusively in Latin. It is thus sedulously closed to the hundreds of millions of Roman Catholic laymen, whose knowledge of it must come only through their respective parish priests.

In 1904 Pope Pius X announced to the world in a motu proprio his intention to have the vast accumulation of documents and statutes composing the literature of the canon law gathered into a new code. For thirteen years canonists assembled at Rome for that purpose worked on the immense undertaking. In 1917 Pope Benedict XV announced, to the college of cardinals in secret consistory that the new compilation was finished. By his bull Providentissima he directed that it become binding on all Roman Catholics throughout the world on and after May 19, 1918.

True to the uniform policy of all the papal centuries, the new work, known as Codex Juris Canonici—Code of Canon Law—was issued from Rome only in Latin. In further confirmation of that policy the Sovereign Pontiff caused to be printed on the reverse side of the title page leaf this significant injunction in the same tongue: "Nemini liceat sine venia Sanctae Sedis hunc Codicem denuo imprimere aut in aliam linguam vertere." Expressed in English, that injunction would say, "No one may, without permission of the Holy See, republish this Code or translate it into another tongue."

The binding force of that injunction justifies a brief explanation. Its purpose is to prevent the new Code from reaching Roman Catholic laymen in any tongue which they can read. For that purpose it is entirely effective. It enables the Holy See to censor and suppress any translations or reprints that Roman Catholics may project. While it has no binding force on Protestant scholars and publishers, their works are outlawed to every Roman Catholic by Canon 1399 of the new Code.

In addition to the policy of keeping lay members in ignorance of their legal status and rights and thus holding them in helpless subjection to the clergy, another potent incentive further accounts for the foregoing injunction and for the whole program of keeping the law and record of the papal government locked in a dead language. It is sought thus to conceal from the modern world the shocking chapters in that record and the arrant treason that permeates the canon law.

So well has this latter incentive been realized that public attention has been almost entirely diverted from the legal system of papal Rome. Though ancient law descended to the modern world through the two channels of civil and canon law, and though modern jurists and scholars have in consequence recognized the importance of the civil law in connecting the ancient and modern worlds, none but Roman priests have written treatises on canon law and the study of that subject has not generally found a place in the curriculums of modern law schools and universities.

If the statutes at large of the canon law which have accumulated during the past thousand years and never been translated were turned into the vernacular of any modern enlightened people it would shock and horrify the world. It is not translated because its sponsors love darkness rather than light. Institutions and legal systems that cannot endure full and exhaustive investigation have no legitimate place in the twentieth century. The most reactionary government in the world, the Papacy alone refuses to permit its laws to be written in the language of the people.